Chapter 1 #3
Sereis, the Ice Lord—pale and ethereal, his white hair adorned with crystals that never melted, moving with the deliberate grace of someone who had mastered the art of stillness.
His mate Mira, small and dark-haired, offered me a cup of something warm with gentle hands.
I took it but couldn't taste it. My tongue had forgotten everything but the distant fire of the bond.
Garruk, the Stone Warden—broad-shouldered and granite-grey, his angular features seeming carved from the mountain itself.
His mate Lark was small and quick, watching me with sharp curiosity while a tiny drake perched on her shoulder chirped in apparent greeting.
Pebble, I learned later. A creature as old as its master but trapped eternally in a hatchling's form.
Zephyron, the Storm Lord—silver-haired and crackling with contained lightning, his eyes shifting between silver and electric blue as he spoke.
His mate Thalia bore scars that branched across her skin like frozen lightning, a former priestess who had defected from the cult to warn them of assassination plots.
Caelus, the Wind Master—lithe and silver-white, perpetually windswept even in the still air of the great hall.
His mate Wren was quiet and watchful, her large eyes holding shadows that spoke of horrors survived.
The woman who had escaped the harvest cells.
The woman who had watched twelve others die.
And Morgrith with Lena. Who stood close enough that their shadows merged, their bond so strong I could feel its resonance even through the chaos in my own blood.
They were kind.
They offered me food and wine. They explained the threat—the cult's preparations, Solmar's machinations, the way Valdris's corruption had been spreading even from within his prison.
They laid out the timeline: seven days until the autumn equinox, when the barriers between realms would thin and the seals would be at their weakest.
Seven days to heal him or destroy him.
Seven days to complete what I had broken all those years ago.
I tried to listen. I tried to focus. But my skin was on fire.
Not with heat—the Black-Glass Keep was warm, yes, but comfortably so, the volcanic energy channeled through ancient engineering that should have made me feel nothing but ease.
This was different. This was internal, a fever that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the bond that had been starved for ten millennia.
My body ached in ways I couldn't name. Hollow. Empty. Reaching for something that wasn't there.
When Kara touched my arm in reassurance—just a brief squeeze, meant to comfort—I flinched so hard I nearly knocked over the wine I hadn't drunk.
"I'm sorry," I gasped, pressing my hands flat against the obsidian table. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"It's all right." Kara's fierce eyes had softened with understanding I didn't deserve. "The bond. It makes touch difficult when it's calling you elsewhere."
Elsewhere.
East. Down. Come to me.
I pressed my palm harder against the cool stone, trying to ground myself, trying to stay present in this room full of people who were trying to help me. But the thread kept pulling, and every time someone spoke, I lost the thread of their words to the louder voice singing through my blood.
"—equinox ritual will require all seven Lords present—"
Come home.
"—cult's defenses have been fortified since Thalia escaped—"
I've waited so long.
"—possibility of a surgical strike, minimal casualties—"
Mine. Mine. MINE.
"Evara."
Morgrith's voice cut through the chaos, and I looked up to find everyone staring at me. I had been clutching my chest again, I realized. Pressing my palm against the place where the bond lived, as if I could somehow soothe it into silence.
"I'm sorry," I said again. The words felt inadequate. "I can't—I'm trying to listen, but—"
"The bond is calling her." Morgrith addressed the others, his voice quiet but carrying through the great hall's perfect acoustics.
I watched the Dragon Lords exchange glances heavy with meaning I couldn't quite parse. Watched their mates lean closer to them, seeking comfort or perhaps giving it. Watched the realization settle over the room like ash from the volcano outside.
I was the key to everything. The original bride, returned to complete the original bond. The only one who might be able to reach whatever remained of Valdris beneath the corruption.
And I was falling apart.
"She needs rest," Davoren said finally. His voice rumbled like the mountain that housed his keep. "A room. Time to recover from the transformation."
"The bond won't let her rest," Lena said softly. She knew. Of course she knew—she had felt the pull of an incomplete bond herself, had fought against it before surrendering. "It will only get worse."
"Then we accelerate the timeline." Zephyron's voice crackled with storm-energy. "If she can't wait seven days, we find a way to approach sooner."
"The seals won't be weak enough until the equinox," Sereis countered, his words measured and precise. "A premature approach risks—"
The bond SCREAMED.
I doubled over, gasping, as the golden thread wrenched so hard I thought it might tear me in two. Not pain—never quite pain—but need so vast it eclipsed everything else. My vision went gold around the edges. My newly-made heart hammered against ribs that hadn't existed a day ago.
COME TO ME.
