Page 3 of The Prince's Fealty

His eyes flew to meet Pel’s, and everything inside him stilled, certainty washing through him. It didn’t make sense at all, and yet it also made all the sense in the world.

“We’rebonded?” It felt necessary to say it out loud, because while every part of Tor’s body and magic was alight with certainty, it didn’t makesense. “But how? When?”

Pel’s expression turned rueful. “Both people need to want it desperately—and particularly and specifically, but not, apparently, by explicitly thinking ‘I want to be bonded’—in a moment when their magic is Blended. And it turns out that there was an occasion where we were both doing that, even though we didn’t mention it to one another.”

Tor watched with bemusement as red burned up Pel’s ears. Tor tried to run back through all the occasions that he and Pel had Blended.Hadhe been thinking particularly and specifically about wanting to be bonded? About wanting to be with Pel, to stay connected with him?

There’d been plenty of times where he’d been thinking about how much he enjoyed being with Pel, but surely it had to be more than that. And then a memory tickled at his mind. Had he… had he thought about wanting tokeepPel? He was pretty sure he’d been eager for them to be connected all the time while they’d been—

His eyes snapped up to Pel’s. Ah, yes, the embarrassment made sense now.

“We actually bonded while we were having—?”

“—and that’s a conversation we don’t need to have while my brother is present,” Pel interrupted quickly.

“What, your brother’s here?”

Belatedly, Tor looked at more than Pel and saw that not only was Bavil here, so were Beluna, Cavun, Denil, and a woman with warm brown skin and reddish-brown hair whom Tor didn’t know. She looked to be about his age, maybe a few years younger. She was dressed in common garb and didn’t look like she was a guard like the three who had apparently stuck with Tor and Pel through weeks of Tor being unconscious.

Pel laughed. “You thought we were alone?”

“I… didn’t think about it at all,” Tor admitted, looking back at Pel, though he was now unable to fathom how he’d missed everyone else around the fire. Sheepishly, he confessed, “I was so excited that I was with you. I really thought you weren’t ever going to talk to me again—and I wouldn’t have blamed you. This is so much better than that. It’s wonderful. Everything else is just a bonus.”

Pel leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips, but Tor understood this time why he didn’t let them get carried away again.

“Hello, everyone,” Tor said belatedly, once Pel was settled against his side.

It made a lot of sense why everything felt so much better when he was with Pel and when they were connected, even if it was touching through several layers of clothes.

They all greeted him with varying degrees of amusement. Tor couldn’t blame them.

Tor smiled at the woman he didn’t know. “I don’t think we’ve met. If we have and I didn’t realize, I apologize.”

She smiled at him. “We haven’t met formally, Your Highness. I’m Tama, and I heard about you from my friends when you saved all our lives from the landslide and the Tondian guards.”

Ah. Tor had… not realized they were talking to exiles. But that was good. It was excellent, in fact. It was exactly what he’d thought they needed to do to get the situation resolved. How handy that it had happened while he was unconscious.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Tama,” Tor said politely.

“She’s a healer,” Pel explained, “and likely the only reason you’re not still in a coma. She’s also the one who let me know we were bonded. Healers can sense it, apparently.” He made a face. “Which means that Wavilon must have known and not said anything, but that might explain the weird looks I kept getting from him before we left for Alossa.”

If the Tondian healer had figured it out, he appeared to have kept it to himself; Tor couldn’t imagine that Pel’s father would have kept quiet before they fled. No, he would have put it in his angry letter to Tor’s brother, and everything would have been even more of a mess. If Pel had been imprisoned in the dungeon with Tor, if he’d wound up in the nursery…

Tor shuddered. No, he couldn’t think about it.

He turned to Tama instead. “Thank you. I appreciate your help very much.”

Now that he knew what to look for, the tell-tale sensation of foreign magic inside him was unmistakable. If he still felt this rough after being healed, he could only imagine how much help he’d needed.

Twoweekshe’d been in a magical coma. Goddess.

“You’re very welcome,” Tama told him.

“Could you tell if my magic was still bound?” He glanced at everyone and belatedly asked, “Uh, that wasn’t a secret, right?”

Pel smiled at him. “No, we all know that your brother overreacted because my father can definitely be an ass.”

That made everything simpler. But he’d try to be more mindful of his words before they just spilled out of his mouth.