chapter two: The bond that claimed us
905 Words
I tried to pull away.
Pain ripped through my chest—white-hot, merciless—stealing my breath and forcing a scream from my throat. My knees buckled, the world tilting violently as agony exploded behind my ribs.
Across from me, he cried out too.
The sound was raw. Uncontrolled. Nothing like the composed, terrifying figure the stories warned of.
We froze, locked in place by something far worse than fear.
The pain faded slowly, retreating like a tide that had proven its strength and chosen not to drown us—yet. I clutched my chest, gasping, my heart pounding so hard it felt as though it might tear free.
His breathing matched mine.
That realization hit harder than the pain.
The priest screamed, the sound shrill and breaking as he stumbled backward, robes tangling around his feet. “That’s impossible!” he shrieked. “No one survives the curse—no one binds with him!”
Guards scattered, crashing into pillars and each other in their desperation to flee. No one tried to restrain the king now. No one dared approach either of us.
Slowly, impossibly, he rose from the throne.
The broken chains fell away from him, clattering uselessly against the stone floor. The runes etched into the walls flared brighter as he moved, reacting to his presence like living things. Power rolled off him in heavy waves, pressing against my skin until it prickled and burned.
Yet through it all, his eyes never left mine.
Silver. Too bright. Too aware.
“You feel it,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t a question.
My throat tightened. I nodded, tears blurring my vision as I struggled to remain upright. “When you hurt…” My voice broke. “It hurts me.”
Silence stretched between us.
Not empty silence. Charged. Listening.
The priest had gone still, watching us as though we were a prophecy unfolding before his eyes. The air itself seemed to hold its breath.
Then the king laughed.
It was low and fractured, the sound of disbelief cracking open something long buried. There was no humor in it—only awe edged with something dangerous.
“A soul bond,” he murmured. “Forbidden. Ancient.”
He took a step toward me.
My pulse raced, skittering wildly beneath my skin. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my feet wouldn’t move. The bond tightened, a warm, unsettling pressure in my chest that pulled me toward him like gravity.
When he stood close enough that I could feel the heat of his body, the pull intensified. His presence wrapped around me, overwhelming and intimate, as if the space between us no longer truly existed.
“You won’t be able to run,” he said softly. “Not from me.”
His hand lifted my chin, firm but not cruel, forcing me to meet his gaze. The moment his fingers touched my skin, the bond flared—heat spreading through my chest, down my spine, into places I didn’t want to acknowledge.
My breath hitched.
His thumb brushed my cheek in a slow, deliberate movement that made my knees weaken. I hated my body for responding. Hated the warmth curling low in my stomach, the way my pulse betrayed me.
“If you die,” he continued, his voice calm and terrible, “I die.”
The words landed with crushing weight.
The room seemed to tilt again. “That can’t be,” I whispered. “I was meant to—”
“To end the curse,” he finished for me. His eyes darkened. “You were meant to be consumed.”
His grip tightened slightly, grounding me as another wave of dizziness passed. I realized then that he was steadying himself too—his shoulders rigid, his jaw clenched as if resisting something unseen.
“And that,” he said, his thumb still tracing the line of my jaw in a touch far too intimate for a king and a sacrifice, “means you are no longer an offering.”
Hope flared, fragile and dangerous.
“Then what am I?” I asked.
For the first time, his expression shifted—calculation bleeding into something far more complex. Hunger. Fear. Resolve.
“My prisoner,” he said.
The word should have terrified me.
Instead, the bond thrummed in response, tightening, as though it approved.
“And something far more dangerous.”
The priest found his voice again. “Majesty,” he croaked, “this is heresy. The bond must be severed. She must die before it—”
The king turned.
The look he gave the priest was enough.
The man fell silent, collapsing to his knees as if the weight of that gaze alone had crushed him. Power surged, the runes blazing, the very stone beneath our feet cracking with a sharp, echoing sound.
“No one,” the king said, his voice reverberating through the chamber, “touches her.”
His hand closed around mine again.
This time, the contact didn’t hurt.
It steadied me.
And somewhere deep within my chest, beneath fear and confusion and the remnants of pain, something else stirred—something ancient and watchful, as if the bond itself had opened an eye and found the world lacking.
I didn’t know what I had become.
But I knew one thing with terrifying certainty.
Whatever fate awaited the Cursed King—
I was bound to it now.
- Writer
