Page 84 of Burdened Bonds

I sniff.

“Wh-what happened to your girl?” I ask, almost scared to hear the answer.

He’s quiet for some time and then he whispers into the darkness. “Killed, when they came for us. Killed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I should have done more to protect her, to save her,” hesays and, though I can’t see them, I can hear the tears in his voice.

“I’m sure you tried,” I say feebly, not knowing what else to say.

“And maybe it was for the best,” he says even more quietly, “I couldn’t bear the thought of her here suffering like this.”

“No,” I say. We’re silent again for some minutes, both thinking.

“Tell me more about her, your girl,” he says.

I screw up my eyes. It’s painful thinking about her, thinking I might never see her again. It makes my heart ache more than all the rest of the pain put together.

“Please,” he says, “give me something to distract from this pain.” And I think it’s the pain of losing his girl he’s talking about, not the physical wounds.

I blow out air through my teeth. “She came from the wastelands,” I whisper, “an unregistered.”

I tell him everything in the quiet of the cell. I tell him it all. The way I fought the bond. The way I treated her. The way I left her.

When there’s no more to tell, the cell is silent again and I don’t know if he’s drifted back into unconsciousness. Or maybe he’s so disgusted with me, he no longer wants to talk with me.

I close my eyes, willing sleep to suck me back under, and that’s when he speaks.

“We all make mistakes. Especially when it comes to the ones we care about,” he says. “If you get out of here, if you ever find your way back to her, you have to make it up to her. Fate rarely gives us someone to love, to belong to. You shouldn’t throw that chance away. You should grab it with both of your hands.”

In the darkness, I hear him wet his lips.

“Moreau,” he whispers, “there’s a prophecy. Do you know the one?”

I frown, wondering if the pain is making him delirious.

“A prophecy? A prophecy about what?”

“A new Queen Æðelflæd.”

My frown deepens. I recognize the name, but I struggle to remember it.

“They say a girl will come – powerful like the queen – the queen who had five fated mates. And she will free us all.”

“What are you saying? You think that’s Rhi?” I say with derision in my tone.

“I’m just an old, broken were,” he says, “what the hell do I know?”

I shift on the hard ground, more pain shooting through my body. “It sounds like an old story to me,” I mutter.

“Maybe,” he says, his chains rattling, “but what if it’s not?”

33

Rhi

In the end,we come to a decision that no one is particularly happy with but no one openly hates, and we all bundle into Winnie’s car; me sandwiched uncomfortably between Stone and Renzo. Being physically squeezed between the two of them is not even the most uncomfortable part, it’s the way they glare at each other over my head.