SIX #2
The bond slams against my ribs. A heartbeat in the dark. And something in the shadows answers, pulsing with the bond.
Thane’s mouth falls open. My pulse stutters, but I don’t resist it. The bond lights the way.
And I finally understand.
“I don’t think this is an accident,” I say quietly. “Thane . . . do you feel it?”
His breath is uneven. Too fast. “I don’t know what this is.”
I grab his hands, forcing his attention back to me.
“Amara, don’t touch—” he starts, trying to pull free.
“Look at me.”
I use every fiber of my strength to hold him there.
“The shadows are not hurting me.”
I swallow.
“This—” my voice softens, but doesn’t waver, “this isn’t what you think it is.”
The bond surges, sharp and undeniable, the shadows moving in time with it.
My chest tightens. Because this—this isn’t how something corrupted behaves.
I think of his mother. Not running, but reaching.
And his father—not unraveling, but holding.
The pieces lock into place.
My grip tightens around his.
“What if your father never stopped fighting?”
He stills.
Doesn’t breathe.
His eyes snap to mine, something raw flashing in them.
“No.”
The word fractures on the way out.
“That’s not—” His voice catches. He drags in a sharp breath. “That doesn’t make sense.”
But he doesn’t let go of me. Doesn’t step back. And the shadows—they hesitate. Like they’re waiting.
I don’t keep pressing because I see it in his eyes. He’s right at the edge of breaking open. The thought is already there and he can’t escape it.
Then the darkness shifts.
They recoil first, pulling away from where it had wrapped around us, where they had swallowed the world whole. The shadows peel away, dissolving like smoke. The world rushes back in—torches flickering, the city glowing below, the stars returning overhead.
But the shadows don’t vanish. They gather, reaching, coiling upward with quiet purpose.
The bond answers, sharp and certain.
Thane is breathing hard now. He releases my hands as he stares down at the darkness curling around him.
“No.” A whisper, barely a breath. “No, that’s not—”
But his own magics betray him. He steps back, breaking the space between us, but the shadows don’t release him. They wind around his body like a vine climbing a tree.
“If that were true . . . ” His voice cracks. “If my father was fighting something—then why didn’t anyone know?”
His eyes lift, wild now.
“Why didn’t I know?”
I hold his gaze, forcing myself to stay calm, as I watch the man who commands the realm begin to fracture.
“Maybe no one knew what to look for.”
His eyes flick to mine, sharp, searching. I inhale softly, the sensation threading through me—his magics, the bond, moving together like something that belongs.
“I didn’t,” I admit quietly. “Not at first.”
I release one of his hands, tracing my fingers across his palm.
“But this—” I glance at the shadows, the way they move, the way they hold. “This isn’t what you think it is.”
I pull a measured breath into my lungs.
“I’m a girl who grew up on a farm who now channels all four Elements. You have Shadow Clan blood in your veins. Nothing about this is normal, Thane.” My voice steadies as I search his eyes. “Not the bond. Not the way your shadows respond to it.”
A beat.
“Maybe no one saw it clearly because no one’s ever seen it like this before.”
Thane exhales sharply. His hands clench. Release. Clench again.
His entire body trembles, the weight of realization pressing down on him. His shadows coil at his forearms, flickering and shifting.
The bond jolts inside me. And from the startled expression on Thane’s face, I know he feels it too. And then—he collapses.
It happens in an instant. One moment he’s standing. The next, his knees hit the stone.
“Thane!”
I lunge forward, catching his shoulders, gripping tight as if I can keep him from breaking apart completely.
He doesn’t push me away. His body shakes, hands rising to his face, pressing hard against his temples—like he’s trying to hold himself together. The shadows curl around him, winding up his arms, across his shoulders, down his spine. Embracing him.
And I know, they aren’t separate from him.
They are him.
“It’s not real,” he whispers, hoarse. “It can’t be real.”
His hands press harder against his eyes, like he can shut it out.
The truth.
The years.
The lie.
The bond shudders.
I rest my hands on his thighs, anchoring us both.
“Thane,” I whisper, my voice soft but unwavering. “Breathe. Just breathe.”
I draw in a slow breath, exhaling just as steadily, willing him to follow. To feel me. To come back to me. He tries. But it comes out sharp, uneven. His head tilts back, his eyes wild and unmoored.
“All these years,” he rasps, voice breaking. “I resented him. I thought he was weak.”
The words break something open between us.
Thane swallows hard. His hands fall to his lap, palms up—as if there’s nothing left to hold onto. As if he is finally seeing it.
