Chapter 29 #2
“You neglect her,” I toss back, biting the words through clenched teeth. “Instead of being her mother, you’d rather get high in this treehouse. It hurts her.”
“It hurts me too.” Her voice is thick with unshed tears, and my anger evaporates.
For a moment, I see Rue as she was when we first met, when I was still a young boy. She was lovely, ambitious, crafty, and most importantly, lucid. We’ve had this conversation many times since then, and no matter what approach I take, the outcome never changes.
“I could sooner sway the gods than make you understand my reasons. If Hyacinth is to survive what’s coming, I must stay away from her.”
“I could bring her to see you,” I suggest. “She would like that.”
It’s the wrong thing to say.
Rue shoots up from her stool and turns her back on me. Her shoulders are hunched, and any blonde left in her hair is nothing more than a faded memory of brighter days. Gods, I’m starting to sound like her.
“Don’t come back here, Riven. If you do, sorrow is the only thing you’ll find.”
I frown. My eyes flicker to the small basin of water by her cot. A cloth lies next to it, and the coarse, loosely woven fabric is stained with blood. My heart sinks. For once, I think Rue is telling me the pure, unvarnished truth.
If I return to this hut, there won’t be anyone left to open the door when I knock.
“Is there nothing that can be done?” I ask, hiding my clenched fingers beneath my cloak.
She shakes her head. “My time draws near.”
“Hyacinth will hate me if I don’t tell her,” I say, trying to appeal to her sense of reason.
Rue faces me again. Her lips curl—they’re cracked at the corners—and a drop of blood pebbles on the right side. “No, Riven. My daughter won’t hate you for it; she’ll hate me—and that’s the way it must be.”
The wind gusts, and the treehouse moans, the sound mournful and loud in the heavy silence. “I’ll watch out for her, I swear it.”
She nods. “Soon it will be beyond you.”
I stare into the fire. Bits of charcoal and ash surround the smoldering logs, and thick, purple-tinged smoke curls up from the embers. Inhaling it makes me dizzy, but it also quiets the restless buzzing inside my head.
“You didn’t come here to revisit this argument, old friend.” Rue’s stare digs into my cheek, and it’s all I can do not to run away. She sees too much. “Bonds are a crafty piece of magic, you know.”
When I crane my neck to look at her again, my head moves in slow motion. “Can they be faked? Even temporarily, to trick the portal?”
Rue sits back down on her stool and absently toys with a bone tied in her hair.
“Bonds aren’t like other magics,” she says slowly.
“They’re part of the soul, running through a person’s deepest essence.
All shifters are born with a bond—linking them to an animal or monster with such totality that it allows them to change form.
If that link is severed . . .” She shudders.
“It’s a despicable practice that spits in the face of the gods.
Worse than amputating a limb or removing an organ. ”
I stare at my hands as the veins throb ominously beneath my skin. “I don’t disagree with you. You know that—”
“I’m not finished,” Rue snaps. “In rare circumstances, shifters may be gifted by the gods with the potential for a second bond: allowing them to link themselves to a fated mate should they choose. They will experience a pull toward that person, and if bound, their life sources will become so entwined, that the death of one means the death of both.”
I grimace, and the muscles of my face feel oddly stretched. “What’s the point of this story time?” I demand. “I’ve heard the legends about fated mates. They’re nothing more than lies for children to moon over. I need a practical fix, not a fairy tale, Rue.”
“You listen, but you don’t hear,” she hisses. “Nothing is more powerful than a chosen bond. The gods provide opportunity, but a shifter shapes their own destiny. Any elected bond—with the risks carefully weighed and accepted—overrides what nature sometimes provides.”
My heart pounds wildly against my ribs, and a drop of sweat rolls down my spine to pool against my lower back. I need air, but I need answers more.
“I don’t understand,” I admit.
“A shifter who chooses to bind themselves to another wouldn’t have to trick a portal or any other synthetic device. They would pass through unchecked.”
I shoot to my feet and blink half a dozen times. “Because they are bound—only not in the way the portal thinks!”
Rue nods. “When a shifter binds themselves to another, Riven, their soul no longer sings solely for their beast. Their very life force bends, rerouted through the heart of another.” Her eyes flicker with lucidity, and the air in the hut goes impossibly still.
“It’s that song—that frequency—that the portal listens for. If it hears silence where the beast’s voice should be, it will assume the bond is no more, not that it’s been overridden by one more powerful. It won’t know the difference between love freely chosen and a bond cruelly torn.”
Through the haze in my mind, I consider what this means, then my stomach sinks. “There’s no way they have a fated mate bond,” I tell her. “The basilisk would know if they did. Are you sure there’s no device we can use?”
“Fate weaves her tapestry through a foggy glass.” Rue stares into the fire. Her eyes are far away, and my fingers curl. I’m losing her to the smoke.
“Don’t be cryptic,” I beg. “Rue, this is important.”
“The fog never clears,” she whispers. “How can it, when will and choice were born to muddy the future fate designed?”
“What?” I grip her arms, wincing as my fingers wrap all the way around and overlap. “What does that mean, Rue?”
“It means, we all have choices,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes. “The future is only set in stone if one lacks the courage and strength to change it.”
“So what?” I ask. “Is there a risk? Should they try to bond and hope for the best?”
“Fate is powerful, but not as powerful as choice. I’ve told you all I can.” She pulls free of my grasp and points at the door. “Leave me, Riven, and don’t come back.”
I stumble away from the treehouse and walk the mountain until the cold wipes the herbs from my brain. Only when my thoughts are crisp and I’ve lost sensation in my toes do I reach inside my cloak and fumble for the polished stone that will take me home.
The wind howls through the gnarled trees, but it’s the silence that follows each gust that chills me the most. Rue gave me one answer and half a dozen new questions. Whether I’ve found a solution or a death sentence, only time will tell.
I close my fingers around the stone—and the world fractures into light.