Page 46 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams (Fated to the Sun and Stars #3)

I don’t have any response to that. I have the knee-jerk instinct to thank him for talking this out with me—but then I realize that no, actually, I don’t feel very thankful after all.

Apparently, the fae have been keeping something from me, and until I know exactly what it is, I don’t know how hurt to be.

When I leave, I also don’t say a word to Harman, who’s hovering out in the corridor. I’m too focused on seeing Leon, on imagining his expression when I ask him the question I’ve been holding back for too long.

“Ana.” Leon’s by the door when I come in. “I was just going to come and find you. I felt… ”

He trails off when he sees my expression, not needing some magical link to understand that I’m upset.

“You felt what, Leon? My emotions? Did you hear my thoughts?” I turn and sit down on one of the chairs by the small table in the corner.

“I think it’s time we had a discussion about why you’re suddenly so well acquainted with what’s going on inside my head.

What does that location spell of yours really do? ”

He hesitates, and I feel a surge of frustration. “Leon, just tell me, for gods’ sakes! Whatever it is, it can’t be so terrible. You wouldn’t have done it if it was; I know that much.”

Whatever else might be true, I know that Leon loves me—would die for me. Whatever solution he found might have been drastic, but it wouldn’t condemn me to a life of misery. And yet he stands there like he doesn’t know what to say.

I sigh. “Leon?—”

“If I tell you, there’s no going back,” he blurts out.

“What do you mean there’s no going back? You mean the magic can’t be undone? It already seems pretty permanent to me. You said the side effects would fade, but the opposite is true. I’m starting to hear your thoughts like you’re speaking them aloud. How in the world is that possible?”

He runs a hand over his face and slumps down into the chair on the other side of the table. He looks like a man who’s collapsed under a heavy weight he can’t carry a step further.

“It’s known as the sawlamoor,” he says. “It’s a type of bond, or mooring, as we call it. It’s a piece of magic that connects two people.”

“Alastor said that it’s not usually used to locate someone,” I say. Leon’s eyebrows rise, and I shrug, unapologetic. “I forced it out of him.”

“Did he say who uses the sawlamoor?”

“No.” My stomach’s in my throat, making it hard to swallow.

“It’s usually two people in love.”

I take a deep breath. “Like a marriage? ”

Leon shakes his head. “No. We have marriage ceremonies in Filusia just like in Trova, but the sawlamoor is different. Most couples never enter into a mooring. It’s considered…extreme, by many. A connection so deep it binds a couple together: mind, body, and soul.”

“And you and I are...moored?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice calm.

“Yes.” He drops his gaze, looking at his hands, and a wave of pain crosses his face.

I feel the wave of pain run through him, as if it had ricocheted through my own chest. “You were gone, I knew you were likely being tortured, and soon Caledon would kill you. I was ready to destroy Qimorna to find you, but I couldn’t guarantee that would get me to you quickly enough.

Mooring us was the only way I could be sure I’d find you.

So we started the ritual. That was enough for me to reach you in your dreams.”

“Will you accept it, Ana? It means we can be together again, but you have to say yes.”

My hand goes to my throat as I remember the locket he gave me in that dream, the gift he asked me to accept. I’d known at the time there was something special about it, that nothing would be the same afterward.

“That’s what I said yes to in the dream? The sawlamoor?” I ask, my mind still half in the memory.

“Yes,” he says heavily. “A mooring deepens over time the more committed a couple become to each other, but I thought if you didn’t know about it—didn’t really understand what it meant—then it wouldn’t impact you too greatly.

It feeds off the commitment people make to it, starting with an increased sense of each other.

But I knew there were other, more serious side effects.

Eventually, couples can hear each other’s thoughts and emotions.

It’s a deep, lifelong set of ties, but you hadn’t chosen them and might never want that.

I thought I could stop it getting to that point as long as I was careful. ”

“Careful in hiding it from me,” I say flatly. I’m wondering how I couldn’t have been more suspicious before now. I’d never heard of a location spell before and didn’t think such magic was possible.

“Ana, you have to believe me, I didn’t tell you because I wanted to give you a choice,” Leon says imploringly. “Yes, I had to bind us to save you, but I didn’t want to decide your fate for you. ”

“And what kind of choice did I have, when you kept the information from me?” I ask, my voice hard.

I’ve gone backward in time. Traveled back to the days when Leon was keeping a thousand secrets from me, when he kept me trapped in the dark for so long, refusing to give me answers.

“I’ll admit that now the mooring has grown so strong, I’ve been wondering if keeping it from you was even possible anymore,” Leon says.

“I made a mistake. I underestimated how the strength of what we felt for each other would empower the spell, no matter what I did. But I won’t apologize for linking us in the first place Ana, not when it saved your life. ”

I shake my head because he’s so completely missing the point.

“I thought we were passed this,” I say. “I thought you were done lying to me.”

“I thought I was protecting y?—”

“No, don’t say it,” I interrupt him. “I can’t accept that as an excuse anymore.

I told you in Agathyre, Leon. I love that you protect me, but it has to be on my terms too.

I have to get a say in when and what you’re protecting me from; otherwise, I might as well just be some doll you tote around with you. ”

“That’s not fair, Ana,” his voice is low with anger. “You know I never thought of you that way.”

“But you treated me that way,” I say. “Like I didn’t have the ability or the strength to handle the consequences of what you’d done.”

He stands abruptly, startling me. “And if I had told you, would you have done anything differently?”

I stare at him, feeling the pain still roiling through him and searching for its source. Rejection. That’s what the emotion is. He feels rejected by me. For all his desire to give me a choice, he’s afraid that I’m repelled by what he’s done—that I hate the idea of being bound to him.

I don’t. Of course I don’t. And if he’d given me the choice, told me everything when he visited me in that dream, I’d have said yes.

I might have freaked out about it later when the mooring deepened and I realized just how powerful it was, but I can’t imagine a version of events where I would have rejected him…

if he’d been honest with me. But he wasn’t.

And if I can’t trust him, where does that leave us?

“I’ve been lied to by so many people in my life to keep me safe,” I say. “But I thought you understood that I’m not so weak I need to be tricked and deceived for my own good.”

A wave of exhaustion washes over me, and I’m done discussing this. At least, for now. I need to sit with it all for a while. I stand and move away from the table.

“I’ll sleep in Tira’s room tonight,” I say, not looking back at him.

Tira. Gods, how I wish she was here right now.

Leon doesn’t say anything else as I gather my things and leave the room. But I can feel every inch of his sorrow in my own heart. At least now I know what it means—I’m tied to him with a bond that will not break, no matter how much I wish in this moment that my pain was just my own.