Page 100 of Haunted

“It’s broken now, trust me.” I think. I haven’t felt any emotion between us or seen anything through her mind since she exiled me.

Niawen swipes errant hairs from her forehead and then blurts her words. “I bond with you mentally. Do you accept me?”

My heart jumps. I did not expect this. I thought her more meant more physically, touches I should hold back, kisses I should not bestow.

I race through every reason that I should say no to her. I have secrets. Things I can’t let her hear. I don’t want her to search within me with her light, and now she’s asking for a mental bond, a bond that will allow her to hear my thoughts and talk to me telepathically.

Everything is telling me I should say no.

“Yes,” I whisper. I am a fool. “I bond with you mentally. Do you accept me?”

“Yes,” she says.

As a pathway opens up between us, I panic, and throw up barriers. Barriers to hide behind. I must choose what I let her hear.

Niawen and I are bonded.

She doesn’t seem at all happy.

She turns away too quickly. “You decide when you’re ready to bond physically,” she says as she hurries from the room without looking back.

Bond physically?

She just throws that out there and runs?

Physically is the last bond.

She wants them all, then.

I sink to my knees.

In essence, she wants to be my wife.

68

Normally half-emrys bond in stages. Mentally or emotionally first so they can get to know each other on a level of intimacy that no human could. After those two are in place, then half-emrys bond spiritually. This is the union of their lights, the union that makes them one. It’s nigh unbreakable. It is the union equivalent to what the humans call wed, and without it, emrys cannot bond physically without detrimental effects on their light.

The empress and I have not done this. The empress had no light to exchange, and I was living in so much darkness that when we bonded physically, it made no mark upon my heart-center.

But Niawen, though she has a shroud of darkness over her heart, she cannot have physical relations unless she bonds first.

I’m ecstatic and nervous. Our relationship has progressed much too fast. But I want it. All of it.

I have waited for centuries. Why wait longer if she is willing?

Not willing to let our new bond go to waste, I take the first peek to find out how she truly feels. I tell myself that no matter what I hear, I will not be vexed.

You make me happy, she thinks. These are my words she’s repeating back to herself.

Oh, Deian, she thinks. And I told him that deciding when to bond physically was up to him. Oh no! What was I thinking? We’re moving too fast.

I’m being too greedy.

What will our bond do to him?

You make me crazy! She screams her mental words.

I hear them loud and clear.

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