Page 48 of Of Blood and Banes
“Katerina Blackwind.”
I flinch. She knows—she knows myactualname. Hearing it for the first time in so long sounds nearly foreign.
She hisses, “Answer me.”
I dip my head in response, securing the necklace to my neck and tucking it into my shirt. “I understand.”
CHAPTER 17
BREAKING BINDS
“Cole…I need to tell you something,” I whisper. Shaking my head furiously, I run a hand through my hair. It doesn’t sound right. “Cole?—”
I sigh, sagging to sit on my bed as I stare at my boots. Every practiced attempt at telling Cole of my night with Darian freezes me, my tongue refusing to move. Gods, this must be how it felt for him trying to tell me about Celeste. Even if I shouldn’t feel as guilty as I do, the emotion still gnaws inside my chest. Especially after last night…whatever it was. I’ve been running it over in my mind, remembering his touch. His kiss…I brush my fingers longingly across my lips.
A knock sounds at my door, and my blood rushes from my face into my chest. Each step across Cyrus’s old room to the door feels slow. I pull it open, and Cole is glancing over his shoulder down the street.
He turns to me. “Melaina took Darian from me and told me you sent her so I could speak to you in private.”
I motion him into the room and shut the door behind him. I take a shaky breath, my hand resting on the wooden door as I linger in the still moment. As I turn to face him, he’s unbuckling his belt and pulling the journal out from the space betweenhis right hip and bottom of his ribs. He holds the little black book out to me, and I take it as he fastens his belt. Averting my attention down to the book, I rub a thumb over the title ‘Breaking Magical Binds,’ before I flip it open to the first page.
By Leland Blackwind.
I flick up a look at Cole. “My father wrote this.”
He walks until he’s a step away from me and cranes his neck. “All the more reason to believe it, then?”
I flip through the next few pages, detailing the history of dragons and dragon riders. Once I get past the information of the first dragon riders, I pause.
What has been gathered from the Book of Magic is that most magical binds and pacts can be broken through various ways. The first is the most simple—through the Blood and Bone rings. These rings source the purest form of magic, and so they can break the strongest of bonds.
The second way is through a series of rituals, mostly performed by using dragonblood and the ancient language. Though, much of the ancient language—the language of the Gods—has been long forgotten. What translations we still know are limited and not nearly enough to break a bond that has surpassed the six-month mark. The only way to potentially break a longer pact would be if both parties are in mutual agreement of it, and the ritual is held during a celestial event. Celestial events cause surges in the ley lines, which can enhance the magical potency of dragonblood.
“Why else would Sethan have this? Does it not give you a reason to believe he might be trying to find a way out of your blood pact in the event it doesn’t serve him?” Cole murmurs.
I flip to the next page, only to find foreign characters scrawled onto it. “I don’t know…but look at this. Do you think this is the Gods’ language?”
Cole tilts his head and leans closer to me, his forehead nearly brushing mine. “I’m not sure. It doesn’t look familiar to me.”
After flipping through the rest of the book to ensure we haven’t missed anything else, I return to the last decipherable page about breaking binds.
I underline the first paragraph with my finger. “The easiest, simplest way is through using the Blood and Bone Ring. Which means, if anyone’s breaking anything, I have the upper hand.” As a reminder, I wiggle my gloved fingers.
“Who’s to say he hasn’t broken anything already? Do you think you would have felt something? Especially since he caught us…”
He trails off, and I look up from the book at him. Kissing. Caught us kissing, after curfew. My heart leaps in my chest, heat rising to my cheeks. I close the journal as he locks me into his warm honey eyes.
My voice is light. “No…I…I suppose I haven’t felt anything different…”
The rest of the room darkens around us, and I swear the lightest thing in the room is him. His heavy eyes fall to my lips, and he hesitantly brushes my hair off my shoulder to my back. He shouldn’t be touching me like this. And I shouldn’t be letting him. We’re creeping back to the deadly edge we aren’t supposed to be leaping off.
“You felt…nothing?” he breathes.
We aren’t speaking of the pacts anymore. I swallow against the tension collecting in my chest as his fingers skate too lightly against my skin. His touch ghosts against my lower back, his eyes searching mine for an answer to a secret prayer.
“Tell me it doesn’t haunt you, too. Tell me you felt nothing,” he pleads. “Tell me anything, just…let me in.”
“I…”Won’t…or can’t?A thin line separates the two words, and I’m not sure where I lie. But the truth is, I can’t deny how much I’ve dreamed of his lips on mine again…how right it feels. Even if all the circumstances point to it being wrong.
