8. Chapter 8 #2
"Don't say 'interesting' like that." I kept my voice flat. "Nothing good ever follows that tone."
"You." She circled us slowly, the way she used to circle the healing cots back in the village. "Both of you. When you mounted that horse, you looked half-dead. Sallow skin. Shaking hands." Her head tilted. "Now look at you."
I glanced down at my hands. She was right. The grey tinge had faded further. My nails had color again. Even the persistent tremor in my fingers had stilled.
I looked at Eryndor. The dark circles under his eyes had lightened. His posture was straighter—not the tense military bearing from before, but something more natural. Easier.
"It's the magic out here," I said. Too quickly. "Being out of the Dead Zone. That's all."
"Mmm." She didn't blink. “Let me see your Marks.”
"You're already looking at them."
"Not like this." Serenya stepped closer, her gaze moving over the visible lines at my sternum, then to Eryndor's. "Hold still."
I shot Eryndor a look that promised violence if he made this any worse by saying something. He had the sense to stay silent.
Serenya lifted her hand, fingers hovering over the spiral at my chest without touching, tracing an invisible diagnostic rune in the air just above my skin.
"Eryndor."
He stepped in beside me, close enough that Serenya could study the visible mark at his sternum too. I kept my eyes forward.
A pause. Then the rustle of fabric. I didn't turn around.
Serenya moved between us, and I felt something energetic brush against my Marks. A gentle probing. Diagnostic.
Serenya hummed to herself. "The bond was made in the Void. Born in unmaking." She withdrew her hand from hovering over my mark. "It's not just connecting you. It's afraid."
"Afraid?" I almost laughed. "It's a magical bond, not a lost child."
"It was born in the dark." Dreadscale's voice came from behind us. I hadn't heard him approach. "It remembers."
Eryndor went very still beside me. “He’s right.” His voice was flat, but something in it had tightened. “My Mark was never meant to behave like this. Soulbonds do not latch like a snare every time distance opens. They do not... panic.”
I looked between the three of them—Serenya intent, Dreadscale inscrutable, Eryndor gone stiff beside me—and felt my stomach sink.
Serenya nodded. "When you separate, the tether panics. It thinks you're drifting back into the Void, so it claws at you both, trying to hold on. When you touch—"
"It quiets," Dreadscale finished. His eyes moved between us. "A child born in a burning house flinches at every spark."
I shuffled my feet uncomfortably. "Fine. Six feet. We've been doing six feet. Problem solved."
"Six feet isn't enough."
Of course it wasn't.
"What do you mean, not enough?"
"How close?" Eryndor's voice. Low. Controlled.
"Contact." Serenya didn't flinch. "Skin to skin. As constant as you can manage."
No. I'd just spent three hours learning what his body felt like against mine. I was not signing up for more.
"There's another way." I insisted. "Some kind of anchor. A charm. Something that isn't—" I gestured at him. At us. At the whole impossible situation.
"You're spiraling." Serenya caught my wrist. "Stop. Breathe." She grabbed Eryndor's hand with her other. "It's skin contact, not a blood oath. You'll survive."
She shoved our hands together before either of us could react.
The tether sang.
I looked down at my hand. His fingers curled around mine—whether by instinct or intention, I couldn't tell.
The tether hummed between us. Content. Settled.
Of course. Of course this is what it wanted.
"And if we don't?"
"Then you drain. Weaker. Slower. Easier to kill." Her eyes flicked between us. "We have soldiers hunting us, a Void spreading, and a Veil that's still broken. I need you fighting. Not stumbling around half-dead because you couldn't stand five minutes of contact."
I wanted to argue but I didn't have the grounds.
Eryndor's hand tightened around mine. Not comfort—acknowledgment. A soldier accepting orders he didn't like.
"So." Maxx's drawl curled through the clearing. "Three hours on that horse and now you're both glowing." He appeared at the edge of my vision, head tilted. "Tell me again how this is killing you. Slowly. I want to watch you try to sell it."
"Maxx."
"What? If this is a prescription, I need to know the dosage. Someone has to enforce it."
"Once an hour. Skin contact. A few minutes minimum." Serenya's voice went flat. "No skipping. No negotiating. No I forgot." She looked between us. "Set a rhythm now, or I set one for you."
I stared at Eryndor. He stared back.
His eyes were guarded. But through the tether, I could feel it—the same horror, the same resignation, the same desperate wish that any of this was happening to someone else.
"So every hour," he said slowly, "we have to—"
"Yes."
His fingers flexed once at his side, then went still.
"You're taking this well," I said flatly.
"I am processing."
"You're standing there like a statue."
"That is how I process."
"I hate you," I said.
"Noted."
"I hate this bond."
"Also noted."
"I hate—" I swallowed. "I hate that I have to schedule touching you like it's a chore."
His eyes darkened and locked on mine and he was suddenly inches from me. He cupped my face with his hand and his thumb brushed my lower lip. My breath caught before I could stop it.
"On that, we agree."
Then he dropped his hand.
Before I could lean in. Before I could pull away. Before I could do anything at all. He just... let go. Stepped back. Put distance between us like the contact had burned him.
His expression shuttered. Whatever had been there a moment ago—that flash of heat, that almost-softness—vanished behind a wall I couldn't climb.
I stood there. Hand half-raised toward nothing. Feeling like I'd missed a step on a staircase that wasn't there.
The tether whined at the sudden cold.
Neither of us said anything.
Maxx was already setting up camp, humming something inappropriately cheerful. Serenya was organizing her supplies, very deliberately not looking at us.
And I was counting the minutes until I'd have to touch him again—and trying not to think about how part of me wasn't dreading it at all.