CHAPTER THREE
ORLAITH
The claiming bond was going to drive her mad.
Orlaith had survived twenty-seven years of isolation, of being untouched and untouchable, of the Widow's Touch making every casual contact an act of murder. She'd trained herself not to want what she couldn't have. Not to crave the simple human comfort of skin on skin.
And now she was plastered against Vahyn Greymaw's back like a second skin, and the bond was whispering more more more with every step the horse took.
It had been three hours since they'd left the Temple of Bones. Three hours of forced intimacy, of feeling every breath he took, every shift of muscle beneath his shirt, every pulse of his heart through the claiming mark.
Three hours of her curse trying to drain him while the bond tried to merge them.
It was exquisite torture.
She'd tried to maintain distance at first—sitting as far back on the horse as possible, gripping the saddle instead of his waist. That had lasted approximately ten minutes before the claiming bond sent a spike of pain through both their chests that nearly unseated her.
Now her arms were wrapped around him, her cheek pressed against his shoulder blade, their bodies moving in sync with the horse's gait.
And she could feel him dying.
The death-sight wouldn't shut off. Every time she blinked, she saw the curse eating him from inside: black tendrils spreading like poison through his veins, reaching for his heart. The claiming mark fought it, her magic instinctively trying to consume the demon's curse, but it wasn't enough.
He had days. A week at most.
And she was making it worse.
The claiming bond drained life force—that was its nature. It pulled energy from him into her, strengthening her magic, feeding her power. She could feel herself growing stronger with every hour, her control over the Widow's Touch sharpening, her death-sight becoming clearer.
While he faded.
"Stop it," Vahyn said, his voice rough.
She started. "Stop what?"
"Feeling guilty. It's distracting."
Right. The empathic link. He could feel her emotions through the bond, just as she could feel his. Currently, she was getting a steady stream of pain-determination-exhaustion from him, layered over the wolf's constant refrain of mate-protect-claim.
"I'm not—" she started.
"You are." He shifted slightly in the saddle, and she felt the movement through their connected bodies. "I can feel it. Your guilt tastes like ash."
"Emotions have tastes now?"
"Through the bond? Yes." He paused. "Yours do, anyway. Guilt tastes like ash. Your anger tastes like copper. Your fear tastes like—"
"I'm not afraid," she cut in sharply.
"Liar."
The word hung between them. Not accusatory. Just... true.
Because she was afraid. Terrified, actually. Not of him, not of the demons, but of what the bond represented.
Connection. Intimacy. Someone who could feel what she felt, who couldn't pull away even if he wanted to.
Someone who would die because she'd touched him.
Just like Brynn.
The memory rose unbidden: her sister's face, fourteen years old and beautiful, smiling as she'd run toward Orlaith for a hug. It had been Orlaith's sixteenth birthday. She'd been home from Conclave training for a brief visit.
She'd forgotten to put her gloves back on after washing her hands.
Brynn had hugged her. Skin to skin, sister to sister.
And died in her arms, drained to a husk, while Orlaith screamed.
"Your fear tastes like grief," Vahyn said quietly. "Old grief. The kind that never heals."
Orlaith's throat tightened. "Stop reading my emotions."
"Can't. Bond won't let me." His hand came up, covering hers where they clasped at his waist. Even through the glove, the claiming mark flared. "For what it's worth—I'm sorry. For whoever you lost."
"It was my fault."
"Most deaths feel that way. To the ones left behind."
She should have pulled away. Should have snapped something cruel, pushed him back, maintained the walls she'd spent eleven years building.
Instead, she found herself asking: "How did they die? Your clan."
His hand stiffened over hers. For a moment, she thought he wouldn't answer.
Then: "Demon bargain. My uncle—the alpha before me—made a pact with something he didn't understand.
Bael'qur. An archdemon from the Ninth Circle.
" His voice was flat, emotionless. The tone of someone who'd told this story so many times it had lost meaning.
"My uncle wanted power. Wanted to make the Greymaw untouchable, unkillable. Bael'qur promised that, for a price."
"The price was your clan."
"The price," Vahyn corrected, "was entertainment. Demons don't need blood sacrifices or souls. They feed on suffering. On prolonged agony. What better suffering than slaughtering an entire clan in one night and leaving a single survivor to carry the guilt?"
Orlaith's breath caught. "You were there."
