56. Chapter 56 #2
I couldn't nod. Couldn't make my mouth work. But my hand found his wrist in the dark—fingers wrapping around bone, grip too tight, holding on like he was the only solid thing in a world made of smoke.
"Yes."
The one word was all I could give him.
Eryndor’s eyes closed in relief and he gripped my hand and squeezed.
"Then let me in."
His hand left mine and settled flat over my heart. Over the Luminar Mark that pulsed there like a second heartbeat.
"You don't do this alone. Not anymore," he stated. "If we fall, we fall together. If we burn, we burn together. But I am done watching you carry this by yourself."
His voice roughened. "Let me be useful, Amaria. Let me be the shield instead of the sword. Just this once."
I inhaled. And let go.
Our Marks reached for each other. Gentle. Tentative. A question, not an invasion.
Nothing like the collision in the training ring. Nothing like the violent surge that had nearly torn us both apart.
Can I come in?
The Griefweaver stirred. Weak—smothered by suppression, poisoned by my brother's overflow—but it knew him.
Let him in.
An instinct. The same part of me that had watched him drive a dagger into his own chest. The Oath-stone shattering because he'd rather bleed out than let the King use his hands to kill me. Somewhere that remembered him choosing without certainty. Acting without hope.
Let him in.
I opened the door.
It was intimacy. It was magic. It was something between. And something beyond. His soul brushing against mine, learning the edges, mapping the damage like fingers tracing scar tissue in the dark.
The tether held steady—the bond to my Luminar Mark that had kept us breathing since the Dead Zone. Familiar and anchored. But that wasn't what he was reaching for.
The Griefweaver uncurled.
Weak. Poisoned. Half-dead from Caden's overflow and the cuffs choking it silent. But it felt him there, on the other side of the door I'd opened, and it lashed out towards him.
This was the bond that had almost stopped his heart in the sparring ring. The one the bond-weavers warned would shatter him if the balance wasn't right. Every time, the shadow had been the line he couldn't cross.
He crossed it.
Oh.
The poison hit him.
I felt the moment it crossed the bridge we'd built. He staggered with a sharp gasp. His fingers clenched into fists and his breath punched out of him like he'd taken a hammer to the gut.
But he didn't let go.
He didn't step back. Didn't weigh the cost and decide I wasn't worth it. Didn't look at me with apologetic eyes and say this is for the greater good.
Just the overflow, I prayed, not knowing if he could hear me. 'Just give it somewhere to go. Don't drown with me.'
He understood.
The bind narrowed. Focused. Creating a valve for the overflow to go that wasn't my failing heart.
The black lines stopped spreading.
I drew a full breath.
The first in hours. Days. However long I'd been dying on this floor while the world turned grey around me.
Sensation came back in pieces, each one its own small agony.
The cold floor against my hip. The raw skin under the shackles where I'd thrashed against them.
A deep, wrung-out ache in every muscle. My fingers tingled.
My vision cleared enough to find edges again—the wall, the bars, the shape of him kneeling over me.
Eryndor made a sound. Half relief, half pain. When I opened my eyes, the cost was written across his face. Pale. Sweating. Dark circles blooming like bruises beneath his eyes.
He was carrying it now.
Part of it.
Enough to let me live.
****
When I opened my eyes again, he looked like death warmed over.
"You idiot," I rasped as my body slowly started remembering how to function.
Eryndor laughed. It was a terrible sound—exhausted and broken and beautiful.
"You're welcome."
His hand was still on my chest. I could feel the full bind between us now. It was deeper than before, steadier than the chaos of our accidental connection. A bridge built on purpose.
"The bond-weavers were right," I whispered. "We'd know."
"We'd know." He cupped my face. "How do you feel?"
Alive.
The word bloomed through the bond before I could speak it; it echoed back his relief.
"Like I'm not dying anymore." I managed a small smile. "So that's an improvement."
He didn't smile back. His eyes were tracing the black lines still visible on my skin—fading now, but present. A reminder of how close it had been.
"The cuffs are still on." His voice was grim. "The corruption is still building. This is a bypass, not a cure."
"I know."
"We need to get you out of here. Get to your brother. Break the network at the source—"
"Eryndor." I found his hand. Squeezed. "I know."
He exhaled. Some of the tension left his shoulders.
The full bond hummed between us—steady and strong and I should have felt relief. But through the tether, I felt him holding back. A door he kept closed even as everything else opened.
Then, slowly, the door opened.
"You deserve to know."
His voice was quiet. I turned my head, found him staring at the ceiling, his jaw tight.
"Know what?"
"Why I fought this for so long. Why I pulled back every time we got close." He swallowed. "You're bound to my soul now. Both Marks. Everything. You should know what's in there."
I stayed silent. Waited.
"The elders warned us because they knew. They'd seen what happened before." He gritted his teeth. "What I did. Before you. Before any of this."
The bond trembled between us. His fear came through clear—not of me, but of the words he was about to speak. Of what I might think once I heard them.
"Eryndor. Whatever it is—"
"His name was Castien."
The name came out rough. Like he hadn't spoken it in years.
"We grew up together. Trained together. He was the first person who ever made me feel like the Soulbinder Mark was a gift instead of a curse." A muscle twitched in his jaw. "We were eight when we decided to try merging our powers."
I stayed quiet. Let him find the words.
"It felt... perfect. Like the harmony we felt with the crystal, that first time. Like we were meant to work together." His hands curled into fists against his thighs. "But the bond grew too strong. Too fast. It needed more energy than we had, more than either of us could give, so it started..."
He stopped.
"Started what?"
"Pulling," he said in a whisper. "From him. Not from me. Never from me. Just from him."
"I didn't understand what was happening at first."