Chapter Seventy-One
ELARA
Eli gathered everybody in the dining room, including a sleepy Merissa and irritated Leo.
‘What just happened between you up there?’ Eli demanded.
‘It’s hardly your business,’ Enzo spluttered, stepping in front of Elara.
‘Why?’ she instead asked quietly.
Eli looked between them. ‘I felt something. Isra, too.’
Elara turned to where Isra sat gravely.
‘I’ll make tea,’ Merissa sighed, Leo following her out.
‘Care to be less vague?’ Enzo said tightly.
‘We felt Ariete,’ Eli and Isra both said in unison.
Elara whirled, looking around the lighthouse. ‘Where?’
Eli shook his head. ‘We already searched the place. He is nowhere here.’
‘Then what exactly do you mean?’
‘His magick is like a bloody imprint. It flared. Isra, I imagine, felt it with the small scope of her seer powers that are still working. And I…well, I know it well.’
Elara played back the scene, trying not to blush. It had happened twice now: Enzo clinging to her, lost in her as they’d made love. She thought of his words, how he’d explained the feeling. Tried to piece it together with Eli and Isra feeling Ariete’s magick.
Her blood slowed.
‘No,’ she gasped. ‘No, no, no.’
She looked up at Eli, the terror plain on her features. He scanned her, and she could feel his charm settling upon her, then he cursed.
‘The tether,’ he said.
Enzo frowned. ‘Mine?’
Eli nodded. ‘It’s been tampered with.’
Her stomach lurched as she saw the dawning realization on his face matching that on her own. ‘Enzo, tell them what you told me.’
Enzo raked a hand through his long curls, sighing. ‘I don’t know what’s spooked El so much, but we were…’ He glanced at Elara. ‘Spending some time alone.’
‘We gathered,’ Adrian drawled, swiping the bottle of rum from the table as Merissa and Leo bustled back in with tea.
Enzo shot him a death glare, and he had the sense to look scared as he fidgeted with the sleeves of his coat.
Elara waved a hand through the air impatiently. ‘I don’t have time for euphemisms. We were making love back in Altalune, and Enzo was climaxing when something took over him.’
Adrian choked on his rum. Merissa gave him a pitying look.
‘It was a hunger or a desperation,’ Enzo explained. ‘It’s happened twice now—both times when in complete union with Elara. I lost control. Reality faded, and there was only her.’
‘Sounds like a good time,’ Leo remarked.
Elara didn’t laugh. ‘He told me he felt like he was lost, that I was his only tie to reality. Now, what does that sound like to you?’
‘A tether,’ Merissa whispered.
‘Exactly!’ Elara said, the room spinning.
‘And why would that be a bad thing?’ Adrian frowned, taking another gulp. ‘Surely, with how insufferably in love the two of you are, it would be a good thing if you were tied to each other like that.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Isra replied quietly, alarm she so rarely possessed bright in her eyes.
‘Are you able to see, Iz, if what we fear is true?’ Elara pleaded.
‘I can try,’ Isra supplied.
Elara pushed Eli out of his chair, and Adrian gawked at the sight. But Eli barely batted an eyelid, standing behind Elara as Enzo walked round to her too.
Isra huffed a breath, snatching the bottle from Adrian’s hands to take a swig before handing it back. ‘Enzo—hand, please.’ Enzo stood next to Eli and reached out his hand. Isra clutched it in one hand, taking Elara’s with the other. Then, with a deep breath, her eyes turned white.
The seer began mumbling in the archaic Svetan Elara had heard before. The table waited, enraptured. Merissa’s worried eyes flicked between the three of them, Adrian looked bewildered, and Eli’s dark gaze was unreadable.
Leo patted Enzo on the back. ‘Whatever this is, it’s going to be okay,’ he murmured. Enzo only nodded in response.
This time Isra seemed to have more control than she’d had when Elara had first visited her in her house in Helios. No frost coated Elara, and the seer didn’t begin to shake.
Elara waited, her heart drumming against her chest. She felt nauseous. She could hazard a guess as to what being tethered entailed, but she prayed and begged that Isra wouldn’t confirm her suspicions.
Finally, Isra’s muttering stopped, her eyes clearing as she looked between the two titans. She nodded once. Elara cursed.
‘What?’ Eli hissed.
‘Elara is Enzo’s tether,’ Isra replied.
‘What does that mean?’ Enzo asked quietly. Elara blinked back her fear and her tears.
Eli was beginning to pace the room, the rest of the group in various stages of confusion.
‘It means, my love, that I am the only thing keeping you in this world.’
Enzo’s brow furrowed.
‘It means,’ she sighed, ‘that I am the only thing keeping you alive.’