Chapter 16 Zeidan
ZEIDAN
Ireturn to Nytheria with Velcryn still clinging to my skin.
Stone and incense. Marble restraint. The Matrons’ voices layered with implication and warning, every word sharpened to test whether the bond has altered me in ways they can no longer control.
I left that chamber with my authority intact, my position unchallenged, for now, but something in me feels scraped raw, like armor worn too long without rest.
I do not go to the council halls first. I go to her.
The bond pulls hard the moment I cross the final ward, a tight, unignorable thread that snaps into place with a force that makes my breath hitch.
Anger flares along it immediately, hers, hot and indignant, followed by something else I don’t like how easily I recognize.
Defiance. Of course it is. Like she is made to oppose me at every step.
She’s in the eastern corridor near the root sanctum when I find her, boots dusted with soil, hair pulled back too tightly, magic still humming close to the surface of her skin. She turns the instant she senses me, eyes flashing.
“You don’t get to be angry,” she says before I can speak.
I stop a few paces away. “You left without telling me.”
“You were busy,” she shoots back. “Or did the Matrons suddenly stop demanding obedience?”
The edge in her voice is sharp enough to draw blood. The bond thrums, caught between us, feeding on the friction.
“You shadow-walked,” I say, keeping my tone level by sheer discipline. “Into root tunnels you know are unstable. You confronted an elder without support. You tracked treason alone. We talked that we will do it together.”
Her chin lifts. “I am not a child! I handled it.”
“You survived it,” I correct. “That is not the same thing.”
Her eyes blaze. “I am not fragile.”
“I never said you were.”
“You don’t have to,” she snaps. “You loom like I might shatter if you blink wrong.”
I step closer before I mean to, enough that the air between us tightens.
“You disappeared,” I say quietly. “And then I felt the bond stretch like it was being pulled apart thread by thread. Do you have any idea what that does to control?”
Her expression flickers, but then settles into something stubborn. “You don’t get to cage me because you’re afraid.”
I laugh once, short and incredulous. “You think this is fear?”
Her magic stirs, brushing against mine, sparks of heat and resistance tangling together. “Then what is it?”
The anger in her voice should have been the thing I focused on.
The accusation. The grief underneath it.
Instead, what I feel first is the aftertaste of that risk she took, how close she came to being trapped beneath the earth with no way out, how easily a single misstep could have turned shadow-walking into burial.
It is not fear that sharpens my tone when I answer her. It is control, regained quickly.
“I will not be maneuvered, Amelia.”
She turns fully toward me as if I have struck her. “What does that even mean?”
“It means I am not going to stand in your presence and pretend we have built trust that doesn’t exist yet,” I say, keeping my voice even by force rather than ease.
“You left without informing me. You moved on a threat alone. You acted as if you were the only person in this partnership with anything to lose.”
Her eyes flash. “Partnership?” she repeats, incredulous. “You were in Velcryn. With the Matrons. I sent a message.”
“You left a note on a table,” I correct, and I hate how cold it sounds even as I say it. “You did not tell me where you were going. You did not tell me what you were doing. And on top of that you intended to shadow-walk into root tunnels in a land that is already sick.”
“And you think that’s suspicious,” she says, voice tightening, “because you can’t imagine me doing something unless it benefits me.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is exactly what you said,” she snaps, stepping closer, her magic rising in the air like heat off stone. “You said you won’t be maneuvered. As if I had some grand plan to push you around while my home collapses.”
I do not move back, although the instinct to close distance, to contain, to shield, to anchor, runs through me hard enough to make my teeth clench. The bond does not help. It drags awareness between us until I can feel the tremor in her pulse and the furious effort she is making not to let it show.
“I am saying that you acted like a lone blade,” I tell her. “And lone blades get snapped.”
Her jaw tightens. “You don’t get to talk to me like I’m a soldier you trained.”
“No,” I agree. “You are not a soldier. You are the heir of a dying land, and you are making decisions that can turn two realms into ruins.”
“That is rich,” she spits. “Coming from the man who thinks every problem is solved by control.”
Something sharp flickers inside me at the word, because it is true, because it is exactly what I have been shaped into, and because she has seen too much of me already to be wrong.
“You want honesty?” I say. “Fine. I do not assume malice from you. I assume strategy. And yes, I assume the possibility that you might choose your people over this bond if you believed you had to.”
Her eyes widen slightly, outrage sharpening into disbelief. “You think I’m going to betray you.”
“I think you are capable of it,” I answer, and the bluntness lands between us like a thrown knife. “Just as I am capable of choosing Velcryn over you. That is what power forces on people who lead.”
Her expression turns dangerous in a quieter way. “So you’re punishing me for being competent.”
“I am holding you accountable for being reckless,” I shoot back. “You heard treason. You heard planning. You heard poison and blame and collapse, and you walked away without taking anything tangible.”
“I walked away because confronting them in that tunnel would have been suicide,” she says, her voice rising with the force of reason she is trying to use like a weapon. “I walked away because I need proof. Evidence. Not a hunch.”
