Chapter 4 Zeidan
ZEIDAN
The ink bleeds across the parchment in thick, deliberate strokes. I’ve copied this passage a dozen times now, but I still don’t understand the final line. The ancient dialect is stubborn, full of layered meanings and cursed nuance.
Where blood roots, power feeds. Where will bends, soul binds.
The phrase coils around itself in my mind, Crowd and elusive.
I set the quill down and flex my fingers.
Across the stone table, three more scrolls lie open, histories of bond rituals, forbidden accounts of the early schisms between our kind and the Purna.
None of them explains what happens when two unwilling souls are forced into alignment.
I look down at my forearm. The shimmer beneath the skin has intensified. The bond magic is no longer sleeping. It pulses now, aware and expectant.
The room is quiet save for the crackling of cold flame in the braziers. Garrick enters without knocking, as always.
"They’ve called another meeting," he says. "The Matrons are restless."
"Let them be restless," I reply. "Their venom only strengthens my resolve."
Garrick crosses his arms. "They’re not just posturing. They say if you perform the bond, you’ll forfeit your seat. You’ll be stripped of all command."
I stand slowly. "Good. Let them try."
But his expression doesn’t change. "Are you sure this isn’t personal?"
I meet his gaze, unmoving. "Everything is personal."
He says nothing more, only steps aside as I leave the chamber. The corridor beyond is dark, lined with torches that do not burn but glow, Vrakken magic, cold and luminous. My steps echo through the hall like warnings.
In the council chamber, six sets of eyes await me. Matron Serida is the first to speak.
"You risk everything for a dying witch."
"I risk nothing," I say, voice steady. "I act in accordance with our interests."
Matron Hessa scoffs. "You act for your pride."
"If pride led me, I would’ve turned her away and let the blight eat them alive. But I see the future. I see what we could become."
Serida leans forward, fingers steepled. "And what exactly do you see in her?"
A thousand images flicker through my mind. Her eyes lit with fury. Her voice, sharp and clear. The way she refused to kneel.
"A fire worth stoking," I answer.
They whisper among themselves, but I no longer care. Their approval is a game I’ve stopped playing.
The council chamber hums with tension. Matron Serida taps her long nails against the obsidian table as if the rhythm will unsettle me.
Serida leans forward. “Even if it works, the consequences would be dangerous. Binding with a Purna would fracture public loyalty. Our people still remember the wars. The betrayals.”
“Let them remember. Let them watch. If the ritual succeeds, they will forget their fear in awe.”
“And if it breaks you?”
“Then I will be the one who survives it.”
Silence follows. Not approval, but not refusal, either.
Matron Yrelda speaks next, quiet but firm. “You won’t have our blessing.”
“I never asked for it,” I say.
Serida’s lips twist into something too cold to be a smile. “Very well. We will not stop you. But know this: if the bond fractures, so does your future. And if the girl breaks you, we will not gather the pieces.”
I incline my head, not in deference, but in finality.
Later, I walk alone through the citadel, past halls lined with relics of the old Vrakken empire—broken swords, sealed runes, masks worn by the First Blooded.
I should feel calm. Resolute. But the weight in my chest tightens with every step. I think of her. Amelia Crow is proud, fierce, and reckless. I shouldn't admire her. But I do.
She stared me down like no one has in years. No fear, no hesitation. And something in her, something ancient, spoke to the part of me I’ve buried under steel and duty.
The bond will not just bind our magic. It will tangle thought, emotion, and instinct. I hate that. I hate that she might feel what I am feeling, but at least she can’t lie to me that way, because I will feel her too.
I look down at my palm. The shimmer beneath the skin is stronger now. Not pain, not even power, but anticipation.
If she agrees... everything changes.
My future will not belong to Velcryn alone. It will belong to us…
Garrick finds me before midnight, silent as always. He holds out a scroll, sealed in Nytherian violet wax. I break it open without ceremony.
Only one line is written, firm and direct in her hand:
I have one last offer. I will bind my magic to yours in an ancient ritual I know, but I am not doing a mating bond. We do this before dawn.
No flourishes. No hesitation. My heart gives a slow, heavy thud. I let the scroll roll closed and rest it against my chest for a moment.
So she has made her decision. I try not to smile, happy that I get what I want…
It is only natural that she agrees to everything.
Not that I expect anything else. Even better than tying myself to her through a mating bond.
Magic bond works perfectly well too. She is desperate, and I have what she wants.
It was only natural that she agreed to everything.
The Purna girl who walked into my city with fire in her eyes has decided to risk her life for her people, for the Wildspont, and now... for a bond with me.
I hand the scroll back to Garrick. “Prepare the ritual chamber. Tell her I accept. She’ll be here before first light.”
