Page 32 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile

Before Lessia had time to react, the Fae guard she couldn’t stand the smell of—as pure evil wafted directly from his skin—dragged her into a seated position, ripping the fabric from her head, and gripped her shoulders when she wrapped her arms around her front.

The first pair of eyes she found were her father’s tear-filled ones.

Then Frelina’s panicked ones.

Then Kerym’s blue ones, darkened with pain.

Thissian’s ocean-colored ones waited for her next, and she wasn’t sure why his were the worst, but perhaps it was because she’d believed him to be almost numb from how he’d spoken before, but now…

Fear flickered within his eyes.

“It’s all right,” she tried to tell them, but her throat hurt too much for words to form, so instead she mouthed them, trying for a weak smile after.

Her father and Frelina both let out gut-wrenching sounds in response, but Kerym kept her gaze, mouthing “Hold on. He’s coming” back to her.

Thissian didn’t move, his eyes flitting to the king before moving back to her, and she didn’t like the look contorting his features.

She didn’t like it at all.

Lessia couldn’t even nod as Kerym yet again mouthed “Hold on” as Torkher violently shifted her so her back rested against his chest, and she shuddered when his lips tickled her ear. “You’re dying today. And he won’t get here in time.”

Lessia stared straight ahead, refusing to let Torkher’s words sink in.

“He’ll find your broken body floating amidst the waves beneath us. Unless any of the creatures in the sea eat you first, of course,” the Fae spat, but still Lessia didn’t react, forbade herself to even swat at the hands that roved over her bare skin.

The king spoke again as he waved forward the other two guards behind him. “Get my brother up here.”

Lessia watched silently as they unfastened her father’s shackles, an ember of gratefulness trying to warm her chest when Kerym stopped her sister from getting in their way.

Catching his eyes, she wrangled to offer him a smile, but it mustn’t have been too encouraging, as Kerym’s face fell as he stared back at her.

The two guards dragged her father’s body until he was only a few feet away from where Lessia half sat, half lay against Torkher.

Placing Alarin on his knees, they tied his hands behind his back again, then straightened, staring at Rioner standing somewhere behind her.

Despair filled her father’s eyes as he looked at her, and she willed her own not to mirror it, tried to give him hope, tried to send him the belief that she would find them a way out of this.

But her own fragile hope was fading quickly.

Especially when the image of Merrick finding her body that Torkher had conjured earlier pressed to reveal itself in her mind again.

She’d clung to the glimmer—the chance that those shapes she’d seen when the water enveloped her were what she thought they were—but when nothing stirred within her again, those voices worryingly silent, Lessia realized it might have been a fool’s dream.

“Give him the antidote,” the king ordered, shattering the silence, and Lessia barely had time to understand what washappening before one of the guards pulled out a small vial and shoved its contents down her father’s throat.

Her father’s eyes bulged as he nearly choked on whatever they’d forced him to drink, but the Fae behind him wouldn’t relent, pushing his head up until a loud swallow reverberated within the square cabin.

More tears spilled down her father’s cheeks when his eyes found hers again, and she couldn’t help the hiss escaping her lips at the pain that tugged at his expression, that curved his usually straight back, that had his hands ball into fists.

But when she tried to turn her head to glare at the king, demanding to know what he was doing to her father, Torkher wrapped his hand in her hair, pulling it so hard she yelped.

Kerym and her sister growled in outrage when Torkher only chuckled as he tugged even more, forcing her to nearly rest the back of her head on his shoulder.

“Don’t get any ideas, halfling,” he snarled into her ear, and when a heartbreaking sound pierced the silence that followed—one she wasn’t certain who it came from—she forced herself to utter some sound of agreement.

As Torkher released her, her eyes flew across the room, and her brows snapped together, intensifying the ache in her head when she realized it must have been Thissian who let out that awful, sorrow-filled cry.

His eyes touched hers for only a second before they fell, the sorrow in them spreading to his entire frame as he hunched over, folding into himself where he was chained next to her sister.