This is not hostile. That thought flickers once. I ignore it.
I begin the incantation slowly, drawing threads of the bond into visible strands before me. They shimmer faintly, silver laced with gold, beautiful and alive.
My throat tightens.
“I’m not rejecting you,” I whisper to the empty air, as if he could hear. “I’m protecting us.”
The first cut is not physical. It is conceptual. I separate emotion from power. Dependence from alignment. Desire from necessity.
The bond resists immediately. Like a living thing refusing dismemberment. My magic surges in response, sharper than I intend. The Wildspont hums in uneasy echo. I press harder, guiding a blade of will into the nearest thread.
The moment it touches, pain detonates through me. Not external. Internal. A recoil that feels like tearing muscle from bone. The threads lash outward instead of weakening, flaring blindingly bright. My breath leaves me in a choked cry as the circle beneath me fractures, lines of light spiderwebbing outward.
The bond does not diminish. It expands. Force floods through me, too much, too fast. Zeidan’s presence slams into my awareness without permission, rage, alarm, movement.
He knows.
I try to finish the spell. That is the third mistake.
The blade of magic shatters in my hands. The recoil surges upward through my spine, white-hot and blinding. The grove explodes with light.
And then there is nothing.
I waketo the sensation of being carried.
Strong arms. Controlled breathing that is anything but calm.
Zeidan.
The bond is a roaring current now, unstable and volatile, his fury crackling along it in sharp pulses. When I open my eyes, we are already inside the private wing of our quarters. The door seals behind us with a violent snap of wards.
He lowers me onto the bed with a care that does not match the storm in his expression.
“What were you thinking?” he demands.
His voice is not raised. It is worse. It is carved from something restrained and shaking.
I push myself upright, ignoring the weakness in my limbs. “I was thinking clearly.”
“You attempted a severing ritual.”
“I attempted to recalibrate it.”
His eyes flash. “You tried to cut it.”
“I tried to give us breathing room!”
“By carving into the core of something neither of us fully understands?”
His control fractures then, just slightly. The bond flares hot, reflecting the anger he refuses to shout.
“You could have died,” he says.
The words hit harder than the accusation. I look away first.
“You were pulling away,” I say quietly. “You decided distance was protection. I decided control was.”
“That was not your decision to make alone.”
