“Good,” he said after I pulled my thumb away. “I’ve had your blood and you’ve had mine. Now repeat after me—‘Blood of my blood and breath of my breath, nothing can part us now except death.’”
As he spoke the words a ripple of power seemed to flow out of him and into me. It shocked me and I almost jumped back. I remembered where I had