Page 71 of Ties of Shadow

Before us, the scene was in chaos. The mammals and the Shade were pushed back to the top of the crumbled balcony mound. Leon had climbed up an archer tower to try attacking from a different angle. His flames were still scorching, even though he looked exhausted.

But something wasn’t right; I could see through the Shade’s shadows.

“Uncle Koll, is something wrong with the Shade?”

Chapter twenty-eight

Freedom of Choice

Iwatched with increasing horror as the Shade whipped his shadows around the courtyard, pushing, shielding, and battling the worm. It wasn’t like the morning he’d fought the prince at the manor. His shadows weren’t as dark or thick as they’d been when the prince attacked us, or during the ballroom fight. Their reach wasn’t as far. Their lines seemed almost whispers as opposed to the ferocious and indefensible force of nature I’d come to know. In between attacks, the Shade was heaving deep breaths.

“Uncle Koll, what is happening?” I asked, turning my back on the king regent.

He was silent. I turned to him, but he was watching the Shade, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed tightly in unspoken words.

“Uncle Koll, why isn’t he fighting at full strength? He’s usually better than this.”

“He’s fighting with everything he has.” His voice was quiet, the acceptance a death knoll.

We watched as the worm bore down again, and the Shade ducked to the side. A shadow barely caught him, and his head whipped hard toward the ground.

“Why is he so much weaker now? The prince looks tired, but his magic is just as strong.”

Uncle Koll dragged a hand over his face. “Oh stars, he’ll hate me.”

“What is it?”

Jamison flitted overhead, hovering before me.“You did this. The master is suffering from half a bond.”

Half a… “What did you say?”

“When you came to us…he bonded himself to you to save your life.” Uncle Koll’s hand clasped my arm. “That’s why you can hear the creatures. That’s why the marking is distinct but seems to bother you. It’s incomplete.”

I touched my neck. “But I had the mark before I came to you.”

“Master said he’d seen you in the forest when you were trespassing. He noted your clumsiness even then.”

The Shade had been the forester…and he had caught me, placing his hand on my neck. That was our first touch, and though I’d had a tiny dot there before, it was when the mark had first expanded like a twisting bloom. It was, even now, a black whisp curling up and curling down—not full circles. Was the mark…if the Shade was the boy from my childhood…had it started forming then? But the Shade didn’t have a matching bond mark.

Jamison continued. “That’s why he’s weakening. It’s why he’s been limping. He continues to feed his magic into you, but there’s nothing going back into him. As I said, you are a leech.”

Cold flooded my chest. He’d bonded with me. “Why would he half-bond, and why didn’t he tell me?” And where was his bond mark?

“You’d have to ask him that. But if I were to guess, I’d say he was unwilling to steal any more of your freedom after you’d already sacrificed so much to others. He wants you utterly whole and unbound, as you told him you wished to be. He would rather die so you would beuntethered—and therefore free to choose—than think you had to choose him against your will. Against your conscience.”

“He’s such a fool,”the bat hissed.

I whirled to watch this man—this idiot of a man—throw everything he had at the worm. The prince had been knocked off the tower, but he looked okay. He struggled to heave himself back from the battle scene; a soldier ran to pull him toward the wall. The Shade stood alone in the center. He knew he was weak and had gone anyway. I remembered him trying our various potions, but they must not have worked. He wasn’t weak because the earth was sick. He was weak because he was giving his strength to me. No wonder I had healed so quickly. And now, he was going to lose.I know what I want.The memory was as clear in my memory as if he were saying it again in my ear.

What did I want?

Bonded. Enslaved. That’s what a bond had always meant to me—a connection where, if you lost them, you lost everything. If you lost your partner, you lost your will to live and your will to love ever again. But that hadn’t been true for Uncle Koll.

“You said it was worth it?” I turned to him, searching his face for the answer. “To bond even though you lost her?”

“Every second with her is one that I would never exchange for anything in the world. My loss is great, because my love is greater, Aelia. Love is worth the risk.”

The Shade was willing to die for me. He knew how I felt about bonding. He knew the pain caused by my father and the loss of my mother. He knew the half-bond would save my life, but I hadn’t known fully what I was agreeing to. At that time, I wanted him to save me from everything, including death. He had acted. And now he stood alone, fighting off a creature he could never defeat byhimself—one that, though blistered and angry, didn’t seem to be slowing in the least.

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