When the wave passed, I was on my knees. Lena was beside me, her hands careful not to touch, her grey eyes bright with tears.
"We need to get her to bed," someone said. Maybe Davoren. Maybe someone else. I couldn't tell anymore.
They gave me a beautiful room. Soft bed heaped with furs, warm fire crackling in a hearth carved from the mountain's own stone, a view of the stars through windows of polished obsidian that caught their light and multiplied it into constellations that didn't exist. They told me to rest. They promised they would find a safe way to approach the monster who waited in the dark.
I lay in the bed and felt the bond scream.
It wasn't pain—I kept waiting for it to become pain, kept bracing for the kind of agony that would at least make sense, that would give me something concrete to fight against. But this was worse.
This was absence. The phantom ache of a limb severed so long ago that my body had forgotten it existed, but now—now that I was back, now that I had a body again—every nerve remembered what it was missing.
Ten thousand years of denial.
Ten thousand years of a bond stretched taut across the void between death and life, never breaking, never easing, just waiting.
And now my body knew. Now my soul knew. Now every cell in my newly-made form understood exactly what it was supposed to be connected to and felt the vast emptiness where that connection should live.
My skin burned for a touch that wasn't here.
Not the gentle hands of healers offering comfort.
Not the kind touches of women who understood what I was going through.
My skin burned specifically, exclusively, for him—for hands I had felt only once, rough and impossibly gentle, cupping my face like I was something sacred.
My arms ached with emptiness, wrapped around nothing, reaching for a body that should be pressed against mine and wasn't.
Something deep in my chest kept reaching.
Reaching and reaching and reaching toward a presence I had denied myself once, toward the other half of a bond that had never been completed, toward the only thing in all the realms that might make this emptiness stop.
East. Down. Come to me.
The voice wasn't a voice. It was pressure. It was gravity. It was the fundamental force of the universe telling me where I belonged and demanding to know why I wasn't there yet.
I tried to close my eyes. Tried to focus on breathing—in, out, the way my new lungs were supposed to work. But every breath I took was wrong. Too shallow. Too empty. Like my body had forgotten how to function without his presence nearby.
I hadn't slept in ten thousand years.
I couldn't sleep now.
Not with the bond wrenching at me every moment, pulling me toward completion with the desperation of something starved beyond all reason. Not with my blood singing songs I didn't know the words to, ancient melodies that spoke of mating and claiming and finally, finally becoming whole.
I didn't make a conscious decision to leave.
One moment I was in bed, staring at the obsidian ceiling and trying not to scream.
The next I was at the window, my bare feet silent on the volcanic stone floor.
The next I was slipping through shadows that parted for me like water, like they recognized what I was and knew better than to stand in my way.
A gift from Morgrith, perhaps. Or perhaps the world itself, finally acknowledging the First Bride returning to complete what she had started.
The night air was cold against my fever-hot skin.
The Black-Glass Keep rose around me, magnificent and sleeping, its defenders unaware that the key to their entire plan was slipping away into the darkness. I should have felt guilty. Should have stopped, gone back, waited for their careful strategies and measured approaches.
But the bond didn't care about guilt.
And neither, anymore, did I.
East. Down. Come.
I followed the pull like a compass needle following north.
Out of the keep's protective wards, which sparked against my skin but let me pass.
Down the volcanic slopes, my bare feet finding paths they shouldn't have known.
Toward the darkness that gathered on the eastern horizon, a shadow that wasn't the absence of light but something else entirely.
Something waiting.
Something that had been waiting for ten thousand years.
I'm done running, I thought, and the words felt like a vow. Like a promise I was finally ready to keep. I ran once and it destroyed you. It destroyed everything. I spent ten millennia in the void between worlds because I was too afraid to let you love me.
The bond sang in response, harmony for the first time instead of desperate need.
I'm coming, Valdris.
I didn't know what I would find when I reached him. The cultists who worshipped him, perhaps. The corruption that had transformed him from the most beautiful being in existence into something monstrous. The hatred that my rejection had bred, curdled love become something darker than darkness.
It didn't matter.
I had run from everything—from his love, from my own heart, from the vastness of a bond that had terrified me with its depth.
I had run and run and run until running killed me, and even then I hadn't stopped, spending ten thousand years in the void between worlds because that was easier than facing what I'd done.
Not this time.
The eastern horizon pulsed with that wrong-colored light—the same impossible hues I'd seen in the grotto, wavelengths that existed only in the space between realms. Somewhere beneath that darkness, beneath layers of seal and stone and ancient magic, the most beautiful monster in existence felt me coming.
The bond sang louder.
I'm finally coming home.