Chapter Eight
The Blood That Binds
The Harbinger bowed.
The motion was fluid, unnatural, like smoke bending to wind. It coiled at Thorne’s feet like a loyal hound—an ancient horror now tethered to the will of a man Lyra once called brother.
Her blood went cold.
Thorne looked unchanged from the last time she saw him—tall, regal, handsome in a way that seemed more sculpted than born—but the runes carved into his arms glowed with something darker now. The violet shard in his palm pulsed with each beat of her heart, as if her body answered to it.
Kael stepped in front of her, shoulders squared, fangs just barely bared. “What did you do?”
Thorne didn’t answer him.
His gaze remained locked on Lyra. “You were never meant to be raised in the mountains. You were meant to rule.”
“I was mean
