Shade held me in place when I tried to step to the side.
Energy kissed my fingertips as my powers ignited in automatic defense, only a wave of Zakkai’s hand calmed my power. I pulled out my wand to try again, and he smiled fondly at the item.
“Ah, I’ve been looking for that,” he murmured, plucking it easily from my palm and twirling it between his fingers. “I should have known those figments at AcaWard would give it to you.” He chuckled and canted his head to the side, his silver-blue eyes holding mine as he slid the wand under his cloak. “Thank you for keeping my wand warm for me.”
“Your wand?” I repeated, my mouth dry.
His lips curled again, causing little dimples to appear at the edges. “Yes, sweet star. My wand.”
“I-I don’t understand,” I whispered. “How?”
He reached out to tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear, then stepped into my personal space, trapping me between them, with Zakkai in front of me and Shade behind me. “Close your eyes,” he whispered.
I didn’t want to obey him, but my eyelids slipped shut as if he’d drawn them down with a spell. And then I felt him in my mind, untwisting a strand of magic that led to the root of my mate bonds.
One that finally allowed me to understand and see the connection at the end.
The missing link I’d failed to comprehend all this time.
The real reason I had access to Quandary Blood abilities.
It was never my parents or my own heritage or my lineage.
It washim.
Zakkai.
My Quandary Blood mate.
“You had better beright about this,” I muttered to the white-haired male standing in the place Aflora had just stood thirty minutes ago. Before Zakkai took her. Before I betrayed her in the worst way possible.
“How many times must you live the same history to believe my method?” Tadmir asked, his black eyes flickering with a millennium of secrets. “This is the only way. Even Kyros agrees, and he rarely agrees with anything.”
“It doesn’t feel right,” I admitted, pressing my palm to my heart.
“Sacrifices rarely do,” he replied softly. “But the outcome will prove our pain worthwhile. Trust me, Shadow.”
“The last time I trusted someone, I bit an Earth Fae, fell in love with her, and watched her destroy the world in seven different ways,” I said, recalling each version of our lifetimes together.
They all linked back to that pivotal moment in Kols’s suite when Aflora threatened to break the bonds. I’d been living the same reality over and over again, several different ways, all of them ending in war no matter what I did to avoid it.
So this time I gave Zakkai what he wanted—our mate.
Which had been the plan all along.
He was the reason I’d bitten Aflora, after all. He’d warned me she would be beautiful, that I would crave her, but that she wasn’t mine to take.
Yet I did this time.
Because she bit me and I couldn’t help but claim her in return.
I’d expected him to try to kill me after I told him, but instead, he’d shrugged and said it only empowered her more. Which was why I’d guided Zeph down a similar path, providing him with the opportunity to finish the bond with Aflora.
I knew the Council would convene to tell Kols the truth on our first break day—as they’d done every time during the last seven iterations of this sequence.
But unlike before, I hadn’t voiced discontent with Aflora and Zeph going to the village. However, I hadn’t counted on Zakkai’s interference—an error that had almost destroyed everything.
Only, it led to Zeph taking Aflora to the Human Realm and finishing the bond.
