Page 66 of Bound to Three Fae Beasts

“How did you get so close to Gareth and I while we were talking? He’s always searching the crowd, yet you caught him off guard. And the only person I saw anywhere near us was Savannah. So do you have a secret talent the school doesn’t know about?” His gaze was piercing, sending a thrill of fear through me.

Did he know? He’d been close during the first binding trial. Had he seen something that made him suspicious? I wasn’t about to admit it—that sort of admission would get me killed! I swallowed, casting my mind around for another excuse.

The first time I’d tapped into my magic outside the trials was in the library, when I’d successfully hidden from Red and Flora, then skimmed Gareth’s form. The best way to lie, I found, was with the truth.

“I can sometimes turn invisible, it seems. Though it’s clearly not very stable,” I said, trying to put on an unaffected air.

“Invisibility is a rare gift. Almost as rare as…” he let himself trail off.

Was he going to say invisibility was as rare as a shape-thief? If he did know, or if he suspected, why hadn’t he turned me over to the faculty? Was he hoping to blackmail me, or wait until the right moment to expose me to make himself a hero? Maybe he was going to tell Gareth, so they could kill me together.

But then, why wouldn’t he have grabbed Gareth and brought him back with us, so they could kill me?

“I answered you,” I said, feeling weirdly shaky. “Now you answer me.”

He stared at me for a long moment before he said, “I don’t want you to die.”

Surprise rippled through me. Relief made me feel lighter, only to be quickly chased away by suspicion. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why would you care if I live or die?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” He said it so flippantly and dismissively that I clenched my jaw.

Fine. If he wasn’t going to share, I wasn’t going to push. He was probably only feeding me a line, anyway. Even if he gave me the most impassioned declaration of why he wanted me to live, I wouldn’t believe it.

“What happened, anyway?” I remembered the way Hilda had contorted in pain and shuddered.

A muscle twitched in Jasper’s jaw. He sat heavily on the couch and gestured toward the chair. I perched on the edge of it as he leaned his elbows to his knees. “She went through the unbinding.”

“What is that?”

His frown deepened. “Did your mother never tell you?”

“I never even met my—” I cut off, hissing through my teeth. I hadn’t meant to say anything, let alone admit that. My fists clenched as I waited, tense, for him to say something about it. To mock me, or say that made sense for why I was so ignorant. Something.

“The unbinding is when a fae’s bound beast goes wrong. It dissolves, turning into a formless thing that will destroy and consume everything around it unless the fae that had unbound is subdued or killed. When that happens, it releases a magic that harms others, and sometimes will even trigger more unbinding. Seb and Gareth will be watched closely after today, to ensure they won’t end up unbound, too.”

I shuddered. “That can happen to them? What about you?”

Jasper let out a shaky breath and looked away. “I am more susceptible since I have a wrong beast. Your friend Freta, too, since her binding is weak. We don’t know who is causing the unbinding.”

“Who? You mean someone is doing this on purpose?” I pressed, voice lowering.

Jasper hesitated, then nodded. “That is what we’ve been told. We were also told that the Academy grounds were protected, that nobody could reach through the wards.”

The way he said it made it clear he doubted that was the truth. I repressed my own shudder as I wrapped my arms around myself. The magic that had come off Hilda had touched me, too, but it hadn’t hurt like it seemed to hurt the others.

“The unbinding is why the courts are more desperate than ever to produce strong future generations,” Jasper continued. His jaw tightened again and he stared at me with those intense blue eyes in a way that made me shudder with something that wasn’t quite fear. “And that’s the reason I was disowned, and why I’m forbidden from ever having romantic entanglements.”

Wait, what? I stared at him openly, uncertain I understood him. “I’m not sure what that means.”

Jasper’s lip twitched and he glanced away. “I have a wrong beast. Therefore, I am strictly forbidden from doing anything that might result in children. I can’t be permitted to pass my weak magic forward.”

“What happens if you break that rule?” I asked, knowing it was too personal a question but unable to stop myself. This was far beyond what I expected! I knew he was disowned, but to be forbidden romance? Sex?

“The woman will be forced to take abortifacients until it’s confirmed she’s not pregnant. And I … will have my own punishment,” he said, again not looking at me.

It was more open than I expected him to be. I processed this information, wondering exactly what sort of punishment he’d face. “If the purpose is to prevent children, then aren’t there other ways besides abstinence to do that?” I blurted, still confused.

This sort of strictness I could see with low-born fae, but he was once an heir. Surely they would have found a loophole for someone of his status? I recalled one book I’d read in which the hero and heroine, to avoid the possibility of children, only engaged in anal sex. Then even in the human world I learned of plenty of different types of plants that could be used to help prevent conception.