Page 36 of A Baron of Bonds
Rauca tilted her head back and howled. I shushed her quickly, giving her more love and reassuring her that her rider was alright. Parvus trotted down the dirt path with the bag in his mouth, whining for Rauca to come along.
I watched as the giant wolves ran off into the night and sighed, thankful something had gone right.
When I turned back to the iron gate, Lynden stood in shock. “I didn’t know they could be so…tame.”
I chuckled and slapped a hand onto his shoulder. “Honestly, they’re little more than cubs half the time. Every channeler or conduit bonds to their lumen and we…understand each other.”
“But…how?”
I shrugged. “It’s just a part of the magic of Felgren. Parvus and Rauca will return in less than two days, hopefully. Will you keep an eye out for them for me?”
He stared out into the night as if he could still see the lumens, though the clouds over the moon made it unlikely he could see anything at all. “Sure. I’m happy to help.”
“Thank you, Lynden.” I hugged his brawny form in a quick squeeze and patted his shoulder, my inner clock warning me that I needed to get back to my room. “It really is good to see you again.”
He laughed and locked the iron door behind us. “You haven’t changed at all, old friend. It’s good to see you, too.”
I smiled and left, knowing full well of what he did not realize. I had changed. And as I slipped back into the castle and up to my room, I assured myself, through all the faults I still held, I had and would continue to change for the better.
Chapter 23
Rev
I grinned like a fool.
A fool in love, a fool ready to bask in the rays of someone else’s light. Not just anyone’s, but hers.
I chuckled to myself, standing in the washing room connected to my bedroom. I scrubbed at her emerald ring with a paste one of the channeler guards had given to me when I’d asked it of him.
The guards used it to shine their armor and the servants used it to shine the silverware. I used it to clean whatever was caught in Karus’s conduit ring. I had noticed that a cake of blacksomethingwas embedded in every crevice and I would not place it on her finger tonight unless it was free of whatever she had just gone through.
Where had she been? Why did she leave? What could have forced her to leave Felgren and yet let her set the rhyzolm in the grass so that I could find her?
I shook my head and kept scrubbing with the soft-bristled brush I had borrowed as well. She’d tell me when she was ready. I was impatient to know, but more so, I was thankful that she was here, in the room next to mine.
She was about tobemine.
And I hers.
Companion bonds were strong, and sure, they could be broken, but it did not happen often. I knew ours would not. After what we had already been through, I knew there was nothing,nothing, that could break what we shared.
When we were bonded as companions, our connection would be endless. The magic of the bond would pull on us at all times. Even without the rhyzolm, we would share some sense of the feelings and place of the other.
Ourliberummarks on our wrists would dissolve, and we would be free to create children.
I wanted that. I wanted to share that with her, but not yet. Styris tea would prevent it if only for a short while at a time.
I thought of how we had ravaged each other in the throne room and snickered at myself. There I was, a thirty-year-old Baron of Felgren, and I wanted her more than I ever had in my early twenties. If anything, I had only grown in my desire to kiss her, taste her, feel her writhe underneath me.
I put my tools aside and dropped the ring into the water basin to soak. I looked into the mirror and let out a long breath. Thinking of her made my eyes swirl with blue. They swirled with the color of the ocean as she had told me time and again—a place I had never even seen. They only hinted at blue when I was near her. Or when I was thinking of her.
I shook my head. What a Baron I had turned out to be.
The power of the Baron of Felgren seeped through my eyes most of the time, causing my irises to turn fully black. But somehow, my original deep blue often resisted around her. I remembered Heimlen’s gray doing the same thing on occasion, and I wondered if this warring had happened to every Baron before me.
Heimlen would have seen it as a weakness.
I saw it as a strength.