“And you decided to gather that proof alone,” I say. “Again.”
Her laugh is sharp, humorless. “You keep saying that like you were available.”
“I would have been,” I say, and I hear the edge in my own voice now, the part of me that is no longer speaking only as an ally but as someone who felt the bond strain hard enough to make my magic stutter. “If you had given me the chance. I promised you I would, didn't I?”
“And when was that supposed to happen?” she demands. “After the Matrons finished deciding whether I’ve softened you? After you passed their little tests and accepted their warnings and proved to them that you still belong to their leash?”
The insult lands because it is clever and because it is unfair and because it draws blood from a wound I don’t let anyone see.
I take a step toward her, and the air tightens between us, the bond flaring hot with the collision of anger and something else neither of us is naming. Her magic responds to proximity the way a storm responds to pressure, rising, shifting, pushing at the edges of the room.
“You are not the only one under threat,” I tell her, voice low. “You are not the only one with enemies watching for weakness.”
Her eyes narrow. “Is that what this is? You think my initiative makes you look weak.”
“No,” I say, and it comes out harsher than intended. “I think your initiative almost got you killed.”
She goes still for half a heartbeat, and I can feel the impact of that statement in her body, the way it hits somewhere deeper than pride. Her gaze does not soften, but something in it tightens, as if she has been forced to acknowledge that I am not wrong.
“You don’t trust me,” she says quietly.
I hold her eyes and choose the truth that will hurt less than the lie. “Not blindly.”
“And yet you expect me to trust you,” she replies, and now her voice carries something sharper than anger. “You expect me to hand my land over to a bond I never wanted and a prince who keeps reminding me he’d rather be obeyed than needed.”
That twists something in my chest that has no right to be as vulnerable as it is.
“I do not want you obedient,” I say. “I want you alive.”
“That’s convenient,” she says, and her sarcasm cracks slightly at the edges, as if even she knows she is forcing herself to keep the fight going. “A dead mate is a useless asset.”
The word mate lands like a strike, and the bond reacts. Heat blooms beneath my skin, and I feel it answer in her too, a spike of awareness that makes her inhale sharply. For a moment the room seems smaller, as if the walls have edged closer.
“You think this is a game of assets,” I say, and my voice is quieter now, far more dangerous. “You think I am standing here arguing because I enjoy being challenged.”
“Then why are you?” she demands.
Because if I let you vanish again, I will tear this realm apart to find you. Because when the bond screamed, my body moved before my mind did. Because you are becoming the axis my instincts turn around.
I do not give her any of that. I keep my face hard and my voice clean.
“Because two realms cannot survive divided command,” I tell her. “Because your people will turn on you exactly the way that voice promised they would, and when they do, you will need more than courage. You will need structure. Allies who are not guessing what you might do next.”
Her breath trembles once, barely perceptible, and she despises that it does. I see it in the tightening of her jaw, in the way her fingers curl slightly at her sides as if she would rather grip a blade than let me witness that flicker of vulnerability.
“You talk about guessing,” she says quietly, “but you’ve been keeping things from me too.”
I don’t answer immediately.
Her eyes sharpen. “We can speak through the bond.”
It isn’t a question. I hold her gaze.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” The hurt creeps in despite her effort to contain it. “You let me stumble into that alone. You let me believe I imagined it.”
“It required control,” I say evenly. “And you had enough chaos without another variable.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make,” she fires back. “You decided what I could handle.”
“I decided what would not overwhelm you.”
“You decided,” she repeats, and the accusation in it is clean and precise. “You keep deciding for both of us.”
The truth of that presses uncomfortably against my ribs. I step forward, drawn by the heat of her anger, by the way it refuses to cower.
“You left without telling me you were walking into treason,” I say, voice low. “And you are furious because I withheld a method of communication.”
“I am furious,” she snaps, “because you don’t trust me with the same power you claim binds us.”
“I trust you with power,” I answer. “I do not trust the timing of it.”
The bond hums hard, reacting to that truth, and the air between us turns volatile with everything we are not saying.
I step closer without thinking, drawn by the sheer force of her presence, the ache in her words, the way her magic seeks mine even as she resists the idea of needing me. She does not retreat. She lifts her chin as if daring me to take the last inch and prove her right about all of it.
We are close enough now that I can feel the warmth of her breath, close enough that anger and desire are no longer cleanly separated, close enough that one careless movement would become a mistake neither of us could pretend didn’t happen.
Her gaze drops to my mouth.
So does mine.
And then she shifts, only slightly, only enough that her lips brush mine by accident, a brief, electric contact that makes my vision go sharp and my restraint turn thin as paper.
She jerks back immediately, eyes wide, breath uneven, as if she cannot decide whether to be furious or shaken. I am both.
I do not move toward her. I do not reach for her. Every part of me wants to. Instead I force my voice steady, even as my pulse betrays me.
“This bond,” I say quietly, and I hear the roughness in it, the truth I cannot sand down fast enough, “is changing everything.”