“You should go,” I say instead, and even I can hear how the words ring false. “This place will kill you if you linger.”
“Will it?” She glances around again, but there’s no fear in the gesture, only curiosity. “Or will you?”
The question hangs between us like a blade, sharp and gleaming and dangerous to touch. I could kill her. Should kill her, according to every law that governs my people. She has seen too much, knows too much, and represents a threat to the careful balance that keeps our worlds separate.
But the thought of her blood on my hands makes something in my chest recoil with such violence that I have to step back, have to put distance between us before I do something irreversible.
Like fall to my knees and beg her to stay.
“Go,” I repeat, and this time I let the command ring with power, let it settle into her bones like winter cold. “Go, and do not return.”
For a moment, I think the compulsion will take hold. Her eyes go distant, and she sways on her feet as if fighting against invisible chains. But then she blinks, and when her gaze focuses on me again, it’s clear and defiant and utterly unaffected.
“Interesting,” she murmurs. “That usually works on people, doesn’t it?”
The words hit me like a physical blow. She shouldn’t be able to resist my magic, shouldn’t be able to stand in my presence without feeling the weight of my power pressing down on her like a mountain. That she can means only one thing, one impossible, world-tilting thing that I’ve spent three centuries praying I’d never have to face.
The Yulebond. The curse that has haunted my bloodline since the beginning, the mystical tie that binds my people to their destined mates whether or not they will it. I’ve watched it destroy kings before me, watched them sacrifice everything—duty, honor, the safety of their people—for the sake of a connection they couldn’t control.
I swore it wouldneverhappen to me.
But as I stare into her storm-gray eyes, feeling the ancient magic coiling between us like a living thing, I know my oaths mean nothing. The bond has found me at last, and it wears the face of a human woman who looks at me like I’m a puzzle to be solved rather than a monster to be feared.
“You need to leave,” I say again, but this time the words come out broken, desperate. “You need to leave now, before…”
“Before what?” She takes another step closer, and I catch her scent again—pine and snow and something warm and alive that makes my teeth ache with the need to bite and claim. “Before you lose control? Before you do something you’ll regret?”
Both. Neither. I don’t know anymore.
“Before I claim you,” I snarl, letting the truth tear itself from my throat like a confession under torture. “Before this thing between us destroys everything I’ve spent my life protecting.”
The words hang in the air between us, heavy with implication and threat and desperate want. I expect her to run now, finally, to flee back to her safe human world where monsters exist only in stories and magic is something that happens to other people.
Instead, she smiles.
“There’s something between us?” she asks, and there’s a note in her voice I can’t identify—hope, maybe, or challenge. “I thought I was imagining it.”
The admission undoes me. I’m moving before I realize it, crossing the distance between us in two long strides and catching her face between my hands. Her skin is soft and warm and utterly human, and touching her sends sparks of magic dancing up my arms like St. Elmo’s fire.
“You should be afraid of me,” I whisper, my thumbs tracing the line of her cheekbones. “You should be running.”
“Should I?” Her hands come up to cover mine, and the simple touch nearly brings me to my knees. “What if I don’t want to run? What if I’ve been waiting my whole life for something like this?”
The words hit me like absolution and damnation rolled into one. I lean down until our foreheads touch, until I can feel her breath against my lips and see myself reflected in her eyes.
“Then we’re both fools,” I murmur.
“Probably,” she agrees. “But maybe that’s okay.”
For a moment, we stand frozen like that, balanced on the knife’s edge between duty and desire, between the world as it is and the world as it could be. Around us, the glade holds its breath, waiting to see which way we’ll fall.
Then the sound of horns echoes through the forest—my guards, finally responding to the magical disturbance, coming to investigate the trespass. The spell breaks, and I step back so quickly she staggers.
“Go,” I say urgently, and this time there’s no command in it, only a desperate plea. “Go now before they find you here.”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see the questions in her eyes, the confusion and hurt and dawning understanding. But she’s not stupid, this human woman who walks through my wards like they’re cobwebs. She can hear the approaching hoofbeats as clearly as I can.
“Will I see you again?” she asks as she backs toward the treeline.
