Page 70 of The Bond That Burns

“Takes one to know one,” I muttered. “Next you’ll be telling me you don’t drink from the house thralls.”

“I’ve switched to sellbloods. You made them sound so great, I couldn’t help myself.”

She batted her eyes at me. I couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.

“In any case,” she went on. “I’d make a fucking fantastic Second and you’d be lucky to have me. That’s if I even agreed to accept the position. Right now, with you constantly losing your shit...” She shrugged expressively.

“What?” I demanded.

“Well, let’s see. You could pick a suck-up like Laurent who keeps following you around or you could pick someone who isn't afraid to tell it to you straight.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but she had a point.

“Like right now. I’m going to tell it to you straight, Blake. Are you ready? Oh, that’s right, I don’t fucking care.” She leaned towards me. “You’re losing her. Everything you do is making it worse, not better.”

“Pendragon?” I tried to laugh. “I don’t care if she hates me.”

“But that’s just it. You clearly do care. I don’t know if you’re falling for her–”

“That’s absurd,” I interrupted. “We’re highbloods.” Visha should know better. We didn’t mate for love. That was the whole point of triads–stability and strength. My parents were the only exception I could think of. And look what had happened to them.

Last year I may have come close to thinking of Pendragon as something more, but I’d been delusional. Just look at us now.

She shrugged. “Whatever you say. So maybe it’s all about staking your claim and you just really, really want to get in her pants. Either way, what you’re doing right now isn’t going to get you there.”

“Oh, no?” I snapped. “And just what would the genius Visha Vaidya do in my shoes?”

“You could start with apologizing for one. Because you and I both know you fucked up. And after that? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe learn how to actually seduce someone instead of justacting like a cave bear and pounding on things hoping she’ll swoon at your feet?” Visha suggested.

Blunt as a brick, that was Visha. “I’ve never had a problem getting a woman,” I bragged.

“Right. You could have any highblood girl you wanted.” She smirked. “Well, most of them. But that’s the problem. You don’t want them. You wanther. So maybe you’d better stop doubling down and start trying to fix your shit.”

I slouched in my seat. I knew Visha was right... even though I wasn’t about to come right out and say it.

She glanced at the door. “Here comes Rodriguez. You’re about to be saved. But think about what I said, asshole. And another thing,” she added. “If you’re going to keep treating everyone like pawns in your personal drama, could you at least pick a Second who won’t let you spiral into self-destruction? Laurent would follow you off a cliff, but he wouldn’t stop you from jumping.”

I scowled. “Let me guess—you’d have my back, would you?”

“Without hesitation,” she said. “That’s assuming you managed to pull your head out of your own ass long enough to earn my respect again.”

And with that she turned to her parchment, leaving me to stew in silence.

I leaned back in my seat as Rodriguez’s lecture began, but my mind was far from historical strategy.

“You’re losing her.”The words cut deeper than I wanted to admit. Pendragon shouldn’t have mattered this much in the first place. She’d been assigned to me. I hadn’t chosen her. We wereboth Viktor’s pawns in a game of power I’d been trapped in my entire life.

But it didn’t feel that simple anymore. Not since she’d walked away, taking something with her, something that had left me with a burning ache in the vicinity of my chest.

Visha was scribbling notes, totally oblivious to the chaos she’d just unleashed in my head.

I hated that I didn’t know how to fix this. I’d started something and now, like a fire burning out of control, I wasn’t sure I could stop it.

Highbloods didn’t apologize. Not to one another. Certainly not to blightborn.

But maybe that was the problem. Pendragon wasn’t like anyone else—not any other consort or any other blightborn or highblood, for that matter. She was like no one I’d ever met. And it terrified me.

I could feel the weight of our bond tugging at me. Always present, faint but persistent.

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