Chapter 51 Tether & Trust
Chapter fifty-one
Tether my blood, my life force, into his.
“This is your blood bond,” Titania murmured. “It allows you to share magyk, and to sense when the other is hurt, or in danger.” She moved her hand up and the first thread vanished, but another appeared. “This…is called a Tether…”
It was pale and luminescent, like the moon itself had been unraveled and strung between us. Loose tendrils of silvery light danced up and down its length as it flowed lazily back and forth, an undulating tide of magyk.
I angled my body to see it better and asked, “What is it?”
“A Tether can sometimes be created alongside a blood bond,” Oberon said, “when there are…strong, mutual feelings of devotion…” He swallowed and shook his head, apparently unwilling to continue, so Titania spoke instead.
“When a blood bond is made, you share everything for a moment. Your magyk, your life, your heart, everything. And so, if two souls are already bound through choice…through love, a Tether will form too. A blood bond affects magyk gifts only, but a Tether…binds those two souls. You feel everything the other feels. Every emotion, every spark, every joy, but also every sorrow. And physical separation, distance between you, becomes painful…even agonizing.”
Oberon sighed. “Blood bonds are rare. Tethers, even more so, but when they are created, it is usually in place of…wedding vows.”
My heart crawled up into my throat as I remembered the threaded-together sensation, and the terrible, unspooling ache I’d felt upon arriving at the Bower earlier.
I could hardly even lift my gaze to Devil’s face again, because I did not want to see what was there.
I did not want to see that he had known and not told me, did not want to bear the terrible truth that I might have given myself, bound myself, to someone who so easily fed me mistruths.
When I finally gathered the courage to look up, he was watching me carefully, eyes flickering around my face as if waiting to see my reaction.
“Tell me…you didn’t know,” I whispered. “Please, Devil…” He grimaced and dropped his gaze, but I felt the shredding, rending pain in my own heart, and I could not stand it. This time, I screamed, “Tell me you did not know!”
A shield of shadows, studded with his light, flew from my hands and struck him hard in the chest. He staggered backwards into the trunk of the weeping willow and slid to the ground with a groan.
Fueled by the anger in my new power, and the disbelief of his betrayal, I stalked forward, black flames licking around my hands and arms. Devil put a hand to his head, then looked up at me with wide eyes.
“May, stop!” he cried, scrambling to his feet and reaching out, hands alight with his own magyk. “Of course, I knew about the Tether! I did not want you to find out this way!”
I backed him up against the tree and let my flames scorch the ground at his feet. “Please…please lie to me…” I begged. “Please tell me you didn’t do this...”
Slowly, gently, he took my face between his hands. “I cannot lie to you…”
“But you did!” I slammed him against the willow again, hot, shameful, tears now seeping from my eyes.
He struggled as I called up a tangle of shadows to pin him in place.
“You did lie! You did not tell me what a Tether was, nor that one could form from our blood bond. That is a lie, by omission if nothing else. You tricked me!”
He looked horrified, and fought against the shadows, trying to reach for me again. “No! May, I wouldn’t, please! I did not think I needed to tell you!”
I gaped at him in shock and my magyk faltered. “You did not think…that I deserved a choice? In my own fucking life? My own gods-damned soul?”
“No! No!” Devil pleaded. “May, listen, please! If you did not feel anything for me, then the Tether would never have even formed. But it is only a manifestation of shared devotion! Of love! I thought, surely, if we did become Tethered, it would not matter, because we had already chosen each other! You chose me!”
“Would not matter…” I stopped mid-sentence to take a deep breath, for I was walking a razor’s edge between murder and insanity.
“Chosen or not, Devil…if you truly thought that being bound to you for all eternity, unable to leave your side without agonizing pain, would not matter to me, then you must be fucking mad…”
“Is that not what love is?!” he cried, desperation breaking his voice.
