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Not until I slapped his face with a force that ripped his head sideways, strands of hair clinging to his mouth, my palm flaring as if I’d touched hot coals.
Malyr’s onyx eyes snapped back to mine, his jaws trembling, his lips parting, his teeth barred when he shouted, “You don’t get to hurt me!”
Black tears seeped from his eyes.
I shuddered under his pitch-black stare, the darkness that swallowed his irises and the whites right along with it, turning him into something terrifying. Monstrous. What was happen—
He gripped my hair, pulling me up by it while he sat back on his haunches, only for a twisting motion to spin me onto my stomach. Weight settled between my shoulder blades, pushing my breasts against the hard stone. Something slung around my hips. One pull, and my ass lifted high. Pain bit into my knees.
Malyr pushed into me, stabbing through clenched muscles and slamming all the way into my shattering soul. A surge of shadows followed, slamming against my box, sending hundreds of hairline cracks across the glass. Skinny tendrils slipped through—scratching, scraping—curling around something deep in my core. Then, they tugged.
The bond!
I closed my eyes once more, focusing on the box of glass. No, not glass. Diamond! Indestructible. As black as the backdrop of my mind, so dark that the shadows couldn’t distinguish it from its own tendrils. Impenetrable.
“What are you doing?!” Malyr snarled in frustration behind me, thrusting so hard, the grit and gravel scratched over my cheek. “One way or another, I will get this bond!”
With a roar, Malyr poured every ounce of his power into an onslaught against my void, in an all-out assault intended to shatter my defenses. But I held firm, my resolve unyielding. I would not open, and he would not enter.
At least, not into my void.
But he did enter my body—violently, ruthlessly.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I looked over my shoulder back at him. “Don’t hold back, Malyr. I beg of you,” I bit out. “Never let me forget what you are.”
His features contorted into a furious mask, shadows flaring from his eyes. Until he spotted my tears, an unknown emotion passing over his face, darkening his features and causing his entire body to tremble.
He looked down at where he was buried inside me, his gaze lingering there for a moment as the shadows cleared from his eyes, if not completely. Then he pulled out, withdrawing from me entirely before he quickly rose and turned his back on me.
I struggled myself up to sit, brushing my skirts down before wrapping my arms around my knees. Silence stretched between us, tense and heavy. Why had he stopped?
“I hadn’t meant to…” His voice faded on a trembling exhale. “It is a poor excuse, I know full well, but I have little agency—”
An unkindness of ravens fluttered in, letting Sebian shift out of his shadows. “I searchedeverywherefor you two, scouting out the— Wait. Why are you crying? What happened?” He turned toward Malyr, letting his shout shatter from the rock. “What did you do now?”
Malyr walked toward the curtain of icicles that clung to the overhang. He glanced back at me over his shoulder, his eyes carrying a sheen I’d only once witnessed on him before—back when he’d learned I had played a hand in his brother’s death. Except, this time, there was no hate mixed into it, leaving nothing behind for me to read but… sadness.
I shivered under his unguarded stare. “He taught me how to shift.”
With a laughed exhale, Malyr turned toward a gap in the icicles. “You have until a day before the next full moon to practice flight formations with her.”
Sebian scoffed. “So much about having time on your hand.”
“I want her in the air at least five hours a day,” Malyr simply continued, ignoring the remark. “Every day. She needs to get her endurance up before we leave.”
Sebian took a step toward him. “Leave for where?”
Shadows and feathers already swirled around Malyr, bringing about his shift, but one word lingered between the flapping of wings. “Valtaris.”
ChapterTwenty-Two
Sebian
Present Day, the border of Vhaerya and Dranada
Beside us, Galantia’s ravens glided along our slipstream, occasionally flapping their tired wings, our massive unkindness casting small shadows that hushed over the landscape below. The longer we followed the river beneath us upstream, the murkier it became, the water a disgusting, disease-ridden green.
It hadn’t improved; if anything, I could have sworn it was worse now than it was a year ago. Smelled bad, too. Probably from whatever stupid animal had gotten too close for a deadly drink, now rotting away beneath the surface.
