Page 122 of The Serpent Prince

“You still aren’t getting it.” Zadie snapped her gaze back to Imani, her signature sharp with fury. “You let him in. He knows your powers, your secrets. And he wants them for himself, but he knows he can’t have you anymore—not like that. So, he’ll keep you hidden away, try to have you in private, but reduce you to a lower station to prove to everyone what you mean to him, especially as he’s courting the other high sentinel’s daughters. Your problems will only get worse for you when he binds to a chosen mate. Trust me; you won’t want to be here when he does. All the more reason for you to leave with your dignity and control of your own powers. He will chain you and drain you dry.”

“Not until he and I have a discussion,” Imani said again through gritted teeth. Would Kiran really try to bind her for her magic like his father had the other elves he “experimented” on?

She gripped the Drasil tighter. He could certainly try, but she no longer feared him.

A soft sigh escaped Zadie’s lips, but she ceased arguing. Instead, she turned around and thrust two dresses at Imani.

Imani started dressing herself, trying to move faster, wanting this to be over. The garnets on the dress reminded her of the ones she’d been working on the day Malis had come into the shop. The day the man with the green eyes had come in.

She sucked in a deep breath as she reached up to cover her mouth.

Realization slammed into her. A horrifying realization.

It hit Imani like a pile of stones. The reason Kiran had felt familiar to her when they’d first met was because she had already met him before. Indeed, she had once seen a nymph with the same green eyes—two of them—in the shop the day Malis had attacked her. He must have glamoured his eyes to be green and make himself appear more nymph-like. An easy thing for an elf of his power to accomplish.

And he’d touched her when he had removed her glamour.

Imani’s hands started trembling—because they were heartmates—and that bastard had to have known this entire time. She’d thought he had simply kept his sigil from her, but it was an even worse lie. Worse than she could have imagined.

Her grandmother’s ramblings the night before she’d died made perfect sense now. It had never been Malis whom Ara had gone on about—it had been Kiran. The words boomed in her mind.

“Your father was the best divination witch that I’d seen in years, and your heartmate is everything he foresaw he would be. But he’s also far worse than either of us imagined.”

Kiran. Her heartmate.

Imani couldn’t look at Zadie. A ball of tension squeezed her chest, increasing the constricting feeling of the dress, but she ignored it. She would ignore this until she spoke to Kiran about why he had lied about them being heartmates.

Eventually, Imani’s eyes opened once more, and she canted her head to the side. Their gazes met and held for a brief moment in time. She knew exactly what Zadie had been going on about now, and her stomach felt sick.

“How long has he known what I am to him?” She could barely get the words out as she pressed her fingers to her wrist and murmured the incantation to remove the glamour over her heartmate brands.

“He’s known since the day the marks burned in the shop.” Zadie gestured to the two gleaming red stags on Imani’s wrist, facing each other. “But he can’t be heartmated to someone who doesn’t give him a political edge. He’ll steal your power and use it for his own—sharing power between heartmates is an unstoppable force.”

What she said made too much sense. Kiran needed to bind to one of the elves of his kingdom in order to avoid the civil unrest Tanyl was dealing with in a bloody transition of power and needed to unite his kingdom more than ever. But he could still leverage the power between heartmates for his own uses—and it sounded like he planned to … with her in chains while he did it.

Everything had changed now. Imani wanted to set fire to the room, but she stood unmoving, unable to think clearly. She was so bloody stupid.

“If you’ve seen his heartmate mark, as you say you have, then surely he’ll be kinder⁠—”

“Kiran will do whatever Kiran will do to be the most powerful witch he can be,” Zadie interrupted her. “Neither I, nor you, nor anyone out there, can stop him once his mind is set. He forbade me from telling you.”

Zadie tugged the waist of the dress for a final adjustment then stepped back in silent assessment. “Also, you should know that you’re entirely bonded—Kiran had to make sure of that so you could bypass the dwarves’ security. The first blood binding? The soul switching before the dwarves? Sex with you? He’s completed all three of the bindings, right under your nose.”

Rage threatened to explode from Imani.

“How dare he?” she ground out, fists clenched.

Mind reeling, Imani left her own rooms in the east side of the castle, in search of the king. As she walked down the halls toward Kiran’s wing, which was still intact, doubt crept in. The shadows, which normally gave her much comfort, took on a more menacing form. Her temper rose steeply inside her chest, threatening to choke her.

The farther she walked, the more furious she became. Was Zadie right? A part of Imani was still ready to wholly trust Kiran after these past few months. A tiny, minuscule part of her wanted to believe he held enough feelings for her to let her in. He had been completely different with her lately.

But Zadie wouldn’t have risked Kiran’s ire by betraying his orders if it wasn’t important, and she didn’t give a shit who or what he was doing now. They would have this discussion.

Even before stepping into his hallway, she knew it was empty. She couldn’t sense any souls at all. Confused, she turned back the way she had come and began heading to Magnus’s quarters, wondering if they were even still standing.

As she rounded the corner to the rooms, a dark void of a wraith came forward and surrounded her like a halo. Ever since the Under, her shadows were taking more specific forms. She didn’t try to fight it.

“Your protection is appreciated, although I don’t suppose you could open this door for me,” Imani said lightly.