Chapter 22 Amelia
AMELIA
Ido not tell him. That is the first mistake.
The second is believing I can outthink a bond forged in blood and fire.
Nytheria is restless by dusk, the Wildspont’s pulse uneven beneath my feet as I stand alone in the lower grove where the first ley lines were mapped centuries ago. The air smells faintly metallic again. Not rot. Not yet. But strain.
Zeidan’s distance has not quieted the bond. It has sharpened it.
Every time he pulls away, something inside me strains harder toward him. It is not romantic softness. It is not weakness. It is gravity. A magnetic insistence that I do not entirely recognize as myself.
And that frightens me.
If Velcryn strips him of his title, they will blame me. If Nytheria fractures, they will blame him. If the bond keeps deepening, neither realm will see partnership. They will see surrender.
So I convince myself there is only one solution. Not sever it entirely. Just weaken it. Dull the edges. Restore autonomy. That way I can prove to the council I am still with them, that Zeidan is not an obstacle, but a tool… At least that's what my mouth is saying, but I know I am a liar.
I kneel within the circle I carve into the earth, pressing my palm into soil that still remembers older magic than either of us. The severing rite is ancient, rarely used, designed to untangle forced bindings between hostile mages.
This is not hostile. That thought flickers once. I ignore it.
I begin the incantation slowly, drawing threads of the bond into visible strands before me. They shimmer faintly, silver laced with gold, beautiful and alive.
My throat tightens.
“I’m not rejecting you,” I whisper to the empty air, as if he could hear. “I’m protecting us.”
The first cut is not physical. It is conceptual. I separate emotion from power. Dependence from alignment. Desire from necessity.
The bond resists immediately. Like a living thing refusing dismemberment. My magic surges in response, sharper than I intend. The Wildspont hums in uneasy echo. I press harder, guiding a blade of will into the nearest thread.
The moment it touches, pain detonates through me.
Not external. Internal. A recoil that feels like tearing muscle from bone.
The threads lash outward instead of weakening, flaring blindingly bright.
My breath leaves me in a choked cry as the circle beneath me fractures, lines of light spiderwebbing outward.
The bond does not diminish. It expands. Force floods through me, too much, too fast. Zeidan’s presence slams into my awareness without permission, rage, alarm, movement.
He knows.
I try to finish the spell. That is the third mistake.
The blade of magic shatters in my hands. The recoil surges upward through my spine, white-hot and blinding. The grove explodes with light.
And then there is nothing.
I wake to the sensation of being carried.
Strong arms. Controlled breathing that is anything but calm.
Zeidan.
The bond is a roaring current now, unstable and volatile, his fury crackling along it in sharp pulses. When I open my eyes, we are already inside the private wing of our quarters. The door seals behind us with a violent snap of wards.
He lowers me onto the bed with a care that does not match the storm in his expression.
“What were you thinking?” he demands.
His voice is not raised. It is worse. It is carved from something restrained and shaking.
I push myself upright, ignoring the weakness in my limbs. “I was thinking clearly.”
“You attempted a severing ritual.”
“I attempted to recalibrate it.”
His eyes flash. “You tried to cut it.”
“I tried to give us breathing room!”
“By carving into the core of something neither of us fully understands?”
His control fractures then, just slightly. The bond flares hot, reflecting the anger he refuses to shout.
“You could have died,” he says.
The words hit harder than the accusation. I look away first.
“You were pulling away,” I say quietly. “You decided distance was protection. I decided control was.”
“That was not your decision to make alone.”
“And distancing yourself was?” I snap back.
The room vibrates faintly as magic responds to the escalation. I feel the edges of my own power rising, not violently, but defensively.
“You can’t dismantle us because you are afraid,” he says.
I laugh once, brittle. “Afraid?”
“Yes.”
His gaze pins me in place.
“You are terrified of needing me.”
The truth of it slices clean.
My hands curl into the blanket. “Of course I am,” I admit, anger dissolving into something more dangerous.
“You saw what my council did. You heard Vira. If I lean too far toward you, they call me compromised. If you lean toward me, your Matrons call you unstable. Every time I feel the bond deepen, I wonder which realm will punish us first.”
His expression shifts, not softening, but focusing.
“I don’t want to need you,” I continue, the words spilling now that they’ve begun. “I don’t want my magic to stabilize only when you’re near. I don’t want to look for you in every room before I decide whether I can breathe.”
Silence swells between us.
“And yet?” he asks quietly.
My throat tightens.
“And yet I do.”
There it is. Ugly. Honest. The bond pulses, not violently now, but intensely aware. He steps closer, not looming, not retreating. Just present.
