Chapter 23 Zeidan
ZEIDAN
Ihave endured torture without screaming. I have stood in snow with a blade through my shoulder and not allowed my knees to bend. I have watched cities burn and chosen not to flinch.
None of that prepared me for what an ignored bond can do.
I lock myself inside the northern tower chamber and seal the wards personally. Not out of fear of attack. Out of fear of weakness. The room is sparse, stone, a narrow bed, a meditation dais carved with ancient Velcryn sigils meant to reinforce discipline and emotional compartmentalization.
I sit at its center.
I breathe. I empty my mind. And she is there.Not physically. But everywhere else.
The bond does not scream the way it did during the flare. It aches. A deep, constant pressure behind my ribs, like a second heartbeat slightly out of rhythm. I attempt to compress it, to fold it inward the way I have folded every inconvenient emotion since childhood. It does not fold. It resists.
Hours pass. Or minutes. Time becomes irrelevant when the only thing that exists is absence.
I see her when I close my eyes. Not memories. Projections.
Amelia standing in the grove again, but this time turning away from me deliberately. Amelia collapsing in that vision I witnessed. Amelia standing beside Vira while I am nowhere in sight.
The hallucinations begin subtly. A whisper of her voice. The brush of copper hair across my shoulder that is not there. The faint scent of wild cedar and crushed leaves. I open my eyes sharply. The chamber is empty and peaceful. My pulse is not.
Pain lances suddenly through the bond, sharp, disorienting. I brace my hands against the stone dais as nausea rolls through me. This is not emotional distress. This is physical. The bond is destabilizing. Because I am.
I force myself back into meditation posture, spine straight, hands resting on my knees. I lower my breathing deliberately. Inhale. Hold. Release.
Control is dominance. Control is survival. Except this time, control is isolation. The ache intensifies.
It is not simply that I miss her presence. It is that the bond now expects it. It was consummated. Fused. Aligned. What we built cannot be neatly compartmentalized without consequence.
By the second night, I am no longer sleeping.
When I do drift, I dream of her collapsing again, over and over, her body hitting stone while I stand immobile. The helplessness is worse than any wound I have taken.
On the third morning, I try to feed. The goblet remains untouched in my hand. The blood tastes like ash. I hurl it against the far wall. The sound echoes too loudly. For a moment, just a moment, I nearly tear the wards down.
I nearly go to her.
Instead, I reinforce them. That is when the pain spikes again, so violently my knees finally bend. I catch myself on the dais, breath coming sharp and uneven. This is what happens when you try to amputate something that has become vital. The bond pulses, wounded.
I hear the war horn outside. Velcryn warriors do not return quietly from war. Even when the battlefield is miles away.
I sense Ron before I see him.
The outer wards shift subtly at dusk, recognizing blood and rank. His power carries differently than mine, less restrained, more kinetic, like a drawn blade that prefers not to stay sheathed. By the time I hear his boots in the corridor, I already know he has ridden hard.
I remain seated on the meditation dais.
I do not call for him. The tower door opens without announcement.
Ron Valesh fills the threshold with the kind of presence that makes lesser men straighten instinctively.
Sandy-brown hair tied back at the nape of his neck, amber eyes bright with battle-light not yet dimmed, shoulders broad beneath travel-worn leathers marked by recent combat.
There is dust on his boots and dried blood at the seam of his bracer, someone else’s.
He takes in the room in one sweep. Then he looks at me.
“What,” he says slowly, “did you do?”
Not what happened. What did you do. I do not rise.
“You returned early, little brother.”
“I finished early,” he corrects. His gaze sharpens. “Answer the question.”
I hold his stare evenly. “I made a tactical adjustment while you were away.”
He exhales a disbelieving sound and steps fully into the chamber, shutting the door behind him with deliberate finality.
“The Matrons arrived in Nytheria. The sky-wards were visible from three provinces away,” he says. “The entire warrior guard is buzzing like you declared war. Then I hear you locked yourself in a tower and haven’t left in two days. But the most interesting part…my older brother is mated to a Purna.”
His eyes flick over me again, assessing.
“You look like you haven’t fed,” he adds flatly.
“I have.”
“On what? Stubbornness?”
Despite everything, something dangerously close to a smirk pulls at my mouth. It fades quickly.
