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“Harbor,” I whispered, watching the rise and fall of his chest, too scared to look up in case I didn’t see those feelings reflected in his eyes. “What is happening to me?”
“I have to let go,” he replied, voice pained. “I don’t know… Something is wrong.”
Hisjeans. There was abulgein his jeans. For me? I’d experienced desire for Dice, I knew what it felt like, but Harbor had never found his soul bond. This was his first time, and it was forme.
Dice.
That’s what was missing. The pull to Dice that had hounded me day and night, that I’d fought to ignore from the moment I ran, it was gone.
I looked up at Harbor in shock. “The soul bond pull to Dice has disappeared.”
Was he dead? Was that the reason? No, it couldn’t be. I refused to accept that. Dice was strong, and fierce, andfine. Free of me, at long last.
I swallowed thickly. Despite the nightmares that haunted me where I watched Dice die a thousand different ways each time, I’d seen him fight off multiple agathos single-handedly. Iknewhe was strong, that he’d practically raised himself. He could handle anything. He’d probably been just fine through the days of darkness. Excelled, even.
I ignored the small voice in my head that told me I was lying to myself.
“Are we… Are we soul bonds now?” Harbor asked hesitantly, fingers flexing on my shoulders. “Is this what it felt like for you before? I don’t know how that would be possible, but I’ve never experienced desire before. Shit, Mercy. Idesireyou a lot.”
I didn’t question it. I didn’twantto question it.
Harbor had cared for me and helped me when he had nothing to gain and everything to lose from it. He was safety, and home, and peace. He’d never judged me for the terrible things I’d done, and night after night, I’d lain in my trundle and wondered why the Fates couldn’t have given me him instead.
I grabbed the front of his shirt, closed the distance between us, and kissed him.
Chapter 28
Gracehadsobbedforthe rest of the day, throwing up twice before passing out on the daybed where we’d spent the night. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to leave, not even for a second, though as the hours passed without Riot or Wild returning, I was growing increasingly panicked.
What if one or both of them was seriously hurt? Without the bonds connecting them, Grace had no internal warning system, no way to know if they needed help. Shit, it was almost a certainty that Riot was seriously hurt. Wild was a Keres daimon lost to bloodlust—no Moros stood a chance against him.
Eirene appeared at the open door as the sun rose, illuminating the remains of her garden. Would Gaia take pity on the ground and heal it? It didn’t seem like it, or surely she’d have done it already. Maybe the Olympians could fix it, though if it meant Grace entering that pit, then it would never happen.
I wouldn’t let it.
Eirene silently beckoned for me to follow her inside, and I carefully extricated myself from where Grace had been lying on my lap, tucking the blanket tightly around her. Her skin was brighter and healthier than it had appeared yesterday after a day of sunlight, and yet I’d never seen her look so fragile.
Losing the bonds had hurt her. Losing Bullet had broken her.
None of us would never be the same.
“Milos still hasn’t returned,” Eirene said quietly, leading me inside to sit down with the bowl of artichoke hearts she’d cooked for me. “She will be fine—she comes and goes from the temple regularly on her own, though staying away all night is slightly unusual. If you told her to watch over your friends, then that is where she will be.”
She stared out the window, and perhaps it was the harshness of the sunlight compared to the glowing firelight I was used to seeing her in, or perhaps it was the stress of the past few days, but Eirene looked a lot more drawn and frail than I’d expected.
“I can’t leave Grace,” I muttered, feeling ten years older than I had yesterday. “And I don’t think they’d want me to.”
“Sophia communicates to me in feeling and intuition, rather than words,” Eirene replied slowly, giving the bowl of food a pointed look, encouraging me to eat. I knew I should, but I had no appetite. “I don’tfeelas though I should go to the temple, or that I should encourage either of you to go. I think you can take that as a good sign.”
It wasn’t particularly reassuring.
Eirene gave Grace’s sleeping form a pitying look through the window. “I thought there was no greater pain than feeling the life of my bonded slip away, but this… This might be worse. Not only losing one, but knowing the others are right in front of you, but the connection is gone. I wouldn’t have been able to survive it.”
“Grace will survive it,” I replied absently, pushing my food around my plate. “Not easily. Not without fighting for that survival every day. She’ll be angry soon, though. That anger will keep her going.”
That anger would save us all. It wasn’t Grace’s compassion that would see the prophecy fulfilled, but her rage.
Loud barking from outside the gate startled me and Eirene, and I cursed under my breath as Grace sat upright, looking around with panicked eyes and a tear-stained face.
