Chapter 40 #3
“You think I give a fuck about a prophecy whispered in ancient texts?”
“Look at me,” she said, black claws erupting from her fingertips, eyes flaming silver, her chest heaving as she fought back the transformation. “I’m one of them. You can’t deny that truth.”
The frostfire in my veins flared, and I had to hold back my magic. “Just because you have shifter magic in your blood doesn’t mean you’re one of them. That somehow you belong to his people. To him.”
“Doesn’t it?”
My silence betrayed the fear, the anger ripping me apart at the seams.
“Tell me, how am I supposed to go back home and pretend nothing’s changed?
What if your mother finds out magic has awakened in me?
Do you understand what she could do to me?
My family? Everything I’ve ever wanted in life was to serve Skadgard…
to follow in my father’s footsteps. Now the whole world is slipping through my fingers, and I don’t know how to piece it together again. ”
Sylvi sank to the floor, desperation clinging to every fiber of her body. I rushed to cradle her in my arms and rocked her against me, pressing my lips to her hair. “I’m not letting that fucking shifter prince come near you. No one is taking you from your home. Or from me.”
Her body sagged against mine, her breaths ghosting against my throat. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when you tried to tell me,” she whispered.
I smoothed my thumb across her cheek and chuckled softly. “Trust me. I know how insane I sounded. I wouldn’t have believed me, either.”
She gently pushed away from my arms and stood, turning toward a floor-length mirror in the corner of the room, her gaze avoiding mine as she wrapped her arms around her body.
Sylvi had always been my rock, a foundation that never cracked. Fuck, she was the strongest person I knew. The mountain that always tempered the storm. To see her so broken, so forlorn, she felt oceans away when she was only feet from me…
My heart hammered like a violent squall. “Something else troubles you, Syl. And it’s got nothing to do with that prince or his people’s prophecy. You know you can tell me anything, right? I’m here for you, elskan.”
Finally meeting my gaze in the mirror, she asked, “What do you know about mating bonds?”
I blinked, an icy claw of awareness scaling down my spine, her words hauling me back to the attack at the camp, when I’d conjured the dreki and felt that strange sensation deep in my heart.
My soul. “When I studied the history of the dreki riders, I read of the hímdreki’s sacred mating bonds.
According to the manuscripts, pairs bond for life, souls so entwined that when one dies, the other follows.
Dreki whose hearts simply stop beating when their mates perish in battle. ”
Her eyes sharpened in the mirror. “And among our kind?”
My brows pinched. “I’ve only ever found whispers of it in old poems and ballads. Nothing to prove it’s real for our people.”
“Do you believe such bonds could exist amongst the fae?” Her voice was so weak, it made my chest ache.
I walked closer, holding her silver-flecked gaze as though she might vanish if I blinked. “What are you really asking me, Syl?”
She swallowed hard. “What if that night in the maze, when we first met… What if it wasn’t chance?”
I inhaled deeply. “You mean fate?”
She swallowed thickly. “Not just fate, Jack. What if it was Selvarg’s hand? What if fae mating bonds are real, and we weren’t destined to just become friends but…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she wanted to say—the words that ached to slip from her lips because they ached to slip from mine, too.
Unable to stay back any longer, I wrapped my arms around her, tugging her close to my chest, pressing my nose to her hair, inhaling her scent.
“From the moment you stepped into that maze, I knew you were meant to be in my life, Sylvi. There is no me without you. Do you understand? I don’t need a goddess or a prophecy to tell me what my soul already knows. ”
My voice deepened as our eyes locked in the reflection.
“You and I…we are two halves of one whole. If that means we’re bonded mates, then so be it.
But please don’t think it true because a witch told you.
Believe it’s true because, from the moment I first saw you, that tether that vibrates between us has pulled me closer to you each day, feral and unforgiving. Alive with its own pulse.”
My chest heaved, the words tearing free, my spirit feeling relief at finally being able to tell her everything I’ve had to hold back all these years.
“Gods, Sylvi. Don’t you know I love you?
I love you with every fucking breath, every scar, every heartbeat.
With every fiber of my soul. You are the marrow of my bones, the blood in my veins.
And if you were to ever leave this world, my heart would stop beating the moment yours did. ”
Her lips trembled. “Jack…”
I shook my head. “No more doubts, elskan. If proof is what you need, then let me prove it to you.”