Chapter 16 #5
“No, we...” Elloven looked at Taven but shook her head at herself.
No, she wouldn’t—couldn’t—let him speak for her.
“I understand you’ve graciously offered Lexsea’s help in breaking my Vinculo Sagrado with Jesstin.
I also understand you’d prefer him dead.
I’m asking you, as your niece, to spare him. ”
Estelar seemed surprised but not as much as he should have been. “You’ve misunderstood some of what you speak of.”
“What parts?”
“Ellie,” Taven said in caution.
“No.” Elloven stepped forward. “It’s my fault we’re bonded at all, and I’ll bear the blame, and the guilt, but his death would be a crime.
He’s done nothing wrong. Taven told me you’d kill him for it, but it’s unnecessary, as now we all know there’s a much cleaner and safer way to end this bond, even if you did fail to mention it before. ”
“If I did not mention it, it’s because very few can apply or remove bonds without harm coming to one or both involved. And Lexsea does as she pleases. I don’t pretend to have control over her.”
“Are you not her father? Her pretor?”
Estelar stared into the distance. A quick, subtle grin passed swiftly across his expression.
Taven laughed nervously. “Lexsea has agreed. It’s all that matters now.”
Elloven took another step forward. “Are we in agreement, Uncle?”
Estelar’s frown traveled between them. He sat at the edge of his desk, watching them. “And why does Taven think we’d kill Jesstin?”
“It’s... I only...” Taven sputtered. She’d never heard him so ruffled. “I was drawing conclusions from the matter, sir. He’s an outsider. I don’t reckon you allow many of them into Rivenholde, let alone suffer those to live who have bonded to one of us.”
“But as Elloven has said, it was not Jesstin’s choice.”
“The outcome is the same, though... Is it not? He is still...” Taven coughed, flicking a short, hard glance at Elloven. He was annoyed, annoyed she’d caught him in a lie. “I was only surmising.”
“Surmising.” Estelar’s scowl settled deeper into his features. “He is our cherished winner of the Labyrinth of Deception. He brought our Elloven to us—”
“Sir, I—”
“And I see no reason to punish him for it. Yet as Lexsea has agreed to assist, let us draw upon the brighter side of her fickle nature and see this done.”
Taven’s hands shot out to his sides with a frustrated exhalation.
She was missing something, and it was right there, so close she could grab it if only she could see it.
The esguards could be at the croft right now, as she wasted time with words. If he died, his blood would stain her conscience, and hers alone.
“Thank you, Uncle.” The words came out strangled. “Your diplomacy is appreciated.”
Estelar signaled an esguard, speaking in strange words that seemed like code. He took his seat again.
Taven’s relief changed the air in the room. He sighed and sank onto a chair.
Elloven stayed standing. Alertness grounded her, and she needed her wits, which had been scrambled, intentionally, by the men in the room with her.
A woman cannot stand without a man’s guiding hand went the grotesque rhyme, repeated mostly by other women.
Taven wanted her to believe Estelar would murder Jesstin.
Estelar wanted her to believe Taven was making wild suppositions.
Lies or not, she’d do whatever they asked to keep them from hurting Jesstin.
He might confuse that with weakness, but for all he’d been through, he had never once been as powerless as she had with a lord of the realm standing over her, brand in one hand, cock in the other, as his friends drunkenly cheered him into maiming her.
The only mercy she’d been shown that night had been Fabrien declining the suggestion to put the brand inside of her, but there was nothing noble in the choice.
He’d done it before, he’d said, and the women had scarred so badly, they were no longer “fun.”
Every one of them had taken their turn. Every one of them had been careless, causing her to lie awake at night praying none of them had put a child in her—a child her late husband vowed to slaughter in front of her, as though she had any control in the matter.
Some nights she even prayed Fabrien would impregnate her, because it was safer than birthing a child who looked like one of the others.
Sometimes fighting didn’t look like violence or vengeance. Sometimes it was just surviving the night.
Lexsea entered with an air of unadulterated annoyance. Elloven bristled, thinking of the way the woman had exerted control over Jesstin. But she’d read that situation wrong as well.
She had clearly been pulled out of bed. She hastily tucked messy strands behind her ears, but half of her hair was still standing up in the center.
She squinted at Elloven with an unreadable glare.
Her eyes swept Taven with disgust before turning them back on her father.
