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Gullie shot to her feet. “Melina!” she yelled, “You were right! The spell is imperfect!”
“See?!” she shouted from the kitchen. “I told you!”
I stood up. “I figured that out too. Colbolt didn’t forget me, and Tallin—he forgot me for a minute, but he remembered who I was pretty quickly.”
“We didn’t know anything about a crone or a memory,” Gullie said, “But we figured it had to have been really powerful magic. Like, impossible magic. That kind of thing is hard to pull off perfectly.”
“The most I can figure is, she manipulated the hand of Fate somehow.”
“No, it’s bigger than that. I think Malys tried to create a new reality, one in which she’s Princess of Windhelm. She tried to make that reality assert itself, but something went wrong, and both realities are fighting each other. That’s why we can remember you, while other people can’t. What I still don’t know is exactlywhatwent wrong with her spell—why it didn’t work as she wanted it to.”
Valerian returned at that exact moment, as if my immediate thought of him had summoned him. Looking across at him, standing by the door to the cottage we were in, I knew exactly why the spell Malys had laid out hadn’t worked like she had expected it to.
He and I had a bond.
A Fate Bond.
At the time, I hadn’t known it existed, and neither had he, which meant she may not have known it had existed either. Maybe if I hadn’t been bound to Valerian, her spell would have worked, and I wouldn’t be here right now. But the fact that Fate had written our names together in the stars was, it seemed, the reason why I still had a chance at making all of this right.
“I think I know,” Valerian said.
Gullie looked over at him. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” she said.
He shook his head and entered the cottage. “My apologies,” he said, taking a soft bow. “My name is Valerian, and I was once part of the Royal Selection.”
“Ah…”
His eyes moved across to me. “It isn’t enough that we were bound by Fate, Amara,” he said.
“It isn’t?”
“You share a bond with many people. Your parents, your family—even your friends. This is a luxury many of us do not have. But that alone wouldn’t have been enough. Our bond is different, written by Fate’s hand itself without any intervention or urging from either mortal or Fae.”
“What are you saying?”
“There is a word the Fae use when describing such a bond. An ancient word full of power and meaning… we call it the Bond of the Bel—”
“—don’t you dare finish that word,” Gullie shrieked.
Valerian looked stunned. “I didn’t mean to offend.”
“I’m not offended,” she said, composing herself. “But the last time someone used that word, Arcadia was very nearly destroyed.”
“Gullie…” I said, taking her hand. “It’s okay. I already know.”
“You do?”
“I figured it out on Earth. He’s mybelore; My soulmate.”
Gullie’s expression turned desperate. “Why does this always happen to your family? Naturally occurring soulmate bonds are meant to be rare!”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, “But I’m done waiting around.” I looked up at Valerian, who nodded.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “We take the fight to Malys.”
CHAPTERFOUR
Ibarely registered having slept. I had been beyond exhausted, fueled only by stubbornness and a burning desire, a need to see this thing through. When I woke up the following morning, I woke up thinking about how that would be my undoing if I wasn’t careful.
