Page 74

The Truest Of Bonds

As if his appearance unleashes them, the goddesses and Eidolon descend on Allusian. I don’t have a chance to see how, because Reven flings one hand in the air, and a bulwark of darkness barrels our way, threatening to crush us into the rock wall at our backs.

No. Not us. Me .

I do the only thing I can—I let go of Tabra and tap into Eidolon’s power, then burrow a tunnel through Reven’s weapon, the ground shaking as it hits behind us.

“He’s going to kill you!” the Shadows shout as one.

Already he’s flinging another, then another, and I manage to bore through each one, though I’m barely keeping up. Meanwhile, with booms and flashes and movement faster than I can track, the goddesses and Eidolon fight around us.

The crackle of Hakan’s lightning sounds from directly behind me. Using me to hide what he’s doing? Only he can’t use it on Reven. He’ll kill him. “Don’t.”

“When I say,” Hakan says in a low voice, “step as close to me as you can without touching me.”

He’s going to put the cage around us again.

“Three…” he says.

I tunnel through another and another.

“Two…”

“No,” Tabra suddenly snarls in a voice I’ve never heard from her before.

Reven’s body jerks, going strangely stiff, chin up, legs together, arms pinned to his sides. Even his jaw looks frozen in place. Only his eyes move, flicking around the room like he’s searching for the source of this new attack.

Then Reven’s jaw cranks open as if forced. It looks like he’s yelling but instead of sound, a hazy cloud curls out of his mouth like smoke.

She’s pulling his soul out.

“Stop!” I yell.

Tabra’s going to kill him. Despite the chaos of the goddesses fighting around us, I see Eidolon pause to look at what Tabra’s doing…and smile.

No way is that asshole going to get what he wants.

“He’s not Reven,” Tabra says. Tears are thick in her voice. She doesn’t want to do this, but she will if she has to.

I whirl to face my sister. “One of Eidolon’s ghosts is inside him.”

Her gaze darts between me and Reven, brows drawing down. If anyone knows what that’s like, Tabra does. “Can you get it out of him?” she asks.

Reven tried with her and failed. But Eidolon was able to, so I know it’s possible.

“Let me try,” I beg her. “If I don’t…kill him.” I have to choke out those last two words.

“Do it,” she says. “Fast. He’s fighting me.”

And she’s already drained from releasing the goddesses.

In the next second, Allusian hits Tyndra in the chest with a beam of blue light. No sparking. No sizzling. Just pure light.

Desperation whirls me back around, and without so much as a blink of hesitation, I rush at Reven and put my hands to his face.

“This time I know what I’m doing, you bastard.”

These ghosts are made of shadow, and Scoria made sure I know what to do with those.

I send my shadows—the part of me that is and always has been Reven and not the bloody king—searching. Sneaking inside his being through what’s left of the bond between me and Reven, like threading a needle.

Then I do what I saw Eidolon do with my sister the day he pulled his parasitic ghost from her body. I shove shadow down my bondmate’s throat. Reven’s blue eyes bulge and he gags, his body trying to thrash against the restraints Tabra and I both have around him.

I feel around his insides, but all I sense is darkness. Reven chokes. I’m going to kill him if I don’t hurry. I slam my eyes shut and focus the way Scoria taught me. I picture the souls contained in him like different lights rather than simple darkness. Suddenly the image in my mind is as clear as if I were truly looking at it.

The darkness around me is so complete that without the lights from those shards of soul, I’ll drown in it. I look everywhere, searching.

And then I see it.

A brilliant white light is so far down I only see it as a pinprick, but I know without question that it is Reven.

My light in the darkness.

I consider pulling him up to help, but I don’t have enough time.

A boom rocks me from the outside. Rocks us both. But I can’t stop to find out what’s happening around us.

I focus on Reven’s light. If he’s down here… I look the other way. Sure enough, there’s the ghost. His light is a muddy brownish-green, like the excrements of someone who suffers from the bowel sickness.