She shook her head and laughed. “The bond. That’s why you called for me, right? ”
“The quicker you oblige, the sooner I’ll dismiss you,” Estelar replied tersely. He ran his middle finger between his brows. “No need for ceremony, Lex. You know what to do.”
Moments from now, Elloven would lose her connection to Jesstin. “What about...” She cleared her throat. “The child?”
“What child?” Lexsea snapped.
“When Jesstin and I were bonded, we were told I had to conceive in a year or we’d both die. I assume that requirement will be voided with the bond?”
Estelar’s eyes rolled briefly upward.
The half-asleep siren cackled. “Oh, love, you were lied to. They were messing with you. There are no rules to the bond. The bond itself is the rule! The pain of separ—wait, do you not feel his absence here?”
“I feel it,” Elloven said quietly. What else wasn’t true? “I have a high tolerance for pain.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Lexsea’s eyes narrowed. “But Jesstin should be screaming right now.”
“How do you know he isn’t?” Taven asked.
“Get on with it,” Estelar said with a hard look at his daughter. “So we can all retire.”
Lexsea’s eyes closed, her head bobbing slightly. She said nothing, but she didn’t need to, because it felt as though the Guardians themselves had taken divine shears to the center of Elloven and split her through the middle.
She screamed and collapsed. Taven caught her before her knees hit the ground.
If Jesstin hadn’t been screaming before, he would be now.
But it was over. Just like that. Ended. And...
Elloven shakily stood. Bile gathered in her throat. Nothing felt coherent. Nothing seemed real. “That’s all? It’s done?”
“She’s ignorant even for a daughter of Laxius, isn’t she?” Lexsea cajoled, her eyes still closed.
“Wait—wait!” Elloven cried, the horrifying realization coming right as a new bond began spreading over her flesh like a tight pair of gloves, exciting her pores, and sending heat searing through her veins.
With a sob of betrayal so deep she was drowning in it, she looked at Taven and immediately wished she could unsee the victory in his eyes. “You lied to me. You deceived me.”
“I looked after you, as I always have,” Taven replied. He was as calm as the dawn. “Now no one can hurt you.”
“I assume that’s all?” Lexsea left without waiting for an answer.
“And you? You said nothing!” Elloven howled, thrusting an arm at Estelar. “You knew she could break it without bonding us, and you said nothing until I came here tonight!”
Estelar’s brows spiked in rapid amusement. “You could have broken it as well, Aelloven. The magic lives in you, as a receptor of chaos. But there are many things you can do that you have denied.”
“You both planned this, didn’t you?” She couldn’t look at either of them. She was still taking his words one by one, and each syllable dismantled her more. “Taven, you knew. You knew I’d see through you if you used anything other than Jesstin’s life as a reason to bring me to the sept.”
“Mr. Considine will, as promised, help you connect with that which was stolen from you by the devilish concubine who abducted you from your family and passed you off as your own.”
Elloven was horrified. “You don’t mean Esmeray?”
“She didn’t even bother to change her name?” Estelar laughed. “She’s—” He was cut off by a deep, thunderous pealing of bells. His pleasure dissolved in an instant. Alarm passed over his eyes like a storm. “Stay here. Lock the door behind me.” He rushed away.
“What’s happening?” Taven called after him, but his voice was drowned out by the ringing. “Where are you going?”
Elloven staggered to the desk. She counted the silence between rings—two seconds—and breathed through them.
In. Out. In. Out. The bells were the perfect distraction for her to find Lexsea and undo what had been done.
It was a weak plan, one that relied on the help of someone who was certain to refuse, but it was all she had.
She couldn’t stay bonded to Taven, not for a moment longer.
Couldn’t stay in that cursed land another night.
“Ellie?” Taven’s concern was a lash from a reed.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “Don’t you dare touch me, ever, ever again!”
“But I don’t understand...”
“You understand perfectly.” Elloven shook her head. Tears blurred the room. “But I’d rather die than live like this.”
“What are you saying?” Taven reached for her, but the drone of dozens of boots rushing down the hall pulled their attention to the door.
Jesstin woke gasping for his life.
In his dream, he’d been strapped to a torture rack. His limbs were slowly stretched away from his core, one grueling turn of the wheel after another. The pain had been soul-destroying, inescapable.
When he came to, the pain was gone, but in its place was a hollow void he could only describe as his chest having been carved out with a rusted spoon.
Next came the ringing, cutting off his ability to think.
It was outside, echoing from distances close and far.
Jesstin passed out again. He woke and had no idea how much time had gone by.