“You think I am not afraid?” he asks.
I blink.
“You think this is easier for me?” His voice drops lower. “You tried to sever something that I have finally stopped fighting.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
He exhales slowly, regaining control inch by inch.
“I distanced myself because Velcryn is preparing to strip my title,” he says. “Because if they move against me, they will use you as leverage. I was trying to reduce your exposure.”
The words steal the air from my lungs.
“They what?”
“I overheard them,” he says. “Procedure. Succession mathematics. Whether I remain fit to rule if my loyalty divides.”
Cold settles into my spine.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
The irony stings. We stand there, two people who tried to save each other by cutting away the thing holding us together.
The bond begins to shift again. It reacts to the full weight of shared fear, shared confession, shared betrayal. Heat spikes through my chest without warning. Zeidan inhales sharply at the same instant.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
The bond does not hum this time. It erupts.
A surge of raw, unfiltered power explodes outward from the space between us, knocking both of us backward. The impact slams me to my knees, palms hitting stone. Zeidan drops opposite me, breath punched from his lungs.
The air is incandescent with light and shadow woven together, gold and silver spiraling violently around us. It is fusing. The force presses down until I can barely lift my head.
Across the glow, I meet his eyes. And I see fear. Not of each other. Of what we have become.
The chamber walls tremble as the bond flares brighter still, uncontainable and absolute. And then the power surges higher. Much higher. As if something beyond us just answered.
The force presses down until my bones feel too fragile to hold it.
Magic tears through my veins, overwhelming, too vast to contain.
Across the blaze of power, I see Zeidan’s silhouette through the light, eyes black, jaw clenched, fighting for control.
Not of me. Of himself. Of what this is becoming.
The surge climbs higher, reaching for something beyond us, something ancient and watching. If it locks into that resonance fully, I don’t know what it will make of us.
“Zeidan!” I shout, though I am not sure he can hear me through the roar.
The bond answers instead, tightening, pulling, dragging us toward the center of it.
I stop resisting. I crawl toward him.
The power lashes as I move, scraping over skin and bone, but I force myself forward until I can reach him. His magic is flaring in defense, instinctively shielding, bracing for attack.
I grab his face with both hands. He freezes. For one suspended second, we stare at each other in the heart of the storm.
Then I kiss him.
I pour everything into it, fear, anger, apology, want. My mouth crashes against his, desperate and grounding, as if I can anchor the magic through contact alone.
The effect is immediate. The spiraling light shudders.
His hands come to my waist on instinct, gripping hard enough to steady me.
The bond, wild and flaring, hesitates, then collapses inward, condensing instead of expanding.
The storm folds into heat, into proximity, into the tight space between our bodies.
The roar dulls. The chamber stops shaking. Our magic sinks back under our skin in ragged pulses. When I finally pull away, I am shaking.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, breath breaking against his mouth. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t want to lose you. I just… I needed to know I could stand without you if I had to.”
His hands are still on me. But they are no longer holding. They are rigid and controlled. His expression is not fury now. It is something worse.
“You didn’t want to lose me,” he says quietly. “So you tried to cut the bond.”
The words are not sharp. They are steady. And that steadiness devastates me.
“I was scared,” I say. “You were pulling away. Velcryn is circling. My council doubts me. I thought if I weakened it…if I proved I wasn’t dependent…”
“You think this is about dependence?” His voice lowers, not rising, not breaking. “You think I would measure you by how little you need me?”
“That’s not what I…”
“You tried to dismantle something I chose,” he says.
Chosen. The word lands hard.
“I stopped fighting it,” he continues, his gaze locked on mine. “I stopped calculating outcomes. I let myself build around it. Around you.”
My chest tightens.
“And you decided, alone, that it was too much.”
“I was trying to protect us.”
“So was I.”
Silence fills the space where the storm had been. The bond is still there. Still strong. But it feels… raw. Tender. Like skin burned and newly healed. He steps back.
“I cannot fight Velcryn,” he says quietly, “and fight you at the same time.”
“That’s not what this is,” I breathe.
“It is exactly what this is.”
His eyes soften, but in hurt. I hurted him.
“You don’t trust it,” he says. “And you don’t trust me with it.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then why did you try to sever it without telling me?”
I don’t have an answer that doesn’t sound like fear. He sees that, and something in him closes.
“I need distance,” he says finally.
The words feel like ice sliding beneath my ribs.
“No,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
The bond flickers uneasily as he moves toward the door.
“I will not be cut away like a strategic liability,” he says without turning back. “Not by Velcryn. Not by you.”
The door opens with a sharp pulse of magic.
“Zeidan—”
He doesn’t wait. The door shuts behind him.