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I reshaped in the center of the sizable room, the hearth holding only glowing embers, just about every furniture piece covered in leather corsets of different styles. She’d always been messy, pretending to be unconcerned about how the world perceived her, and perhaps that had afforded her a ruthlessness that had always surpassed my own.
My naked soles made no sound as I walked over to where Lorn slept in her little nest beside the hearth. Yet another farce, how she hoarded the softest blankets while she curled a disgusted lip at just about any snot-covered child, pretending that her barrenness was a choice rather than the result of that shift by the cliff when she was pregnant.
I sat beside her, running my fingers through black strands I’d caressed a hundred times. Ardently after we’d escaped the dungeons, more and more roughly after we lost our true virginity to each other, only for it all to rot into yanking it until she screamed.
“Lorn.” I gave a little shove at her shoulder. “Wake up.”
She blinked her eyes open and frowned at me. “Malyr? What… what are you doing here?”
My ribs curled around my heart at the way she rubbed at her eyes, her movements still uncoordinated, her features soft and void of her usual studied siren’s smile. She looked like the innocent girl who’d cried so bitterly beside me.
It lasted but a second.
“The sun is barely up,” she said with an annoyed roll of her eyes that brought about that teasing smirk that had started to trigger a rush of anger in me about three years ago. “Aww, the pretty Raven boy can’t sleep because his chest is hurting?”
I forced my muscles to relax at the sound of that rotten moniker. Nothing but her attempt at stoking my anger, the aggressive outburst that had always followed in the past, along with darkness.
Darkness. Always darkness.
Never again.
After all the weight my gift had put on me, the misery, the loss spun into my fate, the goddess had finally given me a way out. As much as I hated Lorn, hated what we’d made each other become, I would not leave her behind in the dark like she’d done with me the day of her attack.
Not unless she left me no choice.
“Before the sun rises above the cliffs, I want you to find Aros, who arrived last night for thedrif,” I said. “You will bond yourself to him, posthaste. No delays. No excuses.”
Her breathed laugh carried too much amusement, making it clear she wasn’t grasping the seriousness of all this. “I’ll never bond—”
“You will return with him to Hanneling Hold and remain there for the rest of your life,” I continued. “You will never fly north, never seek me out, never come even within a thousand furlongs of myanoaley.”
“You’re not serious—”
“To ensure this, youranoa’sflight feathers will be clipped once a year.” Her unkindness was not likely to leave her gift behind, but I had to take precautions. “Should you leave your mate’s territory, even if only once, even if only by accident, I will personally kill your bird.”
Her pupils darted across my face in the dim light, as though searching for my sincerity and, when they found it, she struggled down a swallow. “Malyr, please… don’t send me away.”
My throat narrowed, but I forced a deep breath to fight against the sensation. I owed Galantia so much. From here on out, I had to do better. A lot better. This was a painful, but necessary, start.
“There is joy and a deep connection to be had in a bond, Lorn.” Now my throat turned itchy—likely because I had no idea if I could ever find the same in mine—burdened as my relationship with Galantia was. That would not keep me from trying to set things right. “Aros has seen every fucked-up part of you, every black second of what was done to you in the dungeons. And he loves you with all his heart.”
“But I loveyou,” she whimpered, her eyes the same sparkling orbs I’d looked into many times through the little cutout in the dungeons.
“No, you do not.” I’d done the same in the past, finding a sense of connection in our brokenness and confusing it as love. But it had never been that. Never. “What you love is this idea of what we are: bound together to eternal darkness. I am leaving all that behind, and so should you.”
“No,” she murmured, and then a bit louder, “No.” A resolute shake of her head. “I won’t let you send me away. You tried it before. You never meant it.”
I’d always meant it, but had somehow been unable to sever our ties completely, almost as if I’d been addicted to the familiarity of that darkness she brought to me and me to her. “You will leave and never return to my side. Ever.”
A tremble took hold of her lower lip as she sat up. “And if I refuse?”
My heart turned heavy, dragging on its strings. I wanted to get her out of this darkness, but not at the cost of her dragging me back down—or the woman I’d vowed to protect.
Holding her stare, I leaned into her so she may see the determination in my eyes before I whispered, “Then I will kill you, just like I said I would, should you ever harm my mate.”
Of course, she only lifted her chin, that single twitch on the right corner of her mouth making my teeth clench. Had I hoped, even for a moment, that she would deny the attack on myanoaley? Perhaps.
A haughty scoff puffed from her lips as she reached a finger into my hair, twirling one of my strands around it, her gaze keeping mine with unwavering strength. “Are you sure you want to take me on, pretty Raven boy? All by yourself? You’re still injured.”
