Chapter 28 The Blade and the Bond
THE BLADE AND THE BOND
JAKOBAV
The moment Ella looked at the painting, something inside him cracked.
She’d gone utterly still, which was unusual for someone so hell-bent on pulling trouble from thin air and dragging it straight to her feet.
It was that rare kind of immobility he’d only seen in her a handful of times: once when she was half-dead in his bed, once when she’d accused him of betrayal, and once when the seer had spoken a truth she believed belonged to her alone.
But this was worse.
It wasn’t fear that froze her, nor fury, nor even shock. It was awe. Reverence. Something dangerously close to longing.
And he wanted to fucking shatter it.
She looked at that portrait like she was remembering a kiss. Not just anyone’s. His.
The Fae staring down from the canvas was polished and infuriatingly well dressed, every line of him was meticulous. His godsdamned clothes were tailored, pressed smooth as if no wrinkle could touch them. Smug bastard. He probably had some servant—or some trick of magic—to keep them flawless.
Jakobav wore nothing like that. He carried blood on his boots, dirt under his nails, and scars scored into skin that he’d never given time to heal soft. He didn’t own a single garment that fit like that. Not one piece of silk that gleamed like armor. Or any fucking silk at all.
That pendant, glinting at the man’s throat, was likely what had made her sigil respond.
He knew that kind of pendant.
Old magic clung to them. Fae magic. And nothing good ever came from it waking.
He saw the way her breath caught, the small flinch she couldn’t disguise, the way her fingers grazed her collarbone as if some hidden part of her had answered his call.
She sees power. Power. Elegance. Mystery.
What does she see when she looks at me?
A brute. A war prince. A creature built for battlefields and blood.
Gods, she kept looking at him.
Fuck that.
She needed something real. Someone who could match her, stand unflinching before the fire she carried, see her as more than a weapon or a symbol.
Someone who could bear her fury and her beauty and the innate defiance of her will.
The way she never backed down from a challenge, never flinched in the face of danger or allowed herself to be lesser, even here in a fortress surrounded by enemies.
Somehow she’d broken straight through the walls he’d built around himself. A barrier no one else had touched. One he’d trusted to hold against kingdoms. And she demolished it with nothing more than that infuriating, intoxicating smirk.
He shouldn’t even be thinking about her, especially not now, when the whole of Dravaryn would be gathering in the capital by nightfall tomorrow, ready for elevation or devastation, depending on if he survived the rite.
Not when his every move should’ve been weighed against the gods and the realm and the cost of failure.
He should’ve been focused on getting ready for his Claiming.
And yet, gods help him, all he wanted was to claim her, more than he had ever wanted anything.
He shouldn’t have been there.
He should have been in his war room, finalizing security protocols and preparing for the moment the kingdom would fill the arena in black and crimson, waiting to see if their prince would rise or fall.
Instead, he stood in the shadow of a stone archway, silent and unseen, watching her as if keeping her in his sights was the only thing that quelled the urge to seize her.
Ella stepped into the infirmary like she owned it, barefoot and tousled and fierce, crossing the room with that purposeful glide he was beginning to recognize, and she’d made it only halfway before she threw the door open again and bellowed into the corridor, “Bryn!”
Jakobav tensed at the sound. A crash answered her, metal clanging hard against stone.
“Gods save me,” came the muffled reply.
Moments later, Bryn appeared, glitter-dusted and somehow sticky, a satchel of clinking vials in one hand and a half-eaten pastry in the other.
“I’m glad to see you survived,” he said at once, brushing crumbs from his coat as if it were an infestation.
“More than that, from what I heard. I knew I detected something different about you. Would’ve been a shame if you died.
You’re the obsession of the castle right now, and life has been dull for far too long. ”
Jakobav bristled, the word “obsession” settling in his chest like grit. It was a struggle to remind himself that Bryn had a knack for embellishment.
“I’m glad to see you too, Bryn,” Ella said, folding her arms. “But right now, I need answers.”
Bryn sighed, bit into the pastry, and chewed with theatrical misery. “By the seven sacred hemorrhoids, Ella, you’re always wanting answers.”
She laughed, soft and unguarded, and Jakobav’s stomach tightened as if the sound had hooked something low inside him and pulled.
