Page 66 of The Bonds of Indigo

I glance down. She refuses to lean her head against me, her hand resting primly in her lap, posture tight as a drawn bow. Instinct betrays me and I pull her a little closer anyway.

Without a word to Atlas, I rush off, heading north. I don’t sprint, but I keep a pace fast enough that any other Mundane would have lost their breath. Still slow enough that she won’t feel jostled.

Why I care is beyond me.

This damned bond is to blame. That’s it.

The moment she figures out how to sever it, everything will go quiet. I’ll feel nothing for her. Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

“How’s your arm?”

I almost cringe at myself. She probably won’t answer. And why the Beyond am I asking? Blame the hunger. Blame the way her scent tangles in my head like incense and wildfire. Blame anything and everything but the truth.

“All better,” she says, so softly the wind nearly swallows it.

“Good.”

“Good…”

I steal a look at her. She’s watching me—head straight, gaze up. And her eyes, fuck me, those eyes. They flare, molten and alive, as if fire itself coils in spirals around her pupils. They’re dangerously stunning, and nothing I’ve ever seen before her.

“Left,” she says, and only then breaks eye contact. For a breath, her gaze lingers on my mouth—and something inside me lurches—before she sharply looks away.

I follow her directions. After several more strides, she has me shift north again. The trees grow wilder here—thin, pale trunks reaching upward like skeletal fingers, their thick, intertwined crowns turning the dying sunlight into a copper haze. Vines hang like braided ropes, shadows webbing across our path. It feels like running through a dormant rainforest—lush but bone-dry, ancient but half-asleep.

Amarah shifts in my arms, lifting herself slightly.

“Here,” she whispers.

Coming to a slow stop, she begins to pull herself out of my arms. I don’t stop her, even if some reckless part of my brain wants to.

A stupid part. The not-thinking part.

I shake my head, turning to scan the trees, and freeze.

Her hand wraps around my forearm, holding onto me lightly as she fixes her attention on something ahead of us. A spark of energy pulses where her skin touches mine—hot and electrifying. I hate that I don’t hate it. I doubt she even realizes she’s doing it; she’d never hold on to me like this consciously.

“It’s… still open.” Her voice is barely a breath.

I force myself to look up. And there it is. A set of wrought-iron gates materializing out of the darkness, their bars ghostly and half-faded, gothic and misplaced. The kind you’d see in a haunted house movie; the ones you know you’re an idiot for walking toward

Her heart, normally steady as a metronome, kicks into a frantic staccato.

I don’t know where the impulse comes from—hunger, worry, the damn bond—but my hand shifts, covering hers gently.

I regret it instantly.

She jerks back like I burned her. Her gaze snaps to our contact, wide and startled, then wrenches away from me. She cradles her hand against her chest, face twisting. It isn’t in disgust, but something far worse.

A terrified, wounded soul and my touch, unintended and stupid, pulled her hurt up from the depths and set it trembling on her skin.

For a heartbeat, our eyes meet. Hers are full of ache and denial. Mine I know are full of something they shouldn’t be.

I open my mouth—no idea what I even mean to say—when she turns from me and bolts straight toward the gate.

“Amarah, be careful!” I bark, surging after her.