Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LYVIA
Connection to the Starling race remains a mystery.
– A Written History of the Itherians, by Olienna. Crystal Castle.
Lyvia – The Arx, Votruvia
My mind whirred as my mouth fell open, and his eyes dipped to my lips before he handed the dagger to me. I tucked Honor into my belt, and Kellan finally pulled his gaze from mine, inching past me. He paused and held his hand out.
There was no hesitation. I reached forward, and his warm hand slid firmly around mine. We carefully shuffled back to the hole in the side of the stone, where the path of glass awaited us.
We slipped into the labyrinth, moving slowly and cautiously as we wound our way through the forest of glass, keeping hold of each other.
“When I received Ronan’s plea for an alliance, something told me I had to take it,” Kellan continued in a low, confident tone. “And when I saw you for the first time in Odessa, I knew it was you.”
His hand squeezed around mine, and a surge of warmth swelled around my chest.
“But you didn’t say anything then—”
“What would I have said? You’d chosen someone already,” he replied, slowing his pace and creeping around a particularly sharp shard of glass.
“But you still had a bone of power. I first thought it might be the Celestyn Bone. I thought, perhaps that’s why I had this connection with you.
That you were meant to lead me to the bone.
And then I found you in the Death Dunes months later. ”
I stepped over a jagged grouping of glass before twisting and ducking underneath a wall of it protruding from the side of the path.
“Bonder, I thought then,” Kellen continued. “You were the Bonder, and that’s why we were connected. You’d lead me to the Celestyn Bone. But then we swore an air oath.”
A pang of grief squeezed my chest. I could almost still feel the strip of air connecting us if I tried hard enough. Was it strange I missed it?
Kellan nodded ahead of me. “I’ve been bound by a handful of air oaths in my life. This was different, and I knew you felt it, too. Something had changed between us. Something more than air linked us.”
“What about Vienah?” I asked in a raw voice, unsure I wanted to know the answer. My stomach twisted as I thought of the water witch.
“Vienah…” Kellan murmured before letting out a sigh.
“I’ll admit Vienah was…a distraction. You’d made it clear you loved Bayne, and when you reacted the way you did at the mention of his soulbinding to Queen Antares…
The devastation in your eyes.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
Kellan paused, his head dipping as if rethinking his actions last fall. I ran my thumb over the edge of his hand, and he kept walking.
“And then our dream,” I murmured, interrupting the silence that had settled.
“Yes.” His voice dropped. “Our dream.”
“You were angry…”
Kellan stilled and turned cautiously to look at me.
“I’m sorry for that. I knew something had connected us, and I knew enough of the Palaega Bone to fear the mind-controlling power it contained.
The People of the Stars keep our stories.
And Sintarrak’s manipulation of our ancestors…
The danger of that power has been seared into our veins.
I thought perhaps… Perhaps you had the Palaega Bone already and had kept it hidden, or perhaps you somehow manifested the power… It scared me.”
I squeezed his hand, and he turned, leading us through the winding maze.
“What changed after that?” I asked, remembering how his demeanor toward me had shifted to something more delicate in the weeks to come.
Kellan paused as we reached the crystal door to the altar chamber. He turned toward me and pressed our palms closer together.
“This,” he whispered, sending a spark of electrifying power surging through my body.
My powers awakened, dancing alongside his as they swarmed past the wall that had been in place. I glanced up, noting we were beyond the marbled rubelline barrier.
I pulled my gaze back to find Kellan’s dark eyes soft on mine, widened in awe.
“I’ve spent years mastering my Conduit ability, training with mages of the Marisarma fleet. But it has never once felt this way,” he said, clarity and conviction riding his words. Kellan released my grip and pushed open the crystal door with his wind.
We stepped inside the shimmering altar chamber of crystals, their color shifting from a soft violet to a light blue.
“This connection we have,” he continued, turning toward me and tugging the door shut with a flip of his wind, “runs deeper than an air oath. It runs deeper than a shared dagger. Deeper than a shared dream. Deeper than a shared hell. I don’t know what it is, but I do know I have fallen irrevocably in love with you. ”
Tears rose to my eyes, and I opened my lips to confess when emotions clogged my throat.
Images of me killing Kellan swarmed my mind, Tynan’s Hell chasing me beyond his gates.
Guilt clawed at my chest, the emotion itself as strong as the powers swarming beneath my skin, stripping me of my worth, of my ability to allow myself to be loved.
“How could you possibly love me after the Abyss?” I asked. “After seeing everything… After experiencing—”
“I saw your darkest moments. I saw your pain,” he cut in, his brows pinching upward. “And I would do anything to keep you from that pain… Anything to reverse it. Anything to bring you safety, to bring you joy.”
Emotions rushed forward, and I shook my head. “But what I did to you in there—”
Kellan’s lips parted, and he knelt before me.
“After what you did to me?” he asked, brows rising. “You saved me from my hell. My death.” He shook his head, the dried blood on his cheek cracking as he smiled. “Bonscaíh, my shadow, I’d endure your hell an infinite number of times if it meant sparing you from it.”
Tears pooled on my lower lids, and I blinked through the blurred vision, dropping to my knees before him. I surrendered to the feeling that had ignited months ago, allowing it to at last see the light of day, to blossom in its full glory.
Bonscaíh. My shadow.
My fingers twined with his. Our fists filled the space between our chests, and I lifted my gaze to his, never more certain of the words that rose to my lips.
“And I’d go through that gate over and over again, not caring what realm I landed in so long as it took me to you,” I finally admitted to him and to myself, allowing a tear to slide down my cheek.
“There is no regret. There is no confusion. I followed you to hell… I came for you because I love you, Kellan Astraeus.”
The soft breeze that seemed to mingle in the crystal chamber stilled as the words left my lips.
The marbled gray in Kellan’s eyes swirled against his dark irises, and he dropped my hands before slipping one around my waist and sliding the other over the crook of my neck and to the back of my head.
His fingers twined in the knotted waves of my hair.
His eyes dipped to my lips and snapped back to mine before he leaned forward.
His full lips crushed against mine in demand, and my arms wrapped around his neck as I sucked a sharp breath in through my nose. A gust of his intoxicating scent fueled the growing surge of warmth that swirled next to something more tender.
Power erupted from Kellan. Water rose from the small pools in the chamber in a spray of mist, joining the wind spiraling around us.
The Transcindiel and Obscura rose from their chasm, surging to the surface and spilling from the pores of my body. A wild array of golden shimmers and velvet shadows leaped to join the cyclone of power that danced around our forms.
My tongue slipped through my mouth and slid over the scar cutting through Kellan’s lower lip. He parted them, meeting my tongue with his own in a desperate, yet unhurried, wandering.
The pressure of the stone against my knees eased as an intoxicating wave of something gentle and fierce melded against my chest, and the wild squall of powers spinning around us slowly lifted our bodies off the ground.
His arm wrapped around my waist, his hands grazing my ribs as he pulled me closer, and I pressed my chest into his. My hands speared through his hair, driving his lips closer to mine as I sucked his lower lip into my mouth before he claimed mine once more with his own.
Our tangled hair flew through the air and whipped past our faces as the world itself disappeared, and all that existed was us.
Every empty, scarred piece of my heart seemed to awaken, like a small, desperate, unspoken call reaching from my own soul to his.
Kellan responded, placing a calm, healing hand on each of them, stitching them up, and dropping a kiss upon them one by one.
Kellan’s feet hit the ground before mine, and he slid his hands to my back and hips as he eased me down, keeping his lips locked onto mine. His wind slowly stilled, little streams of water trickling back into their pools as my own powers happily wandered home.
I blinked my eyes open as Kellan gently slowed his lips, bringing them a breath away from mine. His nose grazed my own, and his dark eyes scanned mine as he ran a tender thumb over my cheekbone.
“Say that again,” he breathed against my lips.
My lips tugged upward, tingling, full, and yearning to connect with his again.
“I love you, Kellan Astraeus.”
Kellan’s dark brows pinched, and his eyes closed as he leaned his forehead against mine.
Memories of his pained past edged their way into my thoughts.
I’d only experienced a few years of his hell in the Abyss…
Those early days in his life that were too painful for someone so young.
I willed the powerful force in my heart to ease that lasting pain, to mend the lingering wounds inflicted on the bloody Islands of Votruvia.
“I love you, Kellan,” I repeated, letting the force rise to my chest and willing it to lay a soothing hand on his soul with each word.