Chapter 18 #2
Lyra cleared her throat. “Damir wished to have the Wanderer’s bones melded to him.”
The council grumbled and grunted. Disdain shifted off my wife to the dead Jorvan king for a moment. A king they did not know was gone.
“What caused you to finally flee?” Yanson pressed.
The queen spoke instead. “My son explained this to me already.”
Darkness thickened around me and Lyra from my soul as the tension deepened. The queen couldn’t speak of Fadey, or I had few doubts Lyra would be barricaded away to keep her from the melder and Ingir.
I glared at the queen, ready to slice at her soul should she give up the truth too soon.
My mother merely held my stare as she spoke. “Melding craft is coveted and feared, as we know. My son informed me that the melder had been attacked. He believed the risk was too great to remain, so they fled.”
“Fled,” Virki said in a growl. “But not to us. Your son was not coming home; he was aiming for the Night Ledges. So much like his brother.”
My brow arched. I did not recall when Nivek held any fascination for the Night Ledges.
“Do you blame him for not bringing her to us, Virki?” Yanson asked, interrupting my thoughts. “What am I asking, of course you do. Perhaps you do not recall what a bond is like, but I assure you, there is no god, no army, who would cause me to willingly walk Drifa into danger.”
Gunter leaned through the murky shadows, hardly bothered by the mists of the darker soul, and tapped Lyra on the shoulder. “She’s my mother.”
With a wink he went back to attention, a new look of pride on his features when he regarded his father.
“Royal sjeleven sealings ought to be brought to the council before a weaving,” Sampson snapped. “It is an act worthy of council involvement.”
“There is no law stating permission from the úlfur must be in place,” a frail-looking councilman—Hugo, if I recalled correctly—mumbled from beneath a tattered cowl. A tome bound in pigskin was open in front of him. Histories and Draven law were written in those pages.
Gods, the endless days studying with tutors returned to haunt me with that tome in view.
Hugo opened the front, and pages crinkled and snapped as he riffled through the front few. His hooked finger pointed to a place on one page.
“A true soul bond is a gift from the Norns of fate and the gods themselves. For a bond to seal fully would mean it is accepted by those gods and the souls gone before us. A soul sealing will supersede any tradition, including pomp and ceremony for royal blood.”
“Didn’t say it was law, Hugo,” said Sampson. “Merely said a royal sealing of souls is of note. Puts her in a position to take one of our damn thrones in the future. Shouldn’t we ought to know?”
“The úlfur might’ve been welcomed into such an occasion had you not been vying to take my head all this time.
” Lyra’s voice was harsh, almost reminiscent of the ferocity I felt when I was engulfed in shadows.
She turned a narrow glare to each member.
“If you had but honored a bond I’ve learned this clan holds so sacred, I wonder how much blood would not have spilled over the seasons.
I wonder how I might’ve helped stop the soul bones long ago instead of hiding the scars in my eyes.
What the world might’ve been if you’d not let pitiful fear and a seer’s words weaken your spines. ”
Her fist slammed on the table on her final word.
Somehow inside my thoughts, I could feel a different meaning behind her words.
No mistake, due to our new connections, I knew Lyra hinted more at the pain I would not have endured if they’d accepted a boy’s word during the raids, if they’d brought the young melder to our gates so long ago.
Nivek would be alive.
As would my father.
I would have a voice.
I would’ve had Lyra all this time.
Still, in some ways, the fight to restore the bond that had been shadowed from us seemed to only deepen it now.
For a pause, her words silenced the council. Until Virki pounded his own fist on the table. “I will not accept this bond. Neither have shown loyalty to Dravenmoor. I do not trust the motives, and I will go so far as to call this secret soul weave treason.”
Gunter shoved between us. “You condemn them, then you must condemn me.” Yanson shot his son a hardened look, but Gunter was unmoved.
“I am the one who wove their souls together. The bond was unmistakable, and I would do it again. If you choose to deny the sanctity of a soul bond, then so be it. Perhaps this is no longer the Dravenmoor in which I was raised.”
“And us.” Auki followed, and next Brynn. “We witnessed. Will you kill us all?”
“Keeping the melder here is a risk,” Sampson interjected. “Should our enemies discover her here, they will come against us. Perhaps it was intentional, and she has convinced our prince she shares in this bond—”
“How does one pretend to have a soul bond, Sampson? Gods.” Yanson’s temper was growing short. “It is felt on both sides and you know it.”
Sampson blustered and stroked his beard out of nerves. “Well, I can’t say exactly. But we do not know much about melding craft.”
“I could not weave them together if there was no bond,” Gunter insisted.
“Sampson speaks poorly about a bond,” said the man with those thick braids and knots in his beard. “But his concerns about Jorvans coming for the melder are valid.”
My blood heated. Patience for blood was spent.
I tilted my head. Unbidden, I rounded the table, stalking the councilman. His soul was mine now. I stopped in the place across from his seat and leaned between two other úlfur members, my palms flat on the table.
The man eyed me with a touch of trepidation. “Something more you wish to add, my prince?”
Buried soul deep was a quiver in his voice. Something I felt run through the shadows inside, not with my own ears. My lips curved into a vicious sort of grin.
Councilman Asmund. I hear you sent the archers to kill my wife.