“I don’t doubt her ability,” he murmured. “She proved her strength with the Transcindiel on the ashen before she left.”
“Then what is the problem?” Nerissa whispered. “Let her try. You cannot tell me you wish to stay soulbound to Queen Antares.”
Bayne’s sigh reached my pointed ears in a rippled whisper.
“Of course, I don’t. But I’ve managed her this long. I know how to handle her.”
Nerissa let out a disgusted scoff.
“But you don’t have to!” Nerissa whisper-screamed at him. “Lyvia is strong enough. She can break magical oaths.”
“And that scares me more than staying soulbound to Queen Antares.Break magical oaths?Do you hear yourself? That shouldn’t be possible. It goes against the forces of this world. Against all that is life and light,” Bayne whispered in a firm tone.
“This is Lyvia. Weknowher,” Nerissa urged.
Warmth flared in my chest. I guarded it against the Bellator bond connecting me to her, a pinch of guilt slithering into me as I kept utterly still and continued to listen.
“Do we?” Bayne challenged.
A strange, floating sensation washed over me as the blood drained from my face.
“I never told you what I saw in the Waters of Ascendiel last summer.”
“You said you thought it was a warning,” Nerissa murmured.
“I saw pure death. I saw a creature of shadows and black flames. I saw wings… I didn’t realize it then, but now I’m certain I saw someone using the Obscura power to battle Soleia flames.Ourflames…”
My stomach hit the ground, and a burning sensation formed behind my eyes. Bayne had never said a thing… He’d seemed shaken when he returned from the Waters of Ascendiel the night of the Awakening, but there was so much happening with the queen and with the bone. And I really didn’t press him on it. But what he claimed… I’dnever…
“She’d never,” Nerissa echoed.
I pinched my eyes shut, trapping my emotions and forbidding them to travel down my bond to her.
“The Waters provide a glimpse. You may not have seen the entire vision. It could have been one of the Embodied battling the Obscura powers…”
“It wasn’t Aelius! It wasme. There is a reason you went after her in Mount Telum last year, Nerissa,” Bayne murmured. “And a reason I kept close.”
My stomach plunged as the reminder of the crew’s early intentions on finding me drew a nasty cut against the recently healed scar.
“You care for her,” Nerissa cut in. “Do not say anything you might regret. And yes, I feared what she might become, but I was wrong. So were you. Stop this line of thinking. We are Bellators, all of us. We need to work together. Let her try to cut the soulbinding bond.”
Nerissa’s voice curved in urgency. My eyes locked on my hand still held out in front of me, and small tremors began to take hold. Lines of gilded darkness swirled on the surface in response to my emotions. I should leave. I should not be here…
“And if I let her try to cut my bond with the queen, how do we know the death in the blade she conjures wouldn’t slip and end me in the process?” Bayne countered.
“Her precision with that power has improved greatly,” Nerissa cut in. “And I’d wager it’s even more exact now that she’s been reborn into her true form. Her elven?—”
“Elf?” Bayne challenged, voice rising from a whisper to a near growl. “Have you even looked at her? Death slithers under her skin like it’salive… She is morecreaturethan elf?—”
“What the fuck did you say?”
My heart stopped along with the tremor in my hand, as Kellan’s voice ripped through the chamber on the other side ofthe wall like the sharp edge of a spear. Sets of footsteps rose from the opposite end of the throne room.
“It’s none of your concern, Astraeus,” Nerissa cut in after too long a pause.
“I was speaking to the king of Lotrennia,” Kellan answered her, his tone firm, yet lacking the condescending swagger it so often carried.
“And I was speaking with my sister,” Bayne cut in smoothly. What sounded like papers swished across a table.