"I was on patrol. Three miles out, checking the boundary stones." His hand tightened convulsively on hers. "I felt it through the pack bonds. Felt them die, one by one. My father. My mother. My sisters. Forty-three wolves, snuffed out like candles."
"How did you survive?"
"Bael'qur wanted me to." Simple. Brutal.
True. "The demon cursed me before it left.
This—" He gestured vaguely toward his blind eye, where the black veins of the curse crawled across his skin.
"—is just the physical manifestation. The real curse is slower.
It eats my life force, day by day, keeping me alive long enough to suffer.
Long enough to hunt for a cure I'll never find.
Long enough to feel the weight of being the last Greymaw. "
Understanding clicked into place. "You've been looking for a way to break the curse."
"For seven years. Every temple, every forgotten shrine, every scrap of ancient lore.
The old gods are dead, but their knowledge remains.
Somewhere." His laugh was bitter. "Turns out, I was too late anyway.
The curse is too advanced. Even if I found a way to break it, I don't have the life force left to survive the unraveling. "
"So you came to the Temple of Bones to—what? Make peace with dying?"
"To find out if the death gods had any wisdom to offer. They didn't." He paused. "Then you showed up."
With a poisoned blade and a contract to kill him.
"I'm sorry," she said. And meant it.
"For which part? Trying to murder me, or accidentally binding yourself to me?"
"Both. Neither. I don't know." Frustration bled into her voice. "The Conclave gave me a contract. I follow contracts. That's what I do. That's all I've ever done."
"And now?"
"Now I'm bound to my target and running from my employers while demons hunt us and we both die slowly." She let out a breath. "I've had better weeks."
Vahyn's shoulders shook slightly. It took her a moment to realize he was laughing.
"Something funny?" she asked.
"Just appreciating the irony. I spent seven years trying to die on my own terms. Then a Blackbriar accidentally gives me the most interesting death sentence I've ever had."
"Interesting," she repeated flatly.
"Better than boring."
Despite everything—the bond, the curse, the certainty of death—Orlaith felt her lips twitch. "You have a strange definition of better."
"Greymaw," he said, as if it explained everything.
Maybe it did.
The horse picked its way through increasingly dense forest. They were heading north and west, into the mountains where civilization gave up and wilderness took over. The trees here were old-growth, massive trunks that blocked out the sun, roots like grasping fingers across the path.
Orlaith's death-sight flickered intermittently, showing her the ghosts of this place: a hunter who'd died of exposure three winters ago, a wolf who'd starved during a harsh season, a child who'd wandered too far from home and never found their way back.
This was the kind of place where the dead lingered.
The kind of place where a cursed bloodwitch and a dying berserker might disappear.
"How much further?" she asked.
"Two days at this pace. Maybe less if we don't stop."
"We'll have to stop. The horse needs rest. So do you."
"I'm fine."
She felt the lie through the bond: his exhaustion, his pain, the way every breath was becoming harder. The death-curse was flaring, agitated by the claiming bond's presence.
"You're dying faster," she said quietly. "Because of me. The claiming is accelerating the curse."
"Yes."
No denial. No false comfort. Just acknowledgment.
"Then we need to break the bond now. Before it kills you."
"No."
The word was flat. Final.
Orlaith's hands tightened on his waist. "What do you mean, no? I can sever it. The ritual is dangerous, but—"
"But it requires both parties' consent," Vahyn interrupted. "And I don't consent."
"That's insane. The claiming will drain you dead in weeks. Days, probably, with the curse accelerating—"
"And if you break it, the curse kills me immediately.
" His voice was patient, as if explaining something to a child.
"The claiming bond is fighting the death-curse.
Badly, inefficiently, but fighting nonetheless.
Your magic is trying to consume Bael'qur's magic.
If you sever the bond, there's nothing left to slow the curse. I'll be dead by nightfall."
Orlaith opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
He was right.
She'd felt it through the bond: her death magic instinctively feeding on his death-curse, trying to drain it the way it would drain any dying thing. It wasn't enough to stop the curse, but it was buying him time.
"So we're trapped," she said. "Break the bond and the curse kills you immediately. Keep the bond and the claiming drains you slowly."
"Yes."
"That's—"
"A disaster," he finished. "I know. You said that already."
They rode in silence for several minutes. The claiming bond pulsed between them, steady as a heartbeat, inescapable as gravity.
Orlaith's mind raced, sorting through options. There had to be a way out of this. Some ritual, some magical loophole, some—