He says nothing, but I see it in his eyes the worry and pity. But I feel nothing except a strange, still pull inside me.
She’s coming, and there’s no turning back.
She returns just past dusk. The guards announce her arrival with stiff, uncertain bows. When she enters the ritual hall, her cloak drips with rain, and her eyes burn like embers.
"I won’t beg," she says.
"I never asked you to."
We stand in silence. The runes on the floor glow softly, responding to our presence.
I can feel the bond magic stirring between us like a tide turning.
She has a strong magic. It recognizes her.
Hungers for her. The ritual is old, older than either of our people, and it does not care for politics or consent. Only alignment.
The floor beneath our feet is etched with sigils so old they predate written history, circles within circles, each one a promise and a warning. I recognize some of them from the texts. Others were never meant to be read aloud. They were carved by hands that believed survival justified any cost.
This ritual was not designed for love. It was forged for endurance. For war. For binding bloodlines together when extinction loomed, and choice became a luxury. The magic bond does not ask why we kneel here. It only measures what we are willing to give.
I feel it now, prowling just beneath my skin. The magic tastes my intent and finds it wanting, not weak, but conflicted. That alone is dangerous.
“This circle will amplify everything,” I tell her, voice rougher than I intend. “Strength. Fear. Doubt.”
Her jaw tightens. “And if one of us breaks?”
I don’t lie to her. “Then the magic bond will decide whether the other is worth saving.”
The runes respond to that truth, flaring hookup-blue, then darkening to something closer to black. The air thickens, heavy as breath before a scream.
I have fought monsters. I have faced death without flinching. But this…this is different. This is surrender disguised as power.
"Once it begins," I say, "there’s no retreat."
She nods. Her fists are clenched at her sides. She is terrified. She is magnificent.
We kneel across from one another, hands outstretched, palms up. The circle flares to life. Cold air rushes through the chamber as the sigils around us ignite.
I begin the invocation. My voice low, deliberate. Her voice joins mine, uncertain at first, then gaining strength. Power floods the space between us, arcing like lightning. The bond magic rises fast…too fast. It surges, wild and untempered.
Our hands connect.
The moment our skin touches, the circle reacts violently, as if it’s been waiting for this exact configuration. Heat and cold collide in my veins. I feel her shock through the contact, sharp and raw, and now I understand the true danger of this bond.
There is no separation here. No shield.
Whatever she feels next, terror, pain, resolve, I will feel it too. And the magic knows it. It is connecting our two magics.
Pain explodes behind my eyes. The world fractures. I hear her scream as my body seizes, magic lashing out in every direction. The chamber shakes. Runes crack. The floor splinters.
A roar tears from my chest, unbidden. Not mine. Something deeper. Older. It rises from a place no voice should reach.
When the magic clears, I’m on my knees, gasping. She’s collapsed, barely conscious, her hand still locked in mine. And on our skin…Mirrored sigils burn. Mine over my heart. Hers on her wrist.
The magic bond is forged. And the old power… is awake.
I stare at the sigil that flares. It burns. I stagger, breath tearing out of me as the mark over my heart ignites, not with pain, but with presence. A rhythm slams into my chest, foreign and intimate all at once. Not mine. Hers.
The ritual was meant to bind power. To braid magic for the sake of an alliance. That is what we wanted. What the symbols were drawn for.
But this… This goes far deeper.
Her breath ghosts through me, shallow and uneven, as if my lungs have learned her cadence. I feel the drag of her exhaustion, the tremor in her limbs, fear still clinging to her like smoke after fire. Not imagined. Not interpreted. Felt.
The bond hasn’t merely fused magic. It has tethered us.
I look up sharply. She’s already staring at me.
There’s no confusion in her eyes. No wonder.
Just the same stunned, terrible recognition crashing through me.
She feels it too. I know she does, not because the ritual tells me, but because the truth has snapped into place with brutal clarity. Then she loses consciousness.
This isn’t what was forged. The alliance is the lie layered on top. The excuse. Beneath it, something far older has awakened. Something that does not ask permission or heed intent. A pull that settles low and absolute, wrapping around my spine, my instincts, my will.
A mating bond.
Fate, buried beneath ceremony and law, rising anyway. The magic hums between us, alive now, aware. Watching. Wanting for us to accept the mating bond and consummate it.
I drop my gaze to the sigil, still blazing over my heart, and understand with a cold certainty that tightens my grip on myself. This is no alliance. It is fusion. And whatever old power has stirred… it has chosen both of us.
A voice stirs in the back of my mind, one I’ve only heard in dreams: This will either crown you, or consume you.
And I don’t yet know which I want more.