Chapter 41
“What now?” It was Leif’s voice at my ear, but it was a tone I didn’t recognize—one filled with malice. I gulped.
This wasn’t going to end well.
Otho took a step forward, and the arm around my neck pulled me back, causing me to stumble.
I was still trying to figure out what had happened, why Leif’s knife was at my neck when I had killed the person he was trying to kill, when Otho spoke.
“I am only getting the emblem. He had no offspring and no partner.”
The direction I was pulled in changed, and I nearly blacked out as the pressure at my neck increased. We were across the room then, our positions reversed as Leif stood in front of the body of what was once his father.
I watched as Otho pulled a gold pin off of Adis uniform, placing it on his own lapel. He was now the viscount of Ralheim.
“I will take the place of my father.” Though his voice was firm, his arm trembled, and I knew he couldn’t reach for the emblem and keep me captive.
I watched Otho’s throat bob. “She’s not your enemy.”
The laugh that bubbled from his chest bordered on demonic. “Isn’t she?”
Something had changed. Something I hadn’t counted on when I had killed Adis.
“Is that why my father’s palace was attacked and only she disappeared?”
I wanted to snap that Ena had too, but I knew even moving my neck the small bit it took to speak would dig my skin into the blade of the knife.
“She fights only for herself,” Otho tried, and if it weren’t for the way he swallowed hard for a second time, I almost would have bought it. What he had feared was coming true: Leif was using me against him. My stomach soured.
“Unfortunately for you, Runa read me the empathetic abilities. I know you are telling a lie.”
I pressed my eyes closed, my thoughts swirling. This was so much worse than I had thought. My mind went into calculation mode, but it was too late.
“I will leave peacefully.” My heart stuttered at Leif’s words, and I reached for my own empathetic abilities to give myself more of an edge. “On one condition.”
I wasn’t the only one in the room holding my breath waiting to hear Leif’s condition. Otho’s jaw shifted, he was gritting his teeth as Askel’s eyes darted between all of us, obviously trying to figure out what he was missing.
I could barely breathe. Had I just found my true weighted, only to lose him so soon?
“I will leave peacefully, as long as Runa agrees to bind herself to me.”
“Or . . . ?” Otho pressed.
“I kill her, and the battle continues. May the best man win.”
The hope flickering in my chest snuffed out.
Bindings were just as sacred as marriages to the Seid.
I hadn’t thought to ask how bindings affected weighted couples, but I knew from watching my own parent’s relationship that this was serious.
If I bound myself to Leif, there was a possibility I would never be able to escape.
I swallowed, but kept my gaze on Otho, waiting for him to indicate what I should do. Askel bit his lip, the nervousness rolling off him piqued.
“It’s her decision.” The words broke in the middle, betraying Otho’s attempt at a neutral position.
“Well?” Leif hissed in my ear.
I couldn’t believe this was the man I had once thought was mine. The first man to make my heart flutter, the one who had made me realize there was more to the world than waiting for someone to rescue me.
Things had changed.
Irrevocably.
While I may have once been willing to forgive Leif, I knew now that I never would.
Regardless, I knew what I had to do—what would save both Otho and Collum, if she was even still alive.
“I’ll do it; I’ll bind myself to you.” The knife at my neck loosened a hair. “But I have a condition too.” I willed my heart to calm itself.
“Go on,” Leif urged.
“I want Friar, the healer, to come with me.” I hoped that Leif, like me, was in the dark on who she really was to Otho.
“How much for the healer?” Leif asked Otho, and I watched his eyes flicker, as he aligned himself with my plan.
“I’ll need coin to replace her.”
“Name your price.” Leif’s voice was confident, likely from the fact he had been the son of a viscount this entire time. A fact that still made me feel like an idiot.
They tossed numbers back and forth across the room over my head, but Otho’s gaze didn’t stray from mine, he was communicating with me silently, but the message was clear.
He would come for me.
I bobbed my head slightly, hopefully indicating to him that it was exactly what I wanted.
A number was decided, and the air in the room shifted.
“Now, fetch a binder.”
I nearly choked with the realization that he planned to bind us right here, right now.
Otho was visibly pale. “There is no known Seid binder in Ralheim.”
“Wrong.” I could almost hear the smirk in his words. “Fetch Signa.”
My heart chilled at the name of the Seid matron, both because of her eerie energy and because she called it like it was. Meaning there would be no hiding from her. Askel ducked through the door, disappearing from sight.
I was regretting agreeing to Leif’s demands already. Maybe death would be kinder.
Even as that thought floated through my mind, I realized I no longer wished to die.
Despite the fact that I was being forced to bind myself to a man I didn’t love, my life now held so much promise .
. . so much potential that I couldn’t bear to part myself from it.
Gone was the scared and reclusive Runa raised to walk in her brother’s shadow.
Now, I was a serpent in my own right, coiling, waiting for the right time to strike.
The right time to help change the outcome of the war.
For the Seid.
It was chilling, to stand in a room with the two men I cared for, one holding a knife to my throat, the other calculating how to get us out of the war neither of us asked for.
“Can I . . .” I cleared my throat and tried again. “Can I change?” I motioned to my bloody shift.
Leif paused, but the knife didn’t leave my throat. “Bring Friar, and have her bring a dress for Runa.”
Otho’s gaze flickered to the door—he was hesitant to leave me. But I knew Friar couldn’t be far. Appearing to realize the same thing, he walked the few steps to the doorway, calling down the hall for his sister.