“Madness and agony? The torment of being away from each other? Please, May…tell me you feel the same…tell me I am not alone in this madness…” He looked almost close to tears, and I suddenly wondered if he could cry—if he could truly feel guilt, or the weight of his actions…
if he could even understand what he had taken from me.
“That is not love, Devil,” I whispered. “That is obsession, and delusion, and I should have known better than to trust a creature with no heart.”
I stumbled backwards, then realized that Oberon and Titania were still there and turned toward them.
Their faces were full of pity, but neither made a move to comfort me, and Oberon looked away when I met his eyes.
He had warned me once that Devil could never care for me, and I refused to listen.
Being with him felt so good, so real and raw and meant-to-be, but now I was seeing the full truth of my own blindness and idiocy.
Perhaps his actions had not been ill intended, perhaps he truly had not understood, but that did not change what he had done.
It did not change the fact that I had asked him what the price of the blood bond was, and instead of giving me a choice, he had found a way to lie, and bound us together.
His words from the day we’d gone to Locksley crept back into my mind: I am going to make you fall so utterly and absolutely in love with me that the Arden herself has no choice but to knit our souls together.
Clearly, it had been foolish to assume he was exaggerating, but perhaps it had been more foolish to allow myself to feel anything for him in the first place.
Only a moment too late, I realized that he could feel the pit of fury and despair opening up inside of me too, and I leaned against the edge of my mother’s tomb as he spoke in a quiet, rasping voice.
“You would not have taken it,” he said. “If I had offered you the blood bond, and told you what might happen, you would have left us all to the Rot rather than admit you might love me.”
“How dare you!” I shrieked, whirling around and slamming him back against the willow with my magyk. “How fucking dare you suggest I would put my pride above the lives of everyone in the Arden. You could have told me the truth and let me decide what price I was willing to pay!”
“The Arden had no time to haggle, and now, neither do Will and Tuck!” Devil snarled.
“I gave you the weapon you so desperately wanted, and I am its price, May. I am the thing you must suffer in order to save those you love, so now you must decide if your hardened heart can live with that, or if you will…rid yourself of me.”
“You…vile creature,” I whispered, releasing him from the shadowy bonds and turning my back again. We were alone in the grove now, and he dropped to his hands and knees in the dewy grass, head bowed.
“Please,” he muttered. “Please, May, I beg you to understand. I have loved you so much and for so long, I know nothing else…I am nothing else. When I finally saw affection in your eyes, when you touched me, when you asked for me, it planted a seed of arrogance, which I allowed to grow. And then a Tether formed, and I realized that you loved me, as I have loved you—”
Overwhelmed by a heartache that might have belonged to either of us, my voice cracked like spring ice on a river. “Oh, spare me your love, Devil! I want none of it! Your love has been nothing but a curse on us both. If it is madness, as you say, perhaps this pain will cure you…”
He straightened up slowly, sitting on his knees and tilting his head back, eyes red-rimmed and glassy. Looking half-drunk and half-mad, he just whispered, “Not even in death will I be cured of this love.”
His words weakened me. I wanted nothing more than to go back to the Hollow, to cloister ourselves in the branches of the oak tree, and forget everything else in the world.
The sound of his labored breathing twisted something up inside me, bringing simultaneous visions of violence and pleasure.
I wanted to hurt him, and kiss him. I wanted to scream and rage and make love, then fall asleep together, only to rage at him again when we woke up.
Somehow, even the knowledge that he could feel my despair through the Tether was not enough.
I dug into the ground with my magyk, searching for the Arden’s currents, but my power was too depleted for traveling.
Exhaustion had threaded itself into my bones, so I stumbled from the shade of the weeping willow and stood in the center of my mother’s grove.
Even as I pulled out my new wings, testing their strength, I prayed for the earth to tear open, swallow me up, and crush every last bone in my body.
That, at least, might be less tortuous than hearing the way he screamed my name when I took flight, leaving him behind.
MAYHEM & HER DEMON WILL RETURN IN BOOK II