17. Chapter 17
AMARIA
Every muscle in my body ached. Three hours of drills. Three hours of sparring while the bond hummed constant static in my chest. By the end, my arms shook when I lifted them. My legs had turned to wet sand.
A group of Dragonborn passed us, exiting from a path carved into the rock. Wet hair. Loose shoulders. One of them groaned something about the hot springs being exactly what he needed.
I glanced at Eryndor. Sweat-soaked. Bruised. Dark circles that matched mine.
Neither of us had slept well in days.
We didn't discuss it. Just followed the steam.
The path wound through a narrow canyon, the air growing heavy with the scent of crushed pine and sulfur as we descended. We passed a few more stragglers. Damp tunics. Flushed skin. Walking like they didn't have a single care left in the world.
The spring opened before us. A natural pool carved into the black rock, forty feet across. Steam curled off the surface, catching the late afternoon light. The water was a deep, mineral blue, almost glowing against the dark stone.
A handful of Dragonborn soaked quietly along the edges, their heads tipped back against the dark rock and eyes closed.
Eryndor and I exchanged a look.
Opposite ends.
I picked the far left. He took the far right. Maximum distance. The length of the pool between us.
I stripped quickly and lowered myself in. Heat enveloped me. Instant. Bone-deep. I groaned, sinking all the way to my collarbone, letting the heavy, mineral-rich water swallow the ache in my muscles.
On the far side of the pool, Eryndor started stripping off his ruined leathers.
I told myself to look away. To close my eyes and just breathe, not to torture myself with the view.
I didn't. I couldn’t. I was glued to the sight of him stripping down piece by piece, revealing more and more of his taut body.
He hooked his thumbs in his waistband, pulling the fabric down, the dim light flickering off that perfect V.
His cock was already straining against the material, thick and pushing over the top.
My mouth watered, and I slowly dragged my eyes up to his.
He was staring right at me. I bit my lip and dropped my gaze back down.
He let the pants drop all the way to the floor, and I whimpered at the sight of him, exposed and standing at full attention. Hard and throbbing, and I could do nothing but ache for it from a distance.
He waded into the water and sank into the heat with a ragged sigh, shooting me a dark smirk as he dragged a wet hand through his hair.
Then Eryndor fully submerged, and the Marks ignited.
Not the slow burn I'd grown used to for this kind of distance. It was fiercer. Electric. A current running through the water, connecting us across forty feet.
I gasped.
Eryndor's head snapped up. His eyes found mine through the steam—and he clenched his jaw. Fighting it. Refusing to let the sensation show on his face even as it flooded through us both.
I could feel him. Not just the pull. Him. The heat soaking into his muscles. The ache in his shoulders slowly releasing. The heat building in his core.
I shifted against the stone edge.
Eryndor inhaled sharply.
He stretched his shoulders, working out a knot.
My fingers dug into the rock.
"What..." The word barely made it out.
"The water." He spoke through gritted teeth. "It's acting like a conduit for our Marks. I can feel—" He stopped and ground his teeth together. His knuckles went white against the stone edge.
Everything. He could feel everything.
A Dragonborn on the east side of the pool frowned.
"Is it getting hotter?" It was. Temperature climbing—slowly at first, then faster. Steam billowing thicker.
Our Marks pulsed between us. Hungry. Demanding.
I tried to stay still. Tried not to move, not to feel, not to send any sensation through the water to him.
Impossible.
Every breath I took, he felt. Every shift of my weight. The water lapping against my breasts. The heat sinking into my skin.
Then a current started. Subtle at first. A drift in the water that shouldn't exist—the pool was still, no inlet, no outlet. But a current was tugging at us. Drawing the water toward the center.
Drawing us toward the center.
"Too hot." A warrior hauled herself out, shaking her head. "Something's off."
Another followed. Then another.
Within minutes, the pool had emptied. Just me and Eryndor, on opposite sides of a spring that was starting to bubble.
"We should get out." My voice didn't sound like mine.
"Yes."
Neither of us moved.
The current strengthened. I was sliding along the stone edge despite my grip. My body wasn't listening anymore. The desire to bond had overridden everything—survival instinct, common sense, and the knowledge that this water would cook us alive.
My Marks wanted him. Wanted completion. And they were going to drag me there whether I agreed or not.
This is what the prophecy wants, I realized. This is what it's always wanted.
Not just union. Annihilation. The Marks didn't care if we survived the completion—they only cared that we bonded. My body was a weapon pointed at my own chest, and every nerve ending was pulling the trigger.
