56. Chapter 56 #3
His voice became distant. The voice of someone reciting a nightmare they'd lived through too many times.
"He got weaker. Slower. I thought he was just tired—we'd been practicing for hours. But then I looked at him. Really looked. And I saw..."
He swallowed.
"His eyes were getting glassy, they were emptying out. By the time I figured out how to break the connection—"
His throat worked.
"He was gone."
My grip on his hand tightened until my knuckles ached.
His free hand drifted to his left wrist. To the red string. His thumb pressed against the fraying knot.
"I tied it the same night." His voice had gone thin. "So I'd feel it every time I reached for someone. Every time the Mark stirred. So I'd remember what my soul does when I forget to hold it back."
The string I'd noticed the first time he held me by the throat. The string I'd almost touched while he braided my hair. A dead boy's leash, knotted around the wrist of the male who killed him at eight years old and never stopped punishing himself for it.
"I didn't just kill him, Amaria." Eryndor's eyes found mine, carrying the full weight of what he’d held for years. "Our bond consumed his soul to fuel itself. I felt it happen. Felt him disappear piece by piece while I just... absorbed him."
The words hung in the air between us.
I thought about the harmony we'd felt. The crystal singing. The way our powers had merged so perfectly it felt like destiny.
Inherently parasitic.
The realization turned the memory rancid.
What we have isn't beautiful. It's hunger.
"That's why you pulled back." I said. "Every time. That's why you fought it so hard."
"I couldn't—" His voice cracked. "I couldn't watch it happen again. Not to you. I would rather spend my life feeling half-complete than risk becoming the thing that consumes you."
"Eryndor—"
"You asked why I was afraid." He cut me off. "Now you know. The bond isn't just connection. It's appetite. And I have spent every moment since I was eight terrified that if I ever let myself want—"
He stopped. Looked at me.
"—the way I want you—"
I held my breath.
"—I would destroy them the same way I destroyed him."
An old instinct in me flinched. Below thought or reason.
The Griefweaver stirred—recoiling the way an animal pulls back from fire before the mind catches up to say hot.
For one ugly, airless second, I saw Brannick.
Not his face. The shape of him. The pattern—a man I trusted, a secret underneath, the moment the floor dropped out and I realized I'd handed myself to someone who could swallow me whole.
What if he's right.
The thought was a needle slipping between ribs. My hand—the one reaching for his—stopped. Hovered. My fingers curled in, just slightly, a fist half-forming before I caught it.
He saw. His eyes tracked the movement. And something in his face collapsed.
There it is, he was thinking. I could taste it through the tether. There's the fear.
Then the fear hit the facts and broke apart.
Eight. He was eight. No training. No warning. A child whose Mark detonated because nobody taught him what it was. I'd held children who flinched at their own hands because the world told them their power made them monsters.
I knew what that looked like. I'd been fighting against it my whole life.
My hand unfurled and found his.
"You were eight."
"That doesn't—"
"You were eight, and untrained, and you didn't know what you were doing." I gripped his hand tighter. "That's not a confession of guilt. That's a tragedy."
"I killed him."
"Unskilled magic killed him. You were just the other half of a circuit that nobody taught you how to control." I adjusted my hand and laced my fingers through his. "And I'll prove it."
He stared at me, raw and exposed.
"How?"
"By not dying. By letting you bind to both Marks, and surviving, and showing you that what happened with Castien isn't destiny. It's not a pattern. It's not who you are."
"You don't know that."
"No." I touched the spot over my heart where the two Marks lived side by side. "But I know that you just saved my life by doing the exact thing you've been terrified of for years. And I'm still here."
His breath caught.
"Still here," I repeated. "The bond didn't consume me. You didn't consume me." I let my mouth twist. "Though if you ever make me do something that romantic again, I might kill you myself."
A broken sound escaped him—half laugh, half exhale.
"There’s my Little Fox."
He sagged back against the cold stone, pulling me with him until my head rested against his shoulder. For a moment, we just breathed. Then his forehead tipped down, pushing against mine.
"I don't deserve you."
"Probably not." His broken laugh vibrated through the bond. "But you're stuck with me anyway. Both Marks. Both sides. All of it."
His hand stayed resting over my heart. The bond vibrated between us—not hungry or parasitic, just connected. Two halves of the same design that had been waiting a very long time to be whole.
"Thank you," he whispered. "For not running."
"Thank you for telling me," I murmured. If he answered, I fell asleep too quickly to hear it.