Page 60 of Enchanted Crown
“If we can rouse him tomorrow,” Malachi laughed. “The man is dead on his feet. He just shifted today. You know how those first shifts take it out of you.”
“I’m fine,” I argued. “Other than the disappointment in not being able to breathe fire.”
Esta laughed and gestured to Malachi. “Go. We all need the sleep. We will discuss what to tell my advisors and family tomorrow.”
Finally, we were alone in my room. I felt the heaviness of sleep calling to me, but there was something we needed to discuss first.
“Esta?” I asked gently.
“Yes?”
She looked as sleepy as I felt. “Is there a reason you have not spoken to me down our bond?” It had been bothering me all day. I had tried twice now, and though I could have sworn she heard and felt it, she’d done nothing back. Said nothing back. Was the tether not as strong for her or something?
“I—” she paused. “Let me be clear. It is not that I am disappointed we are soul bound.”
I grabbed her hand and kissed her palm, giving her the space to explain and fighting my urge to get defensive.
“I just know the gravity of what it means. I do not reject it. Do not reject you. Just please let me come to it on my own terms. I am a bit surprised.”
“I thought you wanted this?” I asked her. “It was your idea.”
“Keir, again, I donotregret this,” she said her eyes on mine. “Not for a moment. This is justmorethan I ever could have imagined. Heart bound was what I wanted and thought I needed, but to find out we aresoul bound?”
“What is your issue with soul bondings?”
“The issue is that I am angry. At myself. For the way I treated you when you first arrived. The way I shoved you away. The way I assumed we could not be...this. The way I ever foolishly assumed I could get you out of my system.” She inhaled deep and closed her eyes a moment. “I do not regret this at all, but I am not ready to forgive myself for the way I treated my soul mate.”
“Es,” I tried. “There is nothing to forgive.” She was punishing herself and it was entirely unnecessary.
She brushed at a tear. “I will get there, okay? Give me some time? I feel it. I know it’s there.” She looked at our hands and again repeated, “I just have to come to it on my own terms. Our heart beats are the same rhythm now, Keir. And it is the most beautiful but terrifying thing to me. I can protect myself. I would die for Dra Skor. But I cannot andwill notlose you.” Her voice caught and dragged over the words, “I just cannot.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered.
“I know,” she agreed. “But I heard you say to Malachi when I was in and out of sleep that I am now unbreakable. Which simply isn’t true. If something were to happen to you, I would break so hard I would never possibly be whole again.” She took a shaky breath. “My nana and my grandfather were soul bound. When he died it took heryearsto recover. I have seen what a bond like that does to a dragon shifter when they lose their bond. She felt him in life, and she also felt and suffered his death right along with him.”
I tried to picture that against the strong woman I knew her grandmother to be. How deeply life and love had cut her.
“You are my greatest love, also my greatest weakness because now all of Dra Skor will know that to get to me, all they must do is get to you. And my dragon instincts want to burn whomever and whatever would dare come near you. I’ve suspected before now that they are after you, but knowing what you are to me, my instincts are raging at me to keep you safe.” Another pause, one long enough I wondered if she was fighting the urge to shift. “That was why I pushed for this to remain a secret for now. Because until we unmask the real monsters of Dra Skor, I do not want them to know how closely we are tied.”
“How fiercely we choose one another,” I added, finally understanding where she was coming from. She was scared. Not of the bond itself, but of all that it meant, of how it would all play out back in Dra Skor. Her intention was to protect. “I’m not sure I cankeep myself from using our bond,” I told her. “It feels too natural. Too right for me to do so.”
“You may use it.” She smiled at me. “And I will use it back when I’m ready. I just need to come to grips with how close I was to destroying the best thing that ever happened to me. And that whatever is going on in Dra Skor may come for you because of this. Because of me. I foolishly thought I needed this to keep you safe, I should have considered this possibility more, what our being soul bound would do. The danger it now places you in.”
“They’ve been coming for you for months, Es,” I reminded her.
“They can come forme. That I can handle, but I cannot handle them coming foryou. I would set the entire realm ablaze, flying high in the clouds while I watched it all burn, before I would allow them to do that.”
I smirked. “That’s rather violent of you.”
“Fierce,” she said, repeating my earlier word, “you will soon learn does not even begin to cover how a dragon shifter feels toward their mate.”
CHAPTER 22
“Try to use your entire body when flying,” Malachi instructed. “You will your body to shift forms, yes, but we also move our human bodies when willing our other form forward. We move with it, into it.”
That made sense. I had seen Amory shift and it felt like her human body shook slightly just before her tigress form came out.
“You can do it so fast, though.” Calling my wings out and willing them back down still took me more than a minute to manage. If not more so.