I cast my shadows over that poison like a scoop. “Got you.”

I open my eyes and I’m in my own body again, solid shadow shoved down my lover’s throat. Reven’s eyes have rolled back and his body isn’t fighting anymore, arms and head limp, held up only by my shadows. Tabra’s let him go now. I can feel it.

I can also see why. Eidolon is suspended in midair, arms and legs splayed, with fear in his eyes as she tries to suck out his soul. But through the curse connecting us, I can feel his power gathering, and gathering, and gathering.

I need to move fast.

Yanking hard, I pull my net of darkness up and out of Reven as fast as I can, and with it, the ghostly soul.

Darkness erupts from Eidolon like a physical force.

I brace myself, only suddenly Aryd is there, brightness exploding from her palms and forming a shield around us—the light of the moons that she wields. The darkness ricochets back at Eidolon as the three goddesses continue throwing power at each other. All four of them tumble across the floor.

Aryd’s across the room in a heartbeat, joining their fight as they regain their feet.

“Scoria!” I call, praying to Allusian that the giantess can get to me fast.

The thing in my net goes wild, fighting and clawing and screaming to be released like a feral sandcat. At the same time, Reven pitches forward and spits what at first looks like blood, except it’s black, reminding me of the shadow souls that took over the Shadowood—a sticky tar-like substance. And it just keeps coming.

“Scoria!” I yell again, then I call for her mate. “Basalt!”

“I am here, young Imperium.”

Without a word, I shove the ghost at her. She takes him and disappears again, and the shout of a remnant of one of Eidolon’s past lives cuts off abruptly.

“Keep them off us,” I toss over my shoulder to Hakan as I release my hold on Eidolon’s power. The cold recedes with such force my head feels like it’s splitting open, but I ignore that to rush to Reven’s side. He’s still purging the shiny, sticky darkness.

I put a hand to his back. “What can I do?”

He holds up a hand, shaking his head.

“What’s happening? Is it the Shadows?”

Another shake of his head. Panic starts to gnaw at me.

He heaves one more time, then takes a long, shuddering breath. Is it all gone?

“Meren.”

His voice bursts into my mind as he surges upright, and I am finally gazing into the brilliant turquoise of his eyes.

“It’s me,” he says through harsh breaths. “All of me.” Then his voice rings in my head. “All of us. You and me.”

I gasp. Just like the night we were bound to each other in the temple in Tropikis, heat coalesces in my core, rises inside me, then bursts outward. It fizzes through my insides to come out of my skin, not just where the thread the priestess connected us with touched my arm, but everywhere. I’m…glowing. So is Reven. And like before, the burn is almost unbearable. I manage to swallow my whimpers, until with no warning, the pain subsides, leaving only a sense of completeness. Wholeness.

Our bond.

It’s no longer broken. It’s whole again. Perfect.

Reven yanks me into his arms, holding me so tight I can’t breathe. And I don’t care.

“How?” I ask. Or wheeze, more accurately.

“Our bond wasn’t severed,” he says into my hair with a voice that shakes. “It was—”

“Poisoned.” We both think the word together.

I can picture the glittering lines of our bond in my head, the blackened ends that looked as though they’d been burned. They weren’t burned, they were buried under… I glance at the splatter of toxic darkness on the floor. Under that. Because of the ghost Eidolon infected Reven with.

“I’m sorry.” He’s still holding me tight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I carried that—”

I put a finger to his lips and rush my own words. “How could you?” I gaze into the face of my true bondmate. All of him here with me. Finally. And what’s more important, this time I believe the finally.

Reven stares at me, then kisses the tip of my finger and we smile at each other.

This.

Reven.

He is worth living for, more than anything else in my life. More than the legions fighting on our behalf, the dominion given into our hands to protect, all of Nova even.

They’re worth fighting for. Even dying for.

He is worth living for.

“Let go of my son, you bitch,” Tyndra snarls.