Read A Sample
The priest doesn't even look up when he says it.
"By fire and blood, you are bound."
The words land like a blade sliding home. I feel the heat crawl up my wrist, the tremor start in my fingers.
I want to pull away, to run, but my hand is tied to his and my voice has vanished somewhere behind my ribs.
The vow-cord tightens. The brand ignites.
The great hall smells of incense and cold stone. My reflection is ghost-pale in the black glass of the windows. I press my lips together, hard, refusing to let this room see me break.
Then the light changes, and the whole court goes silent, too still, too watchful.
Gold. My brand is burning gold.
Whispers ripple through the nobles like wind through dry grass. Four hundred years. Nine words I catch: it has never burned that color before. The priest's hands are shaking. Somewhere a goblet shatters against the floor.
Heartbeats. Six. Five. Four.
I count them without meaning to, willing this moment to end. My throat burns. And then I feel it—a second pulse, steady and furious, blooming inside my own chest where no pulse should be.
His.
My hand is slick inside the cord. His name sits over us like a sentence: the King who burned my father's harbor to the waterline. The man I swore I would feel nothing for. And now I can feel everything he feels.
The realization comes before the fear can swallow me. This bond runs both ways.
I let out a shaky breath I didn't know I was holding. Then I hear it—the low thrum that starts as vibration in my chest and grows into a roar that fills the hall. Not sound. Him. His heart, hammering against mine, giving him away.
Heads tilt toward the dais. The King, carved from shadow and crimson, the torchlight flashing off the firestone at his throat. His name on every frightened tongue. The weight of his stare alone makes my eyes sting.
By the time the priest steps back, the court has gone to murmurs, scattering like ash on the wind. The air smells of smoke and melted wax, sharp and bitter.
He turns to me at last—my husband, my enemy—jaw tight, one gloved hand still bound to mine, a flicker of something raw crossing his face where his crown should sit.
Something inside me folds.
The vow pulses again and drags me half a step toward him, my body betraying every promise I made to myself. I hate it. I hate that his fear tastes like my own.
"You feel that," he says. Not a question. His voice is low, wrecked, meant for me alone.
"That's terror," I whisper.
"I know." His gaze dips to my mouth, then back to my eyes. "It's mine."
He leans in close enough that I feel the heat of him, the faint scent of ember and cedar, and I realize the most dangerous thing in this fortress isn't the King who destroyed my home.
It's the heartbeat we now share.
His breath brushes my ear as he growls,
"The vow won't let me lie to you, Seraphine. So believe me—I'm as afraid of this as you are."