“Shut up and tell me the state of everyone’s injuries and where they are. I want to see them,” she said. “Thane. Maeren. Savina. Soren. All of them. And don’t you dare pretend you don’t know how they’re doing.”
Jakobav went still, breath held without meaning to.
Bryn gave her a slow blink. “Excluding Jake, you do realize you just named the four most emotionally unavailable people in the entire kingdom, right?”
“They’ll let me in,” Ella said, her certainty was absolute. “Where are they?”
Bryn chewed and swallowed, the pause stretching, Jakobav’s patience fraying with it.
“You know,” Bryn said at last, “people don’t usually want to talk to Savina when she’s fresh out of a wound.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No,” Bryn muttered, “you’re the reason half of them were in the infirmary.”
Jakobav flinched. Ella did too, just slightly.
“I didn’t ask them to protect me,” she said, voice low.
“No,” Bryn said, softer now, “but they did anyway.”
It sounded like there was more he wasn’t saying. Jakobav had known Bryn his entire life and had never heard him this cryptic.
Why in the gods’ names was he pushing her so hard?
What did Bryn know that he didn’t?
Everything in the infirmary fell silent. Long enough that Jakobav felt it sinking into her, and she had been through enough. He wanted to cut through it, break it open with his hands if he had to.
“Tell me how they are,” Ella said finally.
Bryn studied her and then relented. “Savina’s already back on guard duty, stubborn as ever.
She woke up mid-stitching and threatened to hex me with a blade to the thigh if I touched her boots, then marched out like nothing had happened.
Soren barely said a word, which means he’s fine.
Maeren’s got cracked ribs and an injured leg, probably more, and she’s pretending it’s just tight muscle tension. And Thane…”
Jakobav leaned forward before he could stop himself.
“Thane?” Ella asked, almost too quiet.
“I heard you stole his favorite blade, and I couldn’t be more proud.”
“Thanks,” she said, a ghost of guilt shading the word. “But I do actually feel a little bad about it.”
“Then go return it,” Bryn said, stepping aside with exaggerated courtesy. “They might still be in the training wing. And try not to make anyone cry, or at least don’t tear any stitches open, which would only make more work for me.”
Jakobav exhaled slowly.
A vicious and wordless heat stirred in his chest that did not care for reason or duty, only for the sight of her moving away from him and toward the people who had bled for him.
He didn’t move, not yet, tracking her as she walked down the corridor. The names she had listed thudded through him like steps on stone. His best soldiers. She cared about their wounds; she wanted to see them.
His people.
Were they now hers too, by some strange twist of fate?
Jakobav slid from the archway and moved like smoke along the wall, keeping to the darker seams of stone as Ella disappeared into the old training wing.
He shouldn’t have followed, not when dawn would bring the final preparations and dusk would demand everything he was.
But she’d named them and claimed them, and that damned blade, the one Thane had carved a kill count into with pride and reckless flair, still hung at her hip like it had always belonged there.
His jaw flexed until it ached.
He wasn’t used to this, this merciless kind of wanting that gripped low in his gut just from watching her exist. He’d been angry before, but not like this, not possessive, not with a hunger that didn’t give a fuck about the Claiming or the kingdom or the cost. Usually so steady, he had become something mercurial, unpredictable even to himself, pulled into Ella’s orbit.
The old training wing lay half-lit, a cathedral of stone and shadow, and Jakobav found the alcove near the southern arch, the same quiet pocket he had used as a boy when spying on older trainees, old habits clinging like older ghosts.
He’d arrived first and hid out of sight; it helped that he knew a faster route.
He saw her before she saw Thane.
She stepped into the chamber and stilled. The room was thick with sweat, steel, and years of echoing grunts, yet she moved through it like it recognized her, like this wing of the castle had been waiting for her return.
Thane sat beneath the window, sharpening a long dagger with slow, practiced strokes, the light catching on the blade and along the cut of his jaw. He looked up.
“No cloak this time,” Thane said. “I barely recognized you without the dramatics.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Ella murmured.
Thane’s gaze dragged over her with unhurried weight. “You don’t.”
Jakobav’s fists clenched until the bones protested.
She walked forward slowly and unhooked the blade from her side, turning the weapon once as if considering its balance, then held it out, handle first. “I think this belongs to you.”
Jakobav knew that blade better than most men knew their own hands, a Velmirian steel meant for Thane’s grip, yet in her hand, it looked different, as if the weapon had chosen her and not him.
