The army
1569 Words
FARAH
The first arrow strikes before I hear the order to fire.
Through the bond, I feel Caspian move—impossibly fast, inhumanly precise. His sword deflects the projectile with a shriek of metal that I experience as a shudder down my spine. Then another arrow. Another. A storm of them, whistling through the air like deadly rain.
He doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t flinch.
Instead, he advances.
The shock of it ripples through Morgaine’s forces—I feel it in the hesitation, the collective intake of breath. They expected him to fall back, to hide behind his walls. Instead, he’s walking toward them like death itself, arrows shattering against the shield of raw power he’s projecting.
My power, I realize dimly. Mixed with his. Woven together into something neither of us could create alone.
“Farah.” Meira’s voice sounds very far away. “Child, you need to pull back. Your nose is bleeding.”
Is it? I can’t feel it. Can’t feel anything except Caspian and the battle and the terrible, exhilarating rush of our combined strength.
“Just… a little longer,” I manage.
Through his eyes—because somehow I’m seeing through his eyes now—I watch Morgaine step forward. She’s beautiful in the way venomous things are beautiful. Dark hair, darker eyes, lips curved in a smile that promises suffering.
“Impressive,” she calls out. “Tell me, Caspian—is this desperation or delusion? You can’t possibly think you can stand against my entire army.”
“I don’t need to stand against your army.” His voice is calm, cold. “I just need to stand against you.”
Her smile widens. “Such arrogance. I’d forgotten how tedious it becomes.”
She raises her hand.
The air itself screams.
Magic erupts from her palm—not fire or ice or lightning, but something worse. Corruption. Pure, distilled wrongness that makes reality buckle and twist. It tears across the space between them like a wound in the world.
Caspian doesn’t try to dodge.
He meets it head-on with a blast of silver-white power that I barely recognize as his magic anymore. It’s too bright, too fierce. Amplified beyond anything one person should be able to channel.
The two forces collide in a thunderclap that I feel in my teeth, my bones, the marrow of my soul.
The ground beneath Caspian’s feet cracks. Spider-web fractures race outward in all directions, and through the bond I feel the strain, the way holding back that much destructive force is tearing him apart from the inside.
“More,” he grits out, though I don’t know if he’s talking to himself or to me.
I give him more.
Power floods through the bond in a torrent that makes my vision white out. Somewhere distant, my body convulses. Meira is shouting something, but the words are meaningless noise beneath the roar of magic.
Caspian pushes back.
Morgaine’s corruption shatters like glass, dissolving into black smoke that writhes and screams before dissipating.
For one heartbeat, there’s silence.
Then Morgaine laughs.
“There you are,” she purrs. “There’s the mate-bond I’ve been waiting for. I was beginning to think you’d never fully open it again. Not after what happened with—”
“Say her name,” Caspian interrupts, his voice deadly soft, “and I’ll show you exactly what I’m capable of.”
“Serapha.” Morgaine practically sings it. “Serapha, Serapha, Serapha. Poor, mad, broken Serapha who thought she could handle the bond with a lord as powerful as you. Who burned herself out trying to keep up.”
Rage crashes through me—mine or his, I can’t tell anymore.
“This one will be different, though, won’t she?” Morgaine continues, circling now like a predator. “I can feel her through your connection. So much raw potential, barely tapped. Tell me, is she burning yet? Can she feel herself being consumed?”
“Farah isn’t Serapha,” Caspian says.
“No. She’s weaker.”
“She’s stronger.”
The absolute conviction in his voice makes my heart stutter.
“Strong enough to survive you?” Morgaine’s smile is razor-sharp. “We’ll see. I give her a month before the bond reduces her to ash and echoes. But don’t worry—I’ll be sure to visit you afterward, when you’re alone again. Broken again. Mine again.”
Something in me snaps.
I don’t decide to do it. Don’t plan it or think it through. I just act.
I stop pushing power toward Caspian and instead yank on the bond as hard as I can, pulling myself toward him through the connection.
The world inverts.
Suddenly I’m not in the sanctum anymore. I’m standing—no, floating—on the battlefield, translucent and shimmering like a ghost. Not fully physical but not entirely absent either. Some impossible in-between state that shouldn’t exist.
Meira’s horrified voice echoes from very far away: “What have you done?”
Both Caspian and Morgaine freeze, staring at me.
“Farah.” Caspian’s voice is strangled. “You can’t be here. You’re not—this isn’t—”
“Fascinating,” Morgaine breathes. “She’s projected her consciousness through the bond. I’ve never seen anyone do that without years of training.” Her eyes narrow with predatory interest. “You’re full of surprises, little mate.”
I ignore her, focusing on Caspian. Even in this strange half-state, I can feel his panic, his terror. Not for himself—for me.
“I’m not leaving,” I say. My voice sounds odd, layered, like multiple versions of myself speaking at once. “And I’m not dying. So you can both stop talking about me like I’m some fragile thing destined to break.”
“Farah—”
“No.” I turn to face Morgaine fully, and some distant part of me marvels at my own stupidity. “You want to know if I’m strong enough? Fine. Let’s find out.”
I reach for the bond again, but this time I don’t just push power through it. I open it completely, dropping every barrier, every shield, every scrap of self-preservation I have left.
The effect is instantaneous and catastrophic.
Power detonates between us—not just Caspian’s magic or mine, but something entirely new. The bond itself, made manifest. Silver and gold light erupts in a pillar that reaches toward the sky, so bright that Morgaine’s soldiers cry out and shield their eyes.
Through the connection, I feel Caspian’s shock, his awe, his terror.
What are you doing? his thoughts scream at me.
Proving a point, I send back.
The light intensifies. Reality buckles. For one impossible moment, I can feel everything—every soldier on the battlefield, every civilian in the sanctum, every stone in the walls and blade of grass in the field. All of it connected, all of it singing with the same fundamental energy.
This is what the bond was meant to be, I realize. Not a chain or a weakness. A bridge. A joining of two souls that creates something greater than either could be alone.
“Impossible,” Morgaine whispers, and for the first time, she sounds uncertain.
The light pulses once, twice. Then it condenses, flowing back into Caspian and into me, settling into our bones like it was always meant to be there.
When my vision clears, I’m solid again. Fully present on the battlefield, wearing nothing but the simple clothes I had on in the sanctum. No weapons, no armor. Just me.
Meira is going to kill me, I think distantly.
If Caspian doesn’t get there first.
He’s staring at me with an expression I can’t read—fury and wonder and something that might be pride all tangled together.
“You,” he says very carefully, “are the most infuriating person I have ever met.”
“I know.”
“You just projected your entire consciousness across a fortified compound using an untrained bond connection.”
“Apparently.”
“You could have died. You could have lost yourself in the connection and never found your way back.”
“But I didn’t.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “Farah—”
“Enough.” Morgaine’s voice cracks like a whip. The uncertainty is gone, replaced by cold fury. “I don’t care if you’ve unlocked every secret of the mate-bond. You’re still just two people against an army.”
She raises both hands this time, and the air fills with the sick-sweet smell of corruption magic.
But before she can release it, Caspian moves.
He doesn’t attack her. He turns to me, catches my face in both hands, and kisses me.
The bond explodes.
Not with violence this time, but with something infinitely more powerful. Connection. Understanding. Two souls recognizing each other completely, accepting each other wholly, choosing each other despite every reason not to.
When we break apart, both of us are glowing.
Caspian turns back to Morgaine, and his smile is terrible to behold.
“You’re wrong,” he says softly. “We’re not two people. We’re one power. And you have no idea what that means.”
Then he reaches back, finding my hand without looking, and together we face the army.
- Writer