“She attempted a severing rite,” I say.
Ron stills. Not shocked. Focused.
“She tried to cut the bond?” he asks carefully.
“She claims she was recalibrating it.”
“And what did you do?”
“I removed myself as a variable.”
He stares at me as though I have announced I intend to abdicate and join a monastery.
“You distanced yourself,” he says slowly.
“Yes.”
His jaw tightens. He walks closer, studying me not as a commander studies a superior, but as a brother studies someone he refuses to lose.
“You consummated the bond,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And then when she panicked under political pressure, you decided the solution was to disappear. Don't think I don't know everything. Rumors fly even to the battlefield.”
“I decided to protect her from Velcryn.”
Ron’s laugh is sharp and incredulous.
“You protected her,” he repeats. “By proving every Nytherian elder right about Vrakken emotional coldness.”
“That is not—”
“It is exactly that,” he cuts in. “You don’t get to pretend this is strategy. This is fear dressed up in doctrine.”
My temper sparks, but it does not ignite. Not with him.
“She is leverage,” I say evenly. “If the Matrons move against me—”
“They will move whether you hide in this tower or not,” Ron interrupts. “You think stripping your title becomes easier if you look unstable and mate-starved?”
The word lands harder than it should. I feel the bond twist painfully in my chest, as if in agreement. Ron’s expression shifts, some of the edge easing.
“I met her,” he says more quietly.
I say nothing.
“She doesn’t flinch when she talks about you,” he continues. “That alone is rare. And she doesn’t soften you. She sharpens you.”
His amber eyes lock onto mine.
“You’re different,” he says.
“Different is dangerous.”
“Different is alive.”
Silence settles between us. He steps closer, lowering his voice.
“You hunted a woman across half the realm because she betrayed you,” he says. “You carved yourself hollow afterward so it wouldn’t happen again. Fine. I understood that. We all did.”
His gaze hardens.
“But this isn’t that.”
I look away for the first time. Ron exhales slowly.
“You’re in pain,” he says. “Which means the bond is reacting. Which means she is too.”
The truth of it settles heavily.
“You don’t get to punish yourself by punishing her,” he finishes.
“I am not punishing—”
“You locked yourself away while she’s alone in a hostile council chamber.”
That hits. Because he is right.
“You are commander of the Vrakken guard,” I say quietly. “Not my conscience.”
“No,” he agrees. “I’m your brother.”
I look at him. He is not my stupid brave little brother anymore. He has grown up at the front. I even think he is gotten wiser than me. Of course, I would never tell him that. Ron studies me one final time.
“If you don’t go to her,” he says calmly, “this will tear you apart from the inside. And I will not watch that happen twice.”
Twice. He does not say Sabrina’s name. He doesn’t need to. For a long moment, I remain seated. Then I rise. The movement costs more pride than pain.
Ron steps aside, but not before clasping my forearm in a warrior’s grip.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, a faint smirk returning despite the tension, “I like her.”
I arch a brow.
“She terrifies half the elders without raising her voice,” he adds. “That earns respect.”
Against my will, something steadies inside me.
“And Zeidan,” he adds as I move toward the door, tone sharpening just slightly, “if you try to martyr yourself again, I will drag you back by the collar.”
A faint huff of breath escapes me. Almost a laugh.
“I would like to see you try.”
His grin is brief and fierce.
“Go,” he says.
And this time, I do. The corridor feels longer than it ever has. With every step toward her chambers, the bond tightens, not violently, but urgently. It no longer aches with distance. It strains with need.
I do not knock. The door yields beneath my hand. The room is dim. No lamps lit. No wards flaring. Just silence.
She is on the floor.
Curled on her side near the edge of the hearth rug, as if she meant to stand and never made it that far. Her hair spills across the stone. One hand is fisted in the fabric at her chest.
Her lips move.
“Zeidan…” she whispers, enough to undo me.
I cross the room in three strides and drop to my knees beside her. For one suspended second, I hesitate, fear is a colder enemy than any blade.
Then I reach for her.
The moment my hand closes around hers, the bond settles. The violent static that has clawed at my ribs for days smooths into something steady and whole. Her breathing evens beneath my palm. The tightness in my skull dissolves.
For the first time in days it's calm. I do not move my hand away.