The shadows shift over his wrists, pooling around our knees like dark water.
I curl my fingers around his, offering him something solid, something real.
“You didn’t know,” I whisper. “None of you did. Because it didn’t look like magics. Not the kind you were taught to see.”
His throat bobs, breath shuddering.
“But I should have.”
His head drops.
I squeeze his hands, refusing to let him slip further into the wreckage.
“No,” I say, sharper now. “You couldn’t have. The only reason I could see this differently is because of the bond. How could anyone know?”
Thane’s shoulders shake beneath the weight of it.
We stay there, knee to knee, in the dark. I release his hands and reach for his face, cupping it between my palms. Behind him, the shadows shift. They move like dark mist, rippling, restless—like the grief and regret etched into every line of his face.
I lift his head, forcing his gaze to meet mine. His eyes are devastated, searching for answers. I won’t let him break. Not like this.
Not alone.
His hands curl into fists against his lap, his jaw clenching.
“He just . . . disappeared. We needed him, and he wasn’t there. My mother—” His voice cuts off sharply, his throat working as he tries to force the words out.
I hold him close, waiting, giving him the space to say it or to leave it buried. But he doesn’t leave it buried.
“My mother was fighting something too,” he says, voice hoarse. “And we thought—we thought it was madness. We tried everything. I sat beside her while she whispered to things that weren’t there. She scratched symbols into the walls—symbols no one understood.”
His breath falters.
“We thought it was killing her.”
A single tear slips down his cheek, catching the moonlight. Then another.
“And what if we were wrong?”
My chest tightens, my own eyes burning. “Thane how could—”
“What if she wasn’t sick?” His voice fractures. “What if she was trying to stop it? Trying to warn us? And we—” He exhales sharply, his hands flexing open, then curling shut again. “We let her die thinking she was lost.”
The shadows stay close, curling at his shoulders like they were made to hold grief.
And through the bond, I feel something deeper than pain. A weight pressed into him long ago. A burden shaped like silence. Thane has always believed the curse was his. That it had been waiting for him.
The bond thrums.
But what if it wasn’t?
The thrumming gets stronger.
What if someone else has been holding it—quietly, slowly breaking—so it wouldn’t break him?
The thrumming becomes so insistent, I rub my hand against my chest.
Tears fall freely now down his face, silver in the moonlight. Without hesitation, I pull him into me, holding him as tightly as I can.
Thane folds.
“We could have saved her,” he rasps. “If we’d just seen it for what it was.”
“You didn’t know.” My voice is fierce, trembling. “None of you knew.”
His fingers tighten against my back, his breath shuddering as he exhales.
“But we should have,” he whispers. “We should have seen it.”
His breath is unsteady, each inhale jagged like it’s catching on something sharp inside him.
“And I blamed him.”
A shuddering breath leaves him, his body folding inward like he’s trying to hold himself together—and failing.
“I blamed my father for letting her get to the point where she—”
He cuts off, the words catching, tearing on the way out.
He tries again. His voice is wrecked.
“She jumped off that fucking tower, and I—”
The rest collapses with him. I feel it—the way he wants to disappear into himself, to shut it all out. I don’t let him.
I pull him closer as his shoulders begin to shake, his weight pressing into me.
He holds on. Or maybe he’s falling apart.
His body gives out. He collapses against me, forehead dropping to my shoulder, too heavy with it all to stay upright. Moonlight catches on the wet tracks down his face.
For a moment, he’s quiet. Then he pulls back. He kneels before me, shoulders bowed, eyes heartbroken.
“I blamed him for all of it,” he says. “The war. The weight of this realm falling on me when it should have been him.”
A bitter laugh escapes him.
“He was supposed to be the one to carry this. This realm. This war. It was supposed to be him. Not me.”
His voice cracks on the last words, and I feel it like a knife to my ribs.
I hold him tighter, trying to anchor us both. And something in me shifts. The bond hums. The shadows coil closer. And the truth begins to surface.
I feel them moving through me—guiding me. Revelations rising, like butterflies breaking free of their cocoons.
He thought his father abandoned him.
But what if that wasn’t true? What if the silence wasn’t surrender? What if it was sacrifice?
The bond surges. I surrender to it, letting it take my hand as we move through this labyrinth—separating truth from myth, piece by piece.
The way his mother fought. The way the shadows cling to him now. The weight inside him doesn’t feel like grief. It feels older. Bound. Passed on.
Hand in hand, the bond and I keep moving through the maze—each dead end revealing another truth, another buried thread coming to light.