Eryndor was drifting too. I could see the war in his body—every muscle locked, fingers digging into the stone hard enough to draw blood, his whole frame trembling with the effort of resistance. He was fighting harder than I'd ever seen him fight anything. He was still losing.
Twenty feet between us.
Fifteen.
The water churned. Steam rose in thick columns, obscuring everything beyond the pool.
Ten feet.
The heat was unbearable now. My skin had gone red. My lungs burned with every breath.
Five feet.
Three.
Eryndor's face swam into view through the steam. Flushed. Desperate. His hand reached toward me—or maybe my hand reached toward him—I couldn't tell anymore whose body was doing what.
Two feet.
Our fingers stretched through the churning water—
Hands clamped around my arms and yanked.
I came out of the pool so fast the world blurred. Stone scraped my back. Cold air hit my scalded skin. I screamed—at the separation, at the cold, at the empty bond howling in my chest.
Then the pool exploded.
A geyser of steam shot toward the sky. Boiling water sprayed across the rocks. The sound was like a dragon's roar, echoing off the canyon walls.
I lay on the stone, gasping, shaking, skin burning. Ten feet away, Eryndor was sprawled on the opposite side, chest heaving, looking as wrecked as I felt.
The Dragonborn who'd pulled me out stood between us. Arms crossed. Unimpressed.
"You idiots." She shook her head slowly. "Water amplifies soul-bonds. Everyone knows that."
I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe.
Eryndor pushed himself upright. His arms shook but held. "How—" The word came out raw. Furious. At himself more than anyone. "How were we supposed to know?"
"Know?" The warrior raised an eyebrow. "Maybe by asking before you jumped into a thermal pool with your half-bonded mate?"
Silence.
The steam settled. The pool stopped churning. My skin throbbed where the water had nearly boiled it.
The warrior looked between us and her expression softened.
"Come with me. There's something that might help."
Eryndor was already on his feet. Unsteady, scalded, still breathing hard—but standing. Pulling himself back together through sheer will. He caught my eye across the ruined pool. We’re okay. We survived. Stay with me. I nodded.
I dragged my clothes back on with wet hands, gathered my weapons into my arms instead of belting them on, and hurried after them.
We followed the warrior into the dark.
We followed her—unsteady, our skin still humming with the ghost of the current—back past the training grounds.
Warriors stopped to stare. I didn't blame them. We were flushed an angry, violent red from the neck down, steaming in the cold air, and wrapped in whatever damp leathers we’d managed to snatch off the rocks.
We looked exactly like what we were: two people who had nearly just been boiled alive.
She led us to a small armory carved into the cliff face. Inside, racks of armor lined the walls—but not the standard scale-cloth and leather. Dark metal, etched with deep, brutal runes that made the air in the tiny room feel heavy and thick with static.
"Warded armor." She pulled two chest pieces from a rack. "We use them for sparring when abilities get out of control. They dampen magical interference."
I stared at the metal. "And it works on... this?" I gestured between me and Eryndor. This didn't begin to cover it.
"It works on everything." She held one out to me. "Won't fix whatever's broken between you. But it might let you function without nearly killing yourselves constantly."
I accepted the chest piece, letting the heavy, cool metal sink into my burned palms. I turned it over, tracing the etched patterns with my thumb. Such a small thing. Such an ordinary-looking solution to a problem that had been devouring us from the inside out.
Eryndor took his, gripping the edges to turn it over. He assessed the dark metal with the exact same lethal focus he gave a new sword before battle—weighing whether to trust it.
We'd been running on fumes and fear for so long. The idea that something could help—actually help—felt foreign. Dangerous to believe.
"Well?" She raised an expectant eyebrow. "Put them on. Let's see if you can share a room without causing a natural disaster."
I pulled the armor over my head.
The metal settled against my chest—and the screaming stopped. I took a breath. A real breath. The first one in days that didn't feel like fighting.
Across the armory, Eryndor's eyes met mine. He'd gone still—chest piece in place, hands frozen at his sides.
He felt it too.
"Oh," I breathed.
The warrior watched us with an inscrutable expression. "Better?"
Better. Such a small word for what this was.
I could think. I could stand ten feet from him and not feel like I was being torn apart. I could look at him without my body screaming closer closer closer until I wanted to claw out of my own skin.
"Yes," Eryndor said roughly. "Better."
We stood there—just breathing—while the armor held back the flood.