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Maybe I was a masochist.

I could tell her. Even Scion–one of my greatest obstacles–wanted me to tell her. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Tellingher felt wrong. Like trapping her into something before she’d had the time to consider it.

Lonnie was shockingly oblivious to her own feelings, even now that she had more time and space to consider them. She’d fallen in love with Bael long before she knew anything about mating or magic, and still had to be convinced their bond was real. It was even worse with Scion, as both of them lacked self-awareness. They’d gone as far as sealing their bond several times over before either acknowledged its existence.

In other words, she’d been able to form real connections slowly because she had no understanding of what a mating bond was supposed to feel like.

Now that she did, I could tell her and she would undoubtedly believe me. But I would never know if she really wanted this, or simply believed it was inevitable. Worse still, there was the looming possibility that I wouldn’t live past the battle I knew was coming, and how cruel would it be to leave her as a mate rather than as an estranged in-law? Even as I came upon her in her towel, I resolved not to tell her.

But then she kissed me and every promise I’d made to myself imploded. It was like she was breathing life back into me. Like my heart beat for the first time in a hundred years, and it only beat for her.

I’d never wanted to stop, but I made myself leave anyway. She was confused and overwhelmed and not looking for a mate, even if her long dormant instincts were pushing her to let me claim her.

That should have been the end of it, but of course it wasn’t. The Gods clearly had an agenda today, and that plan involved fucking with me to within an inch of my sanity.

I’d shadow walked miles off course because I was distracted by Lonnie’s very presence next to me. Then, she was attacked by the sirens and I had to withstand every instinct I had not to overreact to her injuries.

Then, she’d looked at me like she wanted me for more than the healing I’d offered her. She looked at me the way I looked at her whenever she wasn’t paying attention. Like it physically hurt her to look, and she made herself withstand it because it was more painful to look away.

I waited, knowing that if she didn’t take my blood soon, I was going to make her do it. I was ready to tear into my own flesh for her, and then I’d fuck her, claim her, make her mine right there on the fucking ground.

But then my worst fucking nightmare appeared in the form of Cassinda, and if I didn’t already hate her as much as it was possible to hate anyone, I would have just because of her interruption.

I didn’t know what my former betrothed was playing at. She hated me quite as much as I hated her, but for some reason she had fixated on torturing Lonnie from the very second she set eyes on her. It made no sense.

Pulling me from my thoughts, Cassinda herself glanced over her shoulder at me. “So, are you going to marry her?” she asked in the olde tongue.

I drew back, rattled by her change in tone. Did she know Lonnie was mine? Did it matter if she did? “Why would you ask that?” I hedged. “She’s my brother's mate.”

Cassinda raised her eyebrows so high they nearly disappeared into her hairline. “Right, but Iknowyou. Are you going to marry her?”

I closed my mouth with a snap.

I’d entirely forgotten about how much Cassinda really did know. She’d spent a lot of time at the obsidian palace over the years, as we’d been betrothed nearly from birth until the day I left for Aftermath. Even if she hadn’t been the daughter of the Lord of Nevermore, she would have had to be both blind and stupid not to notice something was wrong with our family. Unfortunately, she was neither.

The Everlast family had a long sorted history of rejecting our mates for fear of becoming too happy and triggering the curse that kept us all in a constant state of misery. But that didn’t mean no one ever found their true mate. In fact, most of us did.

The common wisdom within the family had always been that we couldn’t seal a bond, but that said nothing of keeping mates close. More often than not, a true mate was married off to a sibling or cousin, so they could be kept close.

Ironically, now that I’d seen this scenario play out between Lonnie, Bael and Scion I realized that we’d been going about things entirely wrong for years. It was a miracle that none of our ancestors had killed us all generations ago.

“Are you listening to me?” Cassinda asked.

“No.”

She reeled back, looking offended. “You ass–”

“I meant, no. I’m not going to marry her. Not like you mean.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, but said nothing, merely turning back around and focusing on the road ahead of us. I already knew that wasn’t the end of this. I only wished I knew what Cassinda was trying to do.

It had startedto snow by the time we arrived in the heart of Nevermore.

I’d given up and offered Lonnie my arm. Apparently, she was cold enough that she didn’t care that she was angry with me. She’d pulled her legs up to her chest and curled her entire body into my side, and didn’t sit up to look around as we pulled onto the main road.

The street was lined with round red-roofed houses, all with smoke rising from their chimneys and candles flickering in the windows. Here and there along the street, an evergreen shrub stood out from the snow, but otherwise everything was completely frozen over. Far up ahead on a snowy hill stood the keep–Nevermore’s equivalent of a castle.

Unlike the other provinces, the island operated almost entirely independently of us, and governed themselves. They still technically answered to the crown, and the lord of Nevermore was not a king in his own right, but informally it was easiest to view them as a separate kingdom altogether.