Page 7 of The Bound Blood
His expression doesn’t change. Not right away. It stays carved in stone, unreadable, but the temperature in the room shifts. Magic coils tight in the air. Heavy. Suffocating.
“I won’t sever it,” I say, firmer now. “She’s not a threat. Not to me.”
“You don’t know that,” he snaps.
“Ido.” My voice cracks with it. “Ifeelit—she's inside my magic, my blood, and it doesn’t hurt. Itgroundsme.”
“Then it has already taken hold,” he mutters, eyes narrowing like I’ve proven his worst fears. “And it will only get worse.”
He turns away for a moment, running a hand over the front of his cloak like brushing off ash. Then he faces me again, cold fury sitting just beneath the surface.
“You shame your bloodline.”
“I’m not ashamed,” I say, quiet and certain. “For the first time in my life, that's the one thing I don't feel.”
He stares at me for one long breath, disappointment radiating off him like smoke from a fire. Then he straightens.
“Then I’ll do it for you.”
Before I can move or speak, he turns and vanishes into the dark. The moment the words leave his mouth—Then I’ll do it for you—the bond flares so sharply I nearly bend in half. Magic rips across my chest. Not just pain, butprotest. The Veilbindknows. Itfeelsthe threat.
“No,” I gasp, struggling to sit fully upright. My body screams in resistance, muscles locking as leftover shift-magic scrapes raw through my nerves.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The infirmary spins, the floor lurching beneath me before I even touch it, but I don’t stop. I reach for the robe tossed over the chair near my bed and drag it around my shoulders, fingers fumbling with the clasp. My skin is still too hot, raw with electricity, but I don’t care.
The bond pulls at me—gold and alive andpanicked. It stretches like a thread being wound tighter and tighter, leading me straight across the room.
To her.
My feet hit the cold stone, bare and trembling, but I move. One step. Then another.
I follow the tether past the row of beds and the faintly glowing orb-lamps, toward the drawn curtain near the far wall. She’s there. Iknowshe’s there.
Her magic pulses like a heartbeat. But as I cross the threshold—itreacts. A rush of power blasts outward from her bed, smacking into my chest like a wall. Not violent. But firm.
Protective.
She’s not fully in her body. And whatever magic is guarding her now, it’s keeping everything away. Evenme. I brace a hand on the foot of her bed, my other hand clutched at my chest as the bond burns in quiet warning.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I whisper. “I’m here to keep you safe.”
The air hums. The wards don’t drop, but the flare settles. And beneath all of it, her magic answers me.
Faint. Fragile.
But there.
I grip the edge of her bed harder, jaw tight, heart pounding. I don’t know what this bond is becoming. I don’t know what it will cost me. But I know one thing with absolute certainty:
If my father comes for her—if he tries to sever this—he’ll have to go through me.
FOUR
LINDSAY
I don’t remember fallingasleep.
I just remember theshift—like the floor dropped out from under me and I kept falling through layers of silence and light. As though I was Alice falling into Wonderland. Now, I’m standing barefoot in a hallway thatalmostlooks like the Academy. The stones are the same. The long arched windows. The flickering sconce lights.
