Page 63 of Beneath the Cursed Veil

“I didn’t take the necklace off.”

“Oh good,” Kaia deadpanned. “You didn’t take off the trinket that wastemporaryand instead entered into anunbreakablevow that will last till one of you dies. Yeah, that’s so much better.”

I sighed. “This is why I didn’t ask you.”

“Because I would have talked sense into you,” she snapped. “Maybe that should have been your first hint it was a bad idea.”

“I trust her.”

“Clearly not if you did a blood oath.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “Meera has a unique ability to find things. She can find Damon, but she can’t do it without her magic. The necklace was only on her to begin with so she couldn’t persuade me. The blood oath runs deeper?—”

“Because it’s permanent!”

I leveled her with a glare. “We have no leads. Meera’s bound to a magical contract. There isn’t a trace of him. The longer that goes by?—”

Kaia threw her head back and laughed. “She’s been here all of what? Eight days? Nine?”

“We have to find Damon. You’re the one that told me sometimes sacrificeshave to be made.”

“About being king, not this!” she snapped back. “You may be able to lie to yourself, but not me. This has nothing to do with Damon and everything to do with your obsession with her.”

I slapped my hands on the desk. “If you’re just here to lecture me, you can leave.”

Kaia pressed her lips together, crossing her arms. A tense minute passed before she spoke again. “Why are you researching if you already did it?”

I ran my hand along my jaw. “Something went wrong.”

She dropped her arms immediately. “What do you mean wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. The oath just didn’t take right. It’s weird and I probably wouldn’t have questioned it if I didn’t know what it should feel like.”

Kaia glanced down at her left hand briefly, where the binding from our own blood oath was embedded in her skin. Deep red lines twisted around her wrist and down the back of her hand. They met on her palm and formed a jagged crown. Most people would mistake it for a tattoo.

My own binding matched hers but sat on my right hand. The only difference was that instead of a crown, mine became a sword.

We’d been kids when we did it. Teenagers who thought we knew everything. I remembered us being confused about why the bindings took the forms they did. They were supposed to represent us in some way and back then, I wasn’t the heir. Back then, she wasn’t a soldier.

Yet somehow, it seemed fate knew. We were always meant to end up here. I had no regrets.

“What’s different? Explain it to me.”

I tugged off my left glove, revealing my bare skin.

Kaia frowned. “So it just didn’t work?”

I shook my head. “I feel her. Flickers of emotion. Where she’s at.”

Kaia took the seat across from me, pushing the books out the way so we could see each other. “Neither of those things happened with ours. I don’t feel your emotions, thank the gods, and I definitely can’t track you with it.”

I nodded. “Same. I would assume it didn’t work if not for that.”

“Hmm.” She tilted her head back, looking off into the distance. “Do you think you formed a different kind of oath?”

“No idea. Hence, the research.” I motioned to the book in front of me.

“The lack of a binding mark makes me think it could be temporary,” she said. “So that’s good.”

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