“Yes. But it would come with many challenges, as well.”
My hand closed around Raihn’s limp, bloody fingers. “I know. We would face them.”
It almost surprised me, how easily this answer came to me. It wasn’t a platitude, wasn’t a performance. It was the truth.
Acaeja stared at me for a long moment. A shiver ran up my spine—the uncomfortable feeling that my past and future were being rifled through like pages in a record log.
Then she let out a soft chuckle. “Humans,” she said softly. “Such hope.”
I waited, not breathing.
At last, she said, “If I grant this request, do you swear that to me? That you both will use the power I am granting you to fight for what is Right in this world and the next, even against great opposition?”
My heart leapt.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I do.”
“You will be under my protection as an offspring of my acolyte, and that protection will extend to him, as your heart-bonded. But understand that my cousin will not be happy about this development. She will not act against you. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday soon, Oraya of the Nightborn, there will come a day when Nyaxia brings a great reckoning. And when that day comes, you must be prepared to face her displeasure.”
Goddess fucking help us.
And maybe I was a fool for it, but I still didn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
“I see your truth. I see the possibility in both your futures. I see that there is still much to come. And for that reason, I will grant you a Coriatis bond.”
The words were so unbelievable. At first, I couldn’t even grasp them.
“Thank you,” I tried to say, but it drowned in a sob.
“Quickly,” Acaeja said. “He fades.”
My eyes fell to Raihn’s face—motionless, battered, covered in blood, features broken beyond recognition. And yet, for some reason, the image of that same face on our wedding night came to my mind. The night he had promised himself to me, and I couldn’t offer him the same.
“This will be painful,” Acaeja warned.
She touched my chest, right over my heart.
“Painful” was not the right word for it. I gasped at the bolt of agony—like someone was spearing me straight through, hooking my heart and dragging it through my ribcage.
Still, I didn’t flinch, didn’t close my eyes. I looked only at Raihn’s face. Through the haze of pain, I heard our wedding vows: I give you my body.
I give you my blood.
I give you my soul.
Acaeja drew her hand from my chest, slowly, as if pulling a great weight, and then pressed it to Raihn’s. A blinding white light engulfed us.
The pain intensified.
From this night until the end of nights.
I doubled over, my forehead leaning against Raihn’s.
From daybreak until our days are broken.
Acaeja drew her hands back, a thread of light between them.
“I bind these hearts together.” Her voice rippled through the air like water. “Their souls are one. Their power is one. From this moment, until their threads cross this mortal plane.”
Her hands splayed, twenty long fingers weaving together our fates—and then, in one abrupt movement, drawing the threads taut.
I doubled over, unable to move, to breathe. My eyes squeezed shut. My head emptied of everything except for five words: I give you my heart.
The words I wouldn’t—couldn’t—say to Raihn that night. The vow I could not make.
Now I whispered those words over and over again, clinging to them, as my soul itself shattered and reformed.
“I give you my heart,” I murmured against his skin. “I give you my heart. I give you my heart.”
The light faded. The pain ebbed.
Acaeja sounded very far away, her voice like a wave rolling from the shore, as she said, “It is done.”
The words faded off into oblivion.
And so did I.
76
ORAYA
I did not dream of Vincent.
I dreamt of nothing at all.
I opened my eyes to a blue cerulean ceiling. It was the same ceiling that I had awoken to every day for nearly twenty years. But this time, from that first moment, everything felt different. As if my innermost self had been rearranged.
I felt… stronger. Like my blood thrummed through my veins with greater force.
And…
I laid my hand over my chest. Over my heart.
And… weaker.
Like a piece of my soul, the most vulnerable part of me, was now outside my body.
My mind pieced together the events of the battle, not quite in order, and then I shot bolt upright.