26. Chapter 26 #2
"Is that a fact? Or a belief?" Thaleos let the question hang for a moment. "If you attempt to balance this bond using only the magic you know—the magic of brands and limits—you will shatter before you stabilize. So I'll ask again: how deep does your power go?"
"Then what do you suggest?" Eryndor ground out.
Thaleos's lips curved. Almost a smile. "Tell me, Crownforged. What do you believe your Mark is?"
"A gift. A power granted at birth."
"And you?" His gaze found me. "What do you believe your Marks are, Dualborn?"
I hesitated. I'd never questioned it. The Marks were... the Marks. The thing that made us what we were. The source of everything we could do.
"The same," I admitted. "Power. Ability. The thing that defines what magic we can use."
"And there is the trap." He spread his thin hands. "The King's greatest lie, swallowed by the entire realm. You believe Marks are magic. You believe without the brand, you would have nothing."
"That's not—" Eryndor started.
Rhedya cut him off. "It is exactly what you believe.
What everyone outside these borders believes.
" Her voice was hard. "The soul fracture that created the Mark system didn't give your ancestors power.
It narrowed them. Before the Veil cracked, fae could access a full spectrum of magic.
The Marks are blinders. They focus you on one frequency and block out everything else. "
I stared at her. "That's not possible."
"It is truth." Veyla's voice was gentle. "The mainland has forgotten. They think the Mark is the door to magic, but you are the door. The brand is just the single room they shoved you into and locked the rest away."
She looked between me and Eryndor, her expression grave.
"Tomorrow, at first light, you begin the trainings of the Ancestral Way. You must learn to wield power without the crutch of a Mark—to access the full spectrum of what you are, not just the sliver the brands allow. Only then will you have the control needed to stabilize the tether."
"And if we can't?" I asked, my voice tight. "We don't have years to learn a forgotten magic. We barely have days."
"You don't have days." Rhedya uncrossed her arms for the first time. "You have hours."
The air in the garden dropped ten degrees.
"The instability is accelerating," she continued. "If you fail to master the spectrum immediately, the training itself will accelerate the collapse."
I looked at Eryndor. He was listening with the terrifying stillness of a soldier receiving suicide orders.
"And eventually," Thaleos said quietly, "the bond will tear itself apart trying to hold on—taking pieces of both of you with it."
I shot up.
The panic didn't come from fear of death. It came from the certainty of failure. Master a forgotten magic in hours? I couldn't even walk six feet without almost killing him. They were asking me to perform a miracle, and I was fresh out. I was the Rupture. I broke things.
And if I tried this training, I would break him too.
I paced away from Eryndor until the tether snapped taut and held me in place.
"There has to be another way."
"Child—"
"I broke the Veil." The words came out flat.
Dead. "I tore a hole in reality and let the Void start eating the world.
Do you not see the pattern? I am not a person.
I am a rupture. And now you're telling me I'm trapped?
That I'm going to either kill him slowly by staying bound, or kill him quickly by trying to leave? "
"Amaria." Eryndor's voice behind me.
I didn't turn around.
"Then don't try to save us both," I said. "Save him."
I looked at Veyla, my voice steadying.
"You said the backlash would kill us? That's assuming we share the blow. So don't. Anchor him. Shield him. And funnel the break into me. Let me be the dam that breaks. I don't care if it destroys me—I'm already broken. Just make sure he walks away whole."
It was the cleanest answer. I'd always been good at finding the cleanest answer.
"This is not a negotiation."
Eryndor's voice had changed. Gone cold and formal in a way I'd never heard before—a voice that expected to be obeyed.
He stepped forward, putting himself between me and the bond-weavers.
"If the choice is her life or mine," he said, "the decision is already made. Sever it. But you will direct the blow at me."
I spun on him. "You don't get to command me."
"And you don't get to sacrifice yourself because you've decided you're expendable." He shot back.
"I'm not—"
"You are." His jaw was tight. "You're standing there offering to be unmade like your life is a currency you can spend. Like your existence is a debt that needs paying." Eryndor growled.
I could feel the heat rising as my fury built. "I refuse to be the reason you—"
"The reason I what? Finally do something useful? Finally fix one of the things I broke?" Eryndor snapped.
"You didn't break me!" I shouted.
The words echoed off the garden walls.
We were standing too close now. Toe to toe. I could feel his breath, could see the pulse jumping in his throat.
The tether flared.
Not pain this time. Something worse.
Heat.
It rolled through me like a wave—that grating, unwanted warmth that came when we stopped fighting the bond. My breath caught. My skin flushed. I watched Eryndor's pupils dilate, watched his careful composure crack as the same sensation hit him.
The magic wanted us closer. The magic was pulling us together even as we tried to tear each other apart.
"Look at you."
Veyla's voice cut through the haze. I stepped back—or tried to. My body didn't want to cooperate.
"You are already weaving together," she continued. "Every moment of high emotion, the bond tightens. Every touch, every argument, every flash of feeling—you are binding more closely whether you wish it or not. To fight this is madness"
Rhedya nodded. "The choice is not whether to be bound. You are bound. The choice is whether to let the bond tear you apart from the inside, or learn to live within it."
I looked at Eryndor.
He looked at me.
And I saw it in his eyes—the same trapped desperation I felt. The same horror of being caged. We had come here for freedom, for severance, for the clean cut that would let us walk away from hurting each other.
Instead, we'd learned the cage was permanent.
The garden held its silence. The fountain burbled. The birds had stopped singing.
Veyla stepped up to me quietly and held my hands in hers.
"The choice is yours—"
The doors of the great hall banged open.
Music exploded into the garden.
And Maxx burst through, arms thrown wide, drink sloshing down his chest.
"GOOD NEWS, SObrIETY IS NOW OPTIONAL—oh."
He glanced between us.
"Reading the room. Wishing I hadn't."
Eryndor let a long controlled breath out his nose and closed his eyes.
"Right. Well." He took a long swig of his drink. "The Liraethians broke out the good wine—the stuff that makes you forget your name, not just your trauma. Come on. Your adoring public awaits."
He turned and sauntered off, leaving the doors wide open behind him. Music and firelight spilled into the garden.
I stared at the empty doorway. Then at Eryndor.
"We don't tell them."
"We don't tell them," he agreed.
We stepped through the doors together.
"Remember," Veyla's voice followed us out. "First light. Here. Don’t be late."