Chapter 6 #3
There are truths that do not become easier just because they are spoken aloud. Her human life force is the first thing in a century that has pushed back the corruption. The first anomaly that does not belong to any system I understand.
That should be all this is.
A solution.
A tool.
A means to an end.
And yet?—
“Prepare the portal,” I say instead. “And bring weapons. Shadow-forged. She will need to defend herself.”
Kieran’s head lifts. “You’re arming her? Malik will oppose this.”
“Malik opposes anything that requires trust,” I answer. “He prefers certainty even if it costs lives. I am King, not him, despite what he may think.”
“If someone is hunting mirror pieces, we will be targets,” I say. “I cannot protect her at every moment.”
The words are true. That is what makes them worse.
“She needs to be able to fight.”
Kieran bows once and disappears into shadow.
I am left alone in the arena.
This is where I almost killed her.
Where control slipped, where the corruption answered too quickly, too eagerly, like it recognized something in her and decided it wanted her gone.
She should not have come near me again after that.
She should be afraid.
She should be demanding answers.
Instead, she reached out.
Even with my shadows around her throat, even with death pressed close enough to feel like breath against skin, she reached out and touched me, anyway.
Not because she trusted me. She would be a fool to trust me. Because some part of her saw a monster losing control and reached for the man inside it anyway.
Stupid.
Reckless.
Brave.
Everything about her is going to destroy me if I’m not careful.
I find her in the armory.
The room smells of oiled leather, cold metal, and shadow-forged steel. Weapons line the walls in precise rows, each blade resting in its own cradle like something sleeping lightly.
Someone has already changed her clothes. Chella, most likely. Earth-appropriate, practical, nothing that belongs to this world. Black jeans. Boots made for running. A fitted jacket that still somehow carries the ghost of her old life, too expensive, too intentional to be anything but memory.
She looks like herself again.
The thief. The collector. The woman who knows how to stand in rooms she does not belong in and still make them feel like they were built for her.
I prefer her like this.
Sharp. Controlled. Dangerous in a way that does not ask permission.
“These are yours,” I say, setting the weapons case on the table between us.
A smarter man would keep her unarmed. A kinder one would never have bound her in the first place.
She opens it.
Her breath catches.
Two blades. Shadow-forged. Black as void, edges so fine they look like absence rather than metal. The hilts are wrapped in leather shaped precisely, deliberately, as though the weapons already know the hands they were made for.
“I had them made for you,” I say.
I do not add that I should not have.
“They’re beautiful,” she whispers.
“They are lethal,” I reply. “And they will respond to your magic once you attune them.”
She lifts one.
Tests its weight.
Spins it once, slow and precise, like she remembers something her body already knows. The grip is wrong for a court-trained fighter, but perfect for someone who learned in alleys, rooftops, and rooms where getting caught meant not walking out again.
She has done this before. Of course she has.
You do not become the best thief in three continents without knowing how to fight.
“How do I attune them?”
“Blood and intention,” I say. “Cut your palm. Let the blade taste you. Tell it what you need.”
There is no hesitation.
She draws the edge across her left palm in one clean motion.
Blood wells immediately, bright against pale skin.
Then she wraps her hand around the hilt and closes her eyes.
The air in the room shifts.
Not dramatically. Not visibly.
But something in it tightens, like reality itself is holding its breath to see what she will do.
Her lips move silently.
The blade responds first as a faint pulse of darkness, then deeper, stronger, as though it recognizes her voice even without sound. Shadow-light blooms along the edge, flickering in rhythm with her heartbeat.
When she opens her eyes, they are not grey anymore.
They are silver.
Not human silver. Not metal.
Something deeper. Sharper. Like the moment before a storm breaks open and decides what it will become.
Then it is gone.
Her eyes return to storm-grey as if nothing happened at all.
The blades are hers now.
Bonded.
The kind of bond that does not ask permission twice.
“They’ll respond to you,” I say, “the way mine respond to me.”
