Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“Everything you do is such chaos,” he says, but his tone is full of fondness tempered by wonder and a flash of desire when I lick my lips clean, too. “My beautiful, magnificent, unruly star. Devourer of darkness, defender of innocents.”
At his words, suddenly I recall my thoughts about Nuadar on the mountain. “Darrius, I think Nuadar might be the oracle,” I blurt out.
He goes still. “Why?” His reply is quiet, not defensive.
“It’s only a hunch. He’s a dominant corpus magi, but he’s brewed your so-called sedative for years.
What if he is involved somehow, making you progressively weaker or more susceptible to the shift?
He also came up with the idea for the dragon’s bloom, and I think that’s what made us unconscious.
” I inhale, chewing the corner of my lip.
I don’t mention that the oracle had called me Oryndhrian, much like Nuadar had.
“And I believe he might be colluding with the Oryndhrians from something Masi?ta said when we were on the cliffs . . . about the reproductive cycles of the azdaha and their egg count. Only a beastmaster knows that.”
“He’s been with my family for years,” Darrius says, but then he stops and frowns as if the coincidences and timelines are too much to ignore. “I’ll tell Maxur to investigate.”
After I finish my meal, Darrius lifts a hand and a servant clears away the tray of food.
He reaches for my hands across the top of the table, flipping them to stroke the lines on the inside.
I sigh at the light touch. Our lives might be different, but traditions, prophecies, and beliefs cross paths and intersect across all realms.
“Can you read the lines?” I ask, turning my hands to flip his large palms upward.
“Chiromancy?” he replies, and I nod. “I know what they are, but I’m not a diviner by any means.”
I trace the topmost line on his left hand with my fingertip, hearing him suck in his breath. “I’ve never read the palm of a deity before. Will you smite me if I steer you wrong?”
His shadows flare out of him to flick and tug on a lock of my hair. “Never.”
The shadowy tendrils try to slink back to him, but I gather them with the softest tug of my magic and settle them in my lap as if they’re cuddly creatures.
Darrius’s brows rise, but he doesn’t pull them away, especially when he notices my utter lack of pants .
. . or undergarments. As they nuzzle into the bare skin of my thighs, I peer at him, but he gazes back innocently.
Behave, I think to him.
His answering look is sinful.
I clear my suddenly dry throat and focus on my task.
“Both hands are different. The nondominant hand is what is written by the fates and the dominant is what you change with your own will. This top line is your heart line. You see how it’s very frayed at first but then strengthens?
Your heart is very guarded. You were afraid, but you’re not now. ”
I look to his right palm, where the heart line is smooth and deep, and smile.
Darrius has always known his choice, even if his path wasn’t clear.
I stroke the second line of his left. “This is your head line. You’re a man of discipline and order, though you can see from these smaller breaks that your mind goes in many directions at once.
Your right is nearly solid—a testament to what you have achieved.
” I trace the curve around the fleshiest part of his left palm with a fingernail.
“Your life line. There’s a break here and here where others have influenced you.
Perhaps sickness of some sort, maybe related to the curse.
” I glance at the right. “You can see the line on this palm is unbroken, showing your tenacity.” Lastly, I stroke down the middle.
“Your fate line is the same in both. Strong and unerring.”
“Amazing,” he whispers, midnight eyes holding mine.
“Darrius?” I ask, sliding my fingers through his. “What does performing the bonding ritual entail?”
“A true soul bond has four layers, much like the lines you just spoke about—head, heart, body, and fate—as well as seven points of connection, to each chakra in our bodies. While a physical connection can strengthen a soul-fated bond and an emotional one can deepen it, a mental oath—a meaningful vow—can seal it.”
I frown in thought. “So, like marriage vows?”
“A soul bond transcends mortal rites,” he says. “But yes, you will be my wife, and I will be your husband, as blessed by the fates.”
I remember his nickname for me. “What’s the male version of pátnī?”
“Páti,” he says with a smile.
I taste the word soundlessly on my tongue and like how it feels. There’s a certain sense of rightness—pátnī and páti. “How does the vow work? What do I say?”
Darrius stares at me, his handsome face solemn. “Are you certain, Suraya? Once we do this, we will be eternally linked. We will share magic and a life force, and all our thoughts and our feelings. You will have power over me . . . and I will have the same over you.”
