Save Your Regrets for Someone Who Cares

Chapter 3 Severing the Bond

The old brazier sat beneath the rafters with a handful of dry kindling inside. I cleared the dust, struck a spark, and fed it scraps of wood until the attic began to warm.

First, I removed the bone ring Kael had given me when he had no money. He had called it a promise that better years would come. Years of turning it around my finger had polished the cheap surface smooth.

I dropped the ring into the coals and opened my medical journals. Their leather covers held every remedy I had developed for Shadow Fang, including the formulas that needed a drop of royal blood to work.

Dark stains marked dozens of pages where I had tested new antidotes or added blood directly to a final dose. Dying wolves had woken because of those stains. Kael had never asked about the bandages on my hands.

I tore out the pages in small bundles. Names of herbs, measurements, and five years of corrections curled black in the fire. The leather covers took longer, filling the attic with bitter smoke.

Asher had fallen asleep on the blankets with one hand wrapped around the wooden sword's broken hilt. A damp streak still marked his cheek. I covered him with my cloak and waited until his breathing evened out.

The clasp of the Sealing Necklace had fused to my power over the years and resisted my fingers. I spoke the ancient words of my bloodline, braced both hands against the chain, and pulled.

Pain drove me to my knees before the chain moved. Blood filled my mouth, and the metal cut deep into my palm. When the clasp finally broke, the Mate Bond tore loose from somewhere beneath my ribs.

For several breaths, I could only hear the brazier and the blood dripping between my fingers. The place where Kael had lived inside my thoughts was empty. Then my sealed power began moving through me again.

I used the bedframe to stand and crossed to the attic window. Snow had begun to cover the roofs of Shadow Fang, softening the path toward the square where Kael's banquet still burned bright.

Beyond the last house, the border ward ran through the mountains in a wide silver line. I had woven it from my own life force to hold back the ancient Blight. Every night for five years, it had fed from my royal blood.

I closed my injured hand around the broken necklace. The ward answered at once. Its power came back through every marker, carrying five years of strength into my veins.

The ward went dark from one mountain marker to the next until the border stood open. Snow crossed the boundary first. The Blight would follow.

I wrapped Asher in two blankets, tucked the broken sword beside him, and carried him downstairs. The cottage was empty. Music drifted across the square as I walked north through the snow without using the main road.

At the banquet, Kael lifted a silver cup to Zane's future. Halfway through the toast, the severed bond reached him. He choked on the wine, broke the cup against the floor, and folded over the table with both hands pressed to his chest.