“Thank you,” she says.
Her voice is quieter now. Not uncertain, exactly. Just more aware of the space between us than she was before.
“For trusting me with these,” she adds. A small gesture toward the weapons, then toward herself as if she is not sure where she ends and what she has been given begins. “I know you do not have to.”
“You are bound to me,” I say. “You cannot use them against me even if you wanted to.”
“Still.”
She slides them into the harness Chella provided. The leather crosses her chest and settles against her spine, securing the blades in a way that is efficient, functional, but slightly off in proportion.
Too big. Not built for her frame.
“It means something,” she says. “Acknowledging I am not completely useless.”
“You were never useless,” I say.
The words leave before I can measure them.
They do not belong in this conversation. Not like that. Not like truth.
She looks at me then, really looks, like she is trying to understand where that came from.
I step closer before either of us can turn it into something else.
The harness is wrong. The straps are twisted slightly. If she draws the blades in a fight like this, they will catch. Hesitation she cannot afford.
“Hold still,” I say.
She does.
I reach around her, adjusting the leather, tightening the buckles, correcting the angle of the straps. The material is unfamiliar in my hands, designed for someone taller, broader in the shoulders. I have to work around it.
My fingers find a buckle.
Tighten it.
My knuckles brush her collarbone.
The mark on my wrist ignites.
White-hot.
Immediate.
Not pain. Not exactly.
Morgana gasps sharply. Her hand shoots up, gripping my forearm. Not pushing me away. Just—holding on.
The mark on her wrist is glowing too. I can see it through her jacket sleeve, pulsing in time with mine.
“What—” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Why does it feel like?—”
“The binding grows stronger with contact,” I force out. My jaw is clenched tight enough to crack teeth. “Physical touch, proximity, emotional connection—they all intensify it.”
“Intensify how?”
I cannot answer. Cannot form words.
Because it is no longer just heat.
It’s resonance. Something between us pulling taut like a line drawn too tight, vibrating with pressure that does not belong in the body.
It is everywhere at once. In my skin. In my chest. In the space between breath and thought. Spreading through my entire body. Pleasure and pain twisting together until I can’t separate them.
And from the way her pupils are blown wide, she’s feeling it too.
Her control slips for just a fraction of a second, not gone, but challenged by something stronger than will.
“Soon,” I manage, voice low, strained, “denying it will become difficult.”
Her fingers tighten on my arm.
“Denying what?”
The air behind us splits open.
The portal arrives like a tear in reality, soundless for a fraction of a second before it remembers how to exist.
Kieran’s voice cuts in. “My lord, we are ready.”
Morgana jerks back, and I release her.
The binding protests like it has been torn open. Pain blooms where we were connected, spreading slow and sharp, like poison under the skin.
She presses a hand to her chest, breath uneven, trying to steady herself.
I turn toward the portal before I do something catastrophic. Like pulling her back. Like finding out what her mouth tastes like when the binding flares between us.
“New York,” I say. My voice is steady. Controlled. Lies. “Stay close. If we are separated…”
“I know. Pain. Agony. Possible death.” She steps to my side without hesitation. “I’ve got the memo on the binding’s greatest hits.”
Despite everything, I almost smile.
Chella and Kieran are waiting at the portal’s edge. Two of my best. If things go wrong, and they will go wrong, I need warriors I trust.
“Ready?” Kieran asks.
“No,” Morgana mutters. “But let’s go anyway.”
I take her hand.
The binding flares again, less intense now but still there, still humming faintly between us. A constant presence, like something alive that refuses to settle.
She doesn’t pull away.
We step through the portal together.
The between-space swallows us. Cold and infinite and silent, like the world forgetting we exist for a moment.
And for one heartbeat, suspended in nothingness with her hand in mine, I let myself admit what I’ve been refusing to name.
I’m not just bound to her by magic.
I’m falling.
And there is nothing I can do to stop it.