Page 104 of Burdened Bonds

“What is it, Tristan, tell me?”

The drug swirls through my blood, warm and misleading, making me promises, whispering in my ear.

If I just tell him, if I just explain, utter the words …

No!

I ball my hands into fists and bite down on my own damn tongue.

No!

“Is it that girl?” my father sneers. “There’s always some girl. Your uncle was the same – nearly threw away everything for a woman. And as for your cousin! Fools, the two of them!” He narrows his eyes. “Are you a fool too? Fallen for some wisp of a girl? There’s nothing special about her, is there?”

I know he’s taunting me. He has an idea just how special she is. He wouldn’t be hunting her down otherwise. He wouldn’t have me in here chained to this chair, pumped full of drugs, attempting to wheedle answers out of me otherwise. He’d have already beaten me to a pulp and sent me back to the academy, perhaps even a prison cell.

There were witnesses that night the academy was attacked. People who saw just how powerful Rhi is, who saw us fighting side by side. And then there’s that interesting piece of information Summer gave him. Fucking Summer.

“Some say a girl will come … what I want to know is, is it her?”

My father paces this room as I struggle against the combined effects of the drug and his magic. My mouth is desperate to open and spill everything to him. I clamp it shut, fighting my own jaw.

“We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard. You can tell me what you know willingly, or …”

“I don’t know anything,” I choke out.

My father smiles coldly. “So be it.”

He lifts a hand and a needle comes hurtling across the room, I try to swerve out of its path, but I’m chained to my seat and it stabs me deep in my arm, the drug plunging deep under my skin.

The room blurs, my mind loosening as I struggle to hold on, to maintain control of my own goddamn will.

“I’ve had enough of your disobedience, boy.”

The drug pulls me under and for the first time I see it. The truth.

I’d always thought my mom’s pills were an escape from her reality, an escape from him. Now I see what they were, what they really were. A leash. A way for him to control her as he now plans to control me.

I close my eyes, struggling, fighting.

“From now on, you will do as you’re told. You will be the son the Lord Protector demands. From now on, you’re mine.”

40

Renzo

The enforcer leaves laterthat morning, setting off on foot. My little rabbit goes to see him off at the door, accompanied by the professor and the smart girl with the pigtails. I remain in the kitchen, watching over the pig as I spin my knife around by its point on the tabletop.

The thoughts buzz around noisily in my head, and, for the first time, among those thoughts are my future spread out like a path in front of me. Never seen that before, never thought about it. It’s always been one day at a time. Intrigued to see if I’d make it to the end or if that would be the day it all ends. Like a game. Like tossing a coin. Not caring how it lands.

Now, there are possibilities.

She said sealing the bond would be forever and forever sounds like a long, long time. All the way in the distancewhere I’m an old man with a walking stick and a fucking bad temper.

Huh! Me? Old? They always said I wouldn’t make it past my 21st birthday. They said all sorts of shit.

Did I believe more of it than I realized?

The little rabbit walks into the kitchen – her eyelashes all wet, tear tracks run down her face – followed right after by the smart girl. They both stop by the pig and peer down at him. Then the smart girl scoops him up.