Apprehension flickers, and I feel a peculiar wave of discomfort, as if some craven, selfish part of me doesn’t want anyone to wield my magic. “But we will be stronger together?” I ask.
“Infinitely.”
Darrius rises and pulls me up next to him.
The difference in our heights is noticeable as he looms nearly a foot over me.
He takes my small right hand and places it against the middle of his chest, aligned with his spine, and splays my fingers wide.
Then he does the same to me, his right hand nestling between my breasts.
His voice is soft and grave. “The center of the palm rests over the anahata chakra—the heart bridge—which connects your throat, third eye, and crown chakras above, and the solar plexus, sacral, and root ones below.” His left fingertip brushes over each point: the base of my neck, between my brows, the top of my skull, and then his knuckles slide down from between my ribs to my belly and lower, making me gasp.
Reverently, Darrius moves back up, ever so slowly, naming the purpose of each one from root to crown. “Survival, sexuality, identity, love, expression, intuition, and knowledge.”
As he invokes each chakra, the energy sparks between them and between us. I can feel my magic flaring inside of me as if it knows what is about to happen. Despite my earlier trickle of apprehension, I sense no real doubt, only a pulse of certainty that this is our path.
Not our only path.
I blink at the unexpected words from my simurgh. What do you mean?
We are the passage between the earth and the sky, a conduit between the bright of the sun and the dark of the moon—both of your halves will be loved and anchored by kings.
Don’t you mean king? I ask, frowning.
But the voice fades as my magic brims, my runes flaring with silvery iridescence as Darrius’s shadows swirl along his arms. They meet in the middle where we are connected in a lover’s dance, bursting upward like fountains of coiling light and darkness.
“Suraya Saab,” he says in his deep voice that wraps around me like roughened silk. “I pledge to you my irrevocable oath to honor this soul-fated bond. As I offer you my hand, so I offer you my soul to keep from this moment forward.”
My throat clogs with emotion, but I manage to repeat the same. “Darrius Nightsong, I pledge to you my irrevocable oath to honor this soul-fated bond. As I offer you my hand, so I offer you my soul to keep from this moment forward.”
Every cell inside of me tightens as the vow settles into place like stardust. The magic between us seems to still for an infinitesimal moment before it blasts upward and outward, blanketing us both.
I feel it the moment the bond seals, the tether between us glowing with otherworldly iridescence.
Familiar magic that isn’t mine fills my veins, and I watch in wonder as inky runic shadows wind up my arms and merge with the silvery ones already there.
“Fate marks,” Darrius says, staring at his own arms, where a silvery pattern, reminiscent of the runes on my arms, has formed, intertwining with his shadow marks and sinking into his brown skin.
“Is this not normal?” I ask, when his brows draw together slightly as if he hadn’t expected this.
He shakes his head. “Not in millennia. These are gods-touched bonds.”
I pin my lips, but a strangled laugh bursts from me. “You’re a god yourself, if you hadn’t noticed, and I’m a warrior made with divine energy. It’s only logical.” I reach up, wind my fist into his collar, and grin before yanking him down. “You’re stuck with me now, páti.”
“Say it again,” he says against my lips.
“Páti . . . husband.”
The groan that leaves him makes something deeply satisfying, primal, and possessive flare inside of me.
He’s mine. Our kiss is transcendent, his mouth claiming mine as passionately as I claim his.
I feel the bond humming between us. We kiss for what seems like hours, but eventually I pull away, albeit with great reluctance.
“As much as I want to stay here, I need to make sure Papa is well.”
My king runs a hand through his mussed silver hair. His lips are red and swollen, his eyes gleaming. Surprisingly, a dark pink tinge washes over his cheekbones. “I understand, but we do, er, need to . . . consummate the bond in order to fully complete the ritual and seal the vows.”
I lift my brows and grin at his adorably awkward expression. “Not that I am complaining, but don’t previous times count?”
“No,” he says. “We should be fine as long as it’s not too long after.”
“You can wait?”
My soul-fated kisses me softly. “I waited forever for you without any true hope of ever having you. What’s a few more hours?
You are worth infinite lifetimes, Suraya.
” His eyes burn with reverence, and it’s a miracle my legs don’t give out.
“Go see your father. I have to check in with the kingsguard and the Aspa?anā anyway. I’ll see you tonight. ”
“I love you, Darrius,” I tell him.