He could barely breathe.
But Thane didn’t take it. He only stared, not like a soldier reclaiming property but like a man cataloguing something rare. Something dangerous.
“I told Jake he wasn’t ready,” Thane said quietly, eyes fixed on the blade. “Told him he needed to take his Claiming seriously. That the kingdom couldn’t afford a hesitant heir.”
Ella said nothing, but her fingers tightened on the hilt, the smallest movement betrayed how the words hit her.
“He’s changed,” Thane continued, voice even. “Focused. Clear-eyed. More than I’ve ever seen him.”
Jakobav hadn’t expected the approval, almost pride, shaping his words.
“And that’s because of you.”
Jakobav’s jaw tightened, the truth landing harder than he would ever admit.
Focused. Clear-eyed. Because of her. He couldn’t deny it, not even to himself.
She’d been good for him. The past weeks had honed him in ways war had not, in ways council had not, in ways years of training for the Claiming never had.
She’d forced him to look beyond his own walls, beyond the iron weight of expectation, and see more.
And yet not right now.
Right now she was a fucking distraction, keeping him from the training field or in the war room, drilling strategy into his generals, preparing himself for the most important day of his life.
Instead, he stood in shadow like some jealous wraith, watching her, wanting her, knowing he would burn everything he had built to the ground just to have her look at him and no one else.
Fucking fates. He couldn’t turn away.
Her hair had grown longer since she’d arrived, falling in loose, dark waves that brushed against her lower back, unbound and wild, exactly like her.
The dress she wore tonight clung to her in ways that made his blood heat, a soft curve here, a sharp line there, the kind of contrast that seared itself into a man’s mind, refusing to let go.
She had no idea the dress was flame resistant, tailored exactly to her, commissioned the moment he realized he didn’t want her to leave.
And she didn’t need to know.
She looked devastatingly feminine, but Jakobav knew better than to mistake softness for weakness. She radiated power, raw and unapologetic, curling under his skin and promising to strike quickly.
And if she smiled at another man one more fucking time, he might come undone.
He needed to regain control.
Ella opened her mouth, then closed it. Her chin lifted in that stubborn way of hers.
“I didn’t—”
“You did,” Thane said, cutting her off. “Whether you meant to or not. You woke something in him that we’ve all been waiting to see.”
Jakobav’s jaw ached from clenching. He didn’t know if he wanted to put his fist through the wall or storm into the room and kiss her until the stone itself cracked under the force of it.
Then Thane did the unthinkable.
He pushed the blade back toward her.
“Keep it.”
“What?”
“You earned it,” Thane said. “Besides, I’m due for a new one. Maybe something with less dramatic flair.”
Jakobav stared, heat spiking through his veins, a dark surge climbing.
Ella laughed softly, her eyes gleaming, like she’d just been handed a gift more precious than steel, one that Jakobav knew should’ve been his to give.
“Thank you.”
“Just don’t die,” Thane added, turning back to his whetstone with infuriating calm, and Jakobav wanted to wipe that calm from his face with blood.
“You’re the only one who’s ever rattled him. That makes you…inconveniently rare.”
Jakobav swallowed a curse so vicious it scalded the back of his throat.
Why the fuck is he complimenting her so much?
It should have been him standing there and saying those words—to make her laugh like that, to see her face soften, to feel her look at him as though she might actually stay.
His pulse was a war drum in his ears.
He’d never felt anything like it. The sheer loss of control made him want to grab her, haul her into the shadows, and erase every other man from her mind until she remembered nothing but his hands, his mouth, and his fucking name.
He didn’t recognize himself. He didn’t want to. Instead, he stood in a hallway full of shadows and teeth, his restraint fraying with every breath.
And then he moved, not because it was wise, not because he had chosen to, but because he couldn’t stop himself.
Ella barely had time to react before his arm hooked hard around her waist and hauled her clean off her feet, his stride already devouring the space between them and the exit.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Thane’s reaction in the dim light, a wide grin flashing, a small nod that looked far too approving of the spectacle, and then, gods damn him, a fucking wink.
“Jake—” She gasped, but he didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her. He carried her forward with relentless purpose, his silence heavier than any threat, his wrath pressing into every step.
He would deal with Thane later.
Right now she was his obsession. His fury. His fucking ruin.
And he would not be letting her go.