Chapter 40
CHAPTER
Azrian
“What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait for afternoon tea?”, Virelle asked as she and Caelen entered the Vaelros parlor the next morning.
Azrian set the blue book on the table between them, nudging it toward the couple. “We found it in Lady Delarine’s private archive.”
Caelen’s brows knitted. “The Duchess has a private archive?”
“Hidden under her conservatory, yes,” Sabine responded.
Virelle gasped. “Scandalous.”
“It’s far more than scandalous. If the Emperor were to know what is in it, she would hang,” Azrian said.
Virelle skimmed the book’s title page, then the opening chapter, her lips moving in silent perusal. “They were not fairytales after all, then…”
Caelen took the book, scanning a page, his finger trailing the faded script. “So these are… soulmarks… perfectly matched affinity pairings, unions greater than the sums of their parts, so on so forth.” He looked up. “I always thought my nan’s stories were myths, too.”
Virelle leaned back. “But why conceal this? Why create the blood vow system if this”—she gestured at the book—“was already in place?”
“Because,” Sabine said, “soulmarks cannot be predicted or controlled. They occur naturally. The Registry wants order, not chaos.”
Virelle set her jaw. “So they manufactured an alternative. Weaker, but easier to regulate. The Gilt gets power, but only as much as the Empire can leash.”
Sabine nodded. “Exactly. But the marks have started reappearing, and the Registry needs to bury them before the old stories start spreading.”
The room went silent but for the pop of sap in the fire. Caelen, always the pragmatist, broke it. “Are you saying the blood vow was created as a… suppressant? A way to give the Gilt magic, but only insomuch as the Empire was comfortable with?”
Azrian drew a breath. “I believe so. Sabine and I… our bond isn’t like yours.” He flicked a glance at Virelle and Caelen, then to Sabine. “We’ve tried, again and again, to contain our magic. To make it behave as the Registry instructs. It won’t yield.”
“When we weave, our affinities rebel,” Sabine said. “Sometimes, it’s as if the magic is straining to break loose from our bodies. When it does yield, it only does so when we use it in synchronicity.”
“In this book, it says soulbonds used to eclipse any magic the Registry could sanction,” Azrian explained. “The Empire could not tolerate an ungovernable force, so they worked to eradicate it.”
Caelen tapped a finger to his chin. “This… soulbond , then. It’s like a blood vow, but based on love?”
Sabine rolled her shoulders and pressed her lips at the word. She tried to mask her reaction, but Azrian had learned to read her too well not to notice. At least two different forces had brought them together in this marriage, and neither one of them was love. Of course, she’d recoil from it.
He wondered if she knew he’d noticed.
“The book calls soulmarks symbols of recognition.” Sabine flipped the pages of the book until she found a specific passage, then passed it to Caelen.
“Your magic finding its missing half. A soulbond is a willing choice made by the two vessels to join each other in partnership, to weave together, to lend each other their respective magic.”
Caelen scanned the page several times over. “Basically, the exact opposite of a blood vow.”
Virelle’s head twisted, as if looking at her husband a different way might help her understand. “How do you figure?”
“In a blood vow, the other person’s magic is physically forced upon you by the Empire through blood.
They say it, clear as day: by blood, by bond, by the Empire’s will.
Not yours, not mine. The Empire’s. If a soulbond is about choosing each other, the blood vow is about the Empire tying us together.
There’s no active participation in it. We don’t even cut our own hands…
” He pointed to Sabine, to Azrian, then back again. “Unless you’re these two, that is.”
Azrian’s heartbeat slowed to a trickle. He turned to Sabine just as she twisted to him. In her eyes, he found the same realization he’d arrived at within himself. “Our private vow…”
Her magic crackling against his own as they shared their promises. Her blood blooming golden when she’d sliced her own palm.
“We made our own choices…”
“And sealed the soulbond.”
Virelle pressed a hand to her chest and swooned. “You made a private vow?” She swatted Sabine’s arm. “You did not tell me! Why didn’t you tell me? It is so romantic!”
Sabine buried her face in her palm. “My apologies, Virelle. I had larger concerns, like the fact that my newfound magic was rebelling, or that a murderer sent by the Registry to kill us is on the loose.”
Virelle looked to her feet sheepishly. Caelen rubbed soothing circles down her back.
“What do we do?” Sabine asked Azrian. “If the Empire realizes what transpired, they…”
Sabine’s sentence died, but Caelen had no problem finishing it. “They’ll kill you.” Then, after a pause, “Well, kill you sooner , I should say.”
The fierceness that erupted in Azrian at that thought could have burned the Empire to ashes.
Because what he felt, in that moment? No imperial order could ever compare to the sheer devotion he felt for Sabine.
He understood, with more clarity than he ever had, why the Empire had sought to isolate him, to teach him, iron-clad emotional detachment.
The Hand had to be a weapon that could be controlled. But this Azrian knew no loyalty greater than that to his wife. If the Empire had tried to subjugate this version of him, they’d have failed spectacularly.
“We find a way to break the blood vow,” he finally said. “We let the soulbond stand alone. If we succeed, we prove that power can exist beyond the Empire’s leash.”
Caelen nodded. “We’ll help you. However you need.”
Destiny settled on Azrian, heavy as a cloak, sharp as a crown. He’d never believed in fate, but it circled him now, inevitable as the tide. “We’ll have to be clever. Every step will be watched.”
Virelle imitated a salute. “To revolution, then. May it be as elegant as it is destructive.”
Sabine took Azrian’s hand across the table, and when their skin met, his mark flared.
The Registry had made one mistake, Azrian realized, as he watched his wife plot the next chapter of their fate.
They had forgotten that a weapon, given reason, could learn to fight for itself.