Chapter 15 #2
I took in the similar features of the twins.
Faces from a past I’d yearned to forget.
How many moments had I stepped onto battlefields, pleading to meet Salur, so I might be free of my memories from a life ripped away?
Those days when I could not even recall why I was shunned by folk I thought cared.
So many seasons I’d simply believed something inside me had grown rotten, depraved, too dangerous to remain in my own clan.
Now those haunts from the past wished to serve me, stand by me. They wished to protect the only bright piece of my soul.
“You need us,” Brynn repeated, her voice soft.
I let out a sigh and gestured briskly. Fine. Someone fetch Gunter. We will also need him.
—
“Mid bedding.” Gunter leaned against the wall, his arms folded over his bare chest, his trousers half undone and slipping down his hip bones.
“Don’t remind us,” Emi hissed. “I never wish to see your ass again.”
“Because it is so glorious?” With his hair free from the braid down his skull, the auburn strands fell around his shoulders when he glared at me. “You couldn’t have waited a damn bell toll?”
You did not need to come. I would’ve used another. I gestured over my shoulder when we returned to my chamber door.
Gunter snorted when Emi repeated my words.
“Don’t tell me you’d actually consider signaling Weaver Flegi.
He is terrible with his soul weaves and does not care for the melder.
An important thing of note. So I will come with you.
Well, I would’ve been coming in much more delightful ways if you’d waited that bell toll. ”
Brynn rolled her eyes. “I have no doubt Sigrid will still be in your bed when you return. She is moments away from inking your damn name on her breast.”
“Envious, Brynnie?”
“Gods, no.”
Gunter tightened the laces of his trousers. “I’m not missing this. Can’t wait to see the look on Virki’s face come dawn.”
Where Gunter reveled in my uncle’s unease, Virki was the man I trusted the least. If he could betray a sealed bond and his own daughter, it did not take much to imagine what he would do to the melder whose craft he blamed for every wretched twist of fate.
I took care to knock the pattern Lyra and I had predetermined, then stepped into an empty room. The others filtered in behind me, waiting near the doorway while I stepped to the adjacent sitting room.
Inside, the fire in the inglenook had died a bit, the stool I’d kicked during the fiery frustration remained toppled, and there was no Lyra.
Panic grew taut in my chest. I scanned the space, desperate to find her.
Shadows shifted in the corner near an old woven tapestry of the double-headed raven of Dravenmoor.
Lyra peered out, a tinge of red to her cheeks. “Not the most brilliant of hiding places.”
In my absence she’d tied her hair off her neck and added a pair of trousers she must’ve found. Mine, but smaller than I could wear now. Still, they buried Lyra’s figure.
I could not recall a more perfect sight.
I went to her side and slipped my fingers through hers, lifting her knuckles to my lips. Ready?
With a nod, Lyra followed me into the adjacent room. She cracked one knuckle and took in the crowd meandering about my bedchamber. “Why are they all here?”
We need them to witness.
Emi beamed and hurried over to us. She took hold of Lyra’s free hand. “I hear my cousin is horridly unromantic.”
Lyra offered me a knowing smirk. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“I do agree this is the surest way to draw you into the clan as part of the Dravens, not an enemy,” Emi said.
“Yes, so I’ve heard. But are we certain it can’t be challenged because everyone on the council despises my craft and believes those gods-awful prophecies?”
A new somberness filled Emi’s expression. “To unweave a soul bond is only allowed in certain circumstances.”
“Treason.” Auki held up one finger. “And abuse of the heart, mind, or body. Especially against one’s partner.”
Lyra tilted her head, a small grin in the corner of her mouth. “Truly?”
Gunter crossed his arms over his chest. “Why the tone of surprise?”
“It’s just that with the exception of a few, from what I’ve witnessed, I do not think offending your wife’s heart is of much concern to most.”
“Welcome to Dravenmoor, then,” Brynn interjected. “Sealed bonds are cherished. Our women and our men serve side by side, fight side by side.”
“Infidelity against a sealed sjeleven bond is another reason one could be unwoven,” Auki said. “There are no mistresses, no lovers outside the pair unless agreed upon mutually.”
“Virki used betrayal to dissolve his bond with my mother without repercussion,” Emi said softly. “For how could a bone crafter be Draven?”
Auki blew out his lips in disgust. “Strange how it took so many seasons for your bone craft to bother him.”
True enough. Emi’s bone craft presented during her fourth season, but it was several full seasons later that Virki made the accusation of betrayal against his wife.
“More unfortunate is that as his wife’s daughter, I still fell to his responsibility,” Emi said. “I wish he’d sent me to the wilds with her.”
My uncle treated Emi little better than a thrall. A body on which to take out his rage.
“There was no evidence,” Emi went on, her voice rough. “Only my craft. Me. The child my mother loved was the cause of her agony.”
Brynn placed a hand on Emi’s shoulder and squeezed gently.
Lyra did not speak for a long pause, her fingers wringing in front of her body. “Your father was the cause of her agony. Not you.”
“I have the wrong craft, Lyra.”
“So do I.” Lyra held Emi’s stare. “House Bien would still be alive if not for my craft. I have spent a great deal of my life not recalling the truth, but I always knew those who loved me were destroyed because of the magic in my blood. But I was told once that I am more than the scars in my eyes. You are more than the craft in your veins.”
A bit of heat filled my chest when she gave me a small grin.
I brushed a hand over Lyra’s cheek. There is no true reason for them to disregard this bond, to harm you, or me. Not if they follow our laws.
“Some may see it as a betrayal, bonding your life to an enemy.”
And I care nothing for those worthless opinions.
Her eyes were like frosted glass. “You better mean those words, Roark Ashwood.”
I do not want this for strategy, I told her. I have wanted this from the first moment a girl with silver in her eyes offered a lost boy some water. Never doubt it.
Her chin trembled, but she grinned. “Well, there were those times you wanted to slit my throat.”
I smirked. Only for a little while.
“This is a sound move,” Emi interrupted. “Are we doing this? Recent nights may not have been so affectionate, but I think you’ve accepted there is a bond, right, Lyra?”
“Frosted hell, they have trouble acknowledging it?” Gunter scratched his chin.
“While in Stonegate it took some convincing,” Emi said.
Gunter looked aghast. “How? I smelled it the instant I saw them.”
“What?” Lyra’s head canted to the side. “You could sense it?”
“Not sense. Smell.” Gunter used his chin to point between the two of us. “Yours, if you’d like to know, has a bit of a sweet scent like honey blooms near the ponds. Smooth against the back of the throat, unlike some that burn something fierce.”
I brushed my knuckles down the back of Lyra’s arm. Gunter is a soul weaver, the sort I told you about. Their craft is sensitive to the power of a bond.
Gunter clapped his hands together. “Let’s get to it, then.”
Lyra tucked herself a little closer to my side. “You’re truly willing to do this, Gunter? No question?”
Levity faded when Gunter spoke again. “I was in the room, Melder.” He tipped his head at me.
“My father is on the úlfur council. He aided in the split. I followed him. I watched what was done to my truest friend, my prince. I could feel the bond of his soul shadowed, slashed, corrupted. I would rather greet Salur than witness such pain again.”
I did not move. Every muscle clenched. All I could recall of those moments were the pain, the fear, the screams, and the smell of blood.
I’d not known Gunter had crouched somewhere in the shadows.
He went to the center of the bedchamber, asked Emi to find a blade, then gestured for me and Lyra to join him. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with this, so no one can ever hide this damn bond from you two again.”