Page 7 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile
“I think water replaced the air in your lungs. Can you feel it?” she cooed, savoring the fear in the amber eyes as the male shook his head.
“Please!” someone begged, and this time the voice tugged at her heart. “Lessia!”
Tugged so hard her heart skipped a beat.
Frelina. That was Frelina’s voice.
Focus.
She whipped her head around, but the cellar was empty.
Where had the guards gone?
As she brought her eyes back to the king, her question got stuck in her throat.
Soft, bright amber eyes met her own.
Not muddled, hard ones.
Her father’s eyes flooded with tears as he grasped at his throat, the gurgling sound no longer pleasing her but driving a cold sweat across her skin.
“Lessia! Please!” her sister called out again.
Was this another mind trick to stop her from getting to the king?
Focus.
Rubbing her arms, she tried to get her mind to close, tried to force the magic within it away, tried to understand what was real.
As she trailed her fingers across the scars, the letters marking her arm, she reminded herself that the king had had her sister and father.
The letters were real.
They couldn’t create those by capturing her mind.
It’s the same one.
That’s what Merrick had told her.
You and me.
They were real.
Elessia and Merrick.
They were real.
That meant…
Fuck!
Lessia quickly pulled on the magic that had drifted away.
“Breathe. You can breathe!” she urged her father, and when a rattling sound rumbled in his chest, she released a breath, catching him when his knees buckled.
As she pulled one of her father’s arms over her shoulders, her magic burned behind her eyes and she snapped it inward, theway she’d done when training with Raine, Kerym, and Frelina, and upon finding blazing green eyes—the eyes she’d cursed for so many years—she screamed at them to get out, to leave her alone.
And as soon as they flickered, her walls flew up.
