In the Veins of the Drowning(71)

He raised his hand to my chin. He tipped it up and let his lips hover over mine. “Say it, Imogen.”

I opened my mouth, trying to get the words to form on my tongue. I knew the whole of the prophecy. Keeping one another was an utter impossibility, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

He waited, gaze locked with mine, and then he lowered his mouth until our breaths became one. “Tell me that this—what’s between us—is just our bond.”

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Finally, I shook my head. “There’s too much against us,” I whispered. “This—what’s between us—will end, and it will end terribly.”

“You can’t know that.”

I can. I do.

My eyes fell shut, chest crushing, and still, I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words I should. “Let’s get to the palace first,” I finally said. “Then we can decide.”

He let go of my jaw. Took a wide step back, so we each stood on one side of the rift that sat between us.

“We should eat,” I said, flatly. “And sleep.” He nodded, slipping behind a stern mask. “We need to get back as soon as we can.”

The next morning, the sky was a deep gray, low and thick with yesterday’s storm clouds. I fed my horse an apple as Theodore said his goodbyes. Last night, we’d eaten in silence propped up against the pillows. We’d fallen asleep almost instantly on our respective sides of the mattress. When we woke, we were so knotted together, it was as if we’d tried to climb into one another in the night.

We mounted and started down the muddy road, the air between us strained and misshapen. The horses’ hooves squelched. The sky released a light misty rain over us in fits and starts.

“Rested enough to try to ride through the night?” I called up to him.

“Yes.” His answer was cold and concise.

We made good time, and as we rode, my mind scrambled for a plan. When we finally did reach the palace, Lachlan and Agatha would make Theodore see sense. We would perform the severing ritual, free ourselves of our compromised blood bond, and then I could leave and sever the one I shared with Eusia. Only, I had no idea where to find her.

The day darkened, the sun a shocking spill of red over the horizon. The horses drank from a storm-swollen stream while Theodore and I perched on two rocks, eating the bread and cheese Antonia had packed us. “What do you know of magic?” I asked, picking at the crust. “Of the Mage Seers’ spells.”

Theodore shook his head, his dour gaze somewhere off in the distance. “Not much.”

I gave an annoyed huff. “That means you know some.”

He finally deigned to look at me, only to give a scowl.

“I’m tired of your snit,” I spat at him. “You’re mad at me. You think I’m being illogical and absurd to even suggest we unbind. I get it. Be big enough to help me come up with a fucking plan regardless.” I ripped off a bite of bread and chewed. “If I can understand how magic works, then I can possibly narrow down a way to find and end Eusia. She uses magic the way Rohana does, I expect.”

Angry color had risen high on Theodore’s cheeks, but he kept a hold on himself. “I don’t know where she would have learned it,” he relented. “It’s highly regulated. A Mage Seer is permitted one apprentice ten years before her tenure is done.” He rose and went to his mare, guiding her from the stream and back to the road.

I followed, thoughts churning. “How long is a Mage Seer’s tenure?”

“Four hundred years.” He put his foot in a stirrup and mounted. “Rohana is two hundred and seventy-eight years into her tenure.”

“So if I’d killed her, like I nearly had, Varya would have been left without a Mage Seer indefinitely.”

“Correct.”

I groaned as I pulled myself up into my saddle. “Where did Rohana learn magic?”

“None of them are old enough to have been taught by the First Mage, I don’t think. I can’t remember when she died. Spells are passed down, but Rohana and all the other kingdoms’ Mage Seers create a lot of spells that are entirely their own too.”

“They create their own spells?” I could only assume the spell that Eusia had used to bind us was her own.

Theodore gave a solemn nod. “The transference ritual my father performed—Rohana is the only one in Leucosia who can do it.” He was thoughtful for a moment as we moved out of the stream clearing. “I don’t know much about the First Mage, but I do remember that she was executed, gutted if my memory is correct, for the way she used magic. There’s little in the histories about her. She was executed back in the First Years, when the Great Gods were new. That’s all I know.”

We wound down a sloping hill, back into the vineyards we’d traveled through on the way north. “Rohana said that our bond—mine and Eusia’s—was forged by taking the Siren bond and mixing it with magic. She said I was the one who had performed the spell—that I would have to be the one to break it. But I have no idea how.”

We rode side by side. “The ritual,” he said. “The prayer Nemea would make you recite. What was it, again?”

“‘I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me. Cleanse the sea.’” The words left an acerbic film over my tongue.