It didn’t take long for her to appear, her face immediately twisting in horror at the sight before her. Before she could say anything, toppling the carefully crafted lie Otho and I were weaving, he spoke.
“Fetch a binding dress for Runa. Leif wishes to bind her right now. Askel is fetching Signa. In return, he will leave peacefully.”
I watched Friar’s face empty of blood in the same way Otho’s had as the gravity of the situation sunk in. She nodded, then she was gone.
Time crawled, Leif maintaining the knife at my throat, despite Otho’s pleading gaze.
Then, Friar was back, a red dress gripped in her hands. “I’ll take her to change.”
“No,” Leif snapped as she took a step forward. “You will help her change right here.”
It was my turn to pale. Though everyone in this room had seen me at least partially in the nude, it wasn’t easy to overcome the desire to hide my body in an instant.
Friar looked to Otho. “But it’s hardly appropriate—”
“I don’t care,” Leif snapped, and in that instant, I knew he knew more about Otho and I than he was letting on. “You’ll dress her right here, with my knife at her throat. One wrong move, and she’s dead.”
I don’t know if it was just a delayed reaction to everything that had happened in the last few moments, or the venom in his voice, but my limbs commenced trembling.
“Okay,” Friar agreed, stepping forward to hold out the dress. “I’ll need to remove her shift—”
“Cut it off of her.” Leif’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion.
“Me? But I don’t have—”
“Not you,” the man who was about to become the magical equivalent of my husband, snapped. “Him.” He inclined his head to Otho.
And in that moment, I knew. I knew that Leif had somehow found out what Otho meant to me, and he was going to do everything in his power to humiliate me before forcing me to become his bound.
Otho, to his credit, did his best to hide his feelings as he approached, his knife clutched in his fist. But I could see the hint of moisture gathering in his eyes, feel his pain as if it were my own.
He really was my weighted.
“It’s fine,” I whispered as he kneeled on the floor at my feet in the same way he had a season before, to help me when I was beaten. “I want this.” It wasn’t a lie, not really. I wanted Otho to see me, all of me. This wasn’t the ideal situation, but I knew we would overcome this. We had to.
In slow movements, he dug the knife into the fabric, careful to pull the shift away from my body before the knife slipped through it. He kept his eyes on mine the entire time, and we had another one of the silent conversations that came with ease between us.
He wasn’t going to look. He would wait—wait until this was just between the two of us.
The cold air prickling my skin was the only indication that I was naked, and Friar was already there, pulling underpants up my legs, then helping me step into the dress. There was no way for her to add a slip, so I went without, and she moved as quickly as possible to lace up the stays at my back.
“Tighter,” Leif hissed.
“No.” Friar’s response made me flinch. “She nearly drowned a few days ago, her lungs and ribs are still healing.”
“Fine.”
I was surprised that he agreed, but then again, Friar had made a good point. It was a small win.
The sound of hoofbeats reached my ears, and then Signa was there. She stepped inside the room, Askel guiding her by the elbow. Either he had already briefed her, or she knew even more than I did, because she was completely silent as she made her way across the room.
“I heard I am here to perform a binding ceremony?”
“Yes.” Leif held out a rolled-up scroll.
A chill weaved it’s way down my back. He had been planning this. Enough to pack the scroll.
Signa didn’t move to take it, the cloudiness in her eyes making it obvious to me, but Leif still tried a second time.
“She’s blind,” I breathed.
The knife lowered a hair. “Oh.”
I smirked at the embarrassment that flowed from him.
“It’s okay, boy, I know the words. Knife?” Signa held out her hand, palm up.
Otho cleaned a knife on his pants before pressing it into the matron’s hand. It wasn’t until she was moving closer that I recognized it. It was the one he had given me before I’d headed into Malheim to rescue Collum.
“You first, boy.” Signa motioned for his hand, and before I could blink, he had offered it, and she had sliced through the fleshy part, blood dripping onto the stone tiles.
She held out her hand again, and I offered mine without her asking. The slice was quick, clean, and surprisingly painless for the blood that welled.
“I, Signa, ask that the power of the earth bind these two beings . . .” She paused. “Leif Hansen and Runa . . .”
“Wormald,” I volunteered.
One of her eyebrows raised, but she continued on, not questioning it. “Runa Wormald, until the earth claims them once more. Do you both agree you are entering this binding of your own free will?”
“Yes.” Leif didn’t hesitate.
I looked at Otho, my heart breaking as I took in his hunched shoulders and downturned mouth. “Yes.”
“Then put your hands together, and it will be done.”
Leif didn’t hesitate, his cut hand colliding with mine, the blood mixing before dripping down to the tiles.
I didn’t know much about the Seid binding ceremony, but I felt nothing as our hands remained pressed together. I had thought I would feel something when I bound myself to another, and it saddened me that I didn’t, even if it was to a man I now hated.
“It’s done,” Signa announced before turning back toward Askel. “Now, take me back.”
They weren’t even out of the room when Leif backed us toward the door, the knife still at my throat.
“You got what you wanted, now let me walk normally,” I insisted.
“Not a chance,” he seethed.
That’s when the tears flowed. The reality that I would be spending the rest of my days with this horrible excuse for a man settling in my bones.
But even as the tears tracked down my face, I kept my gaze fixed on Otho, who watched us go, fire in his gaze.
This wasn’t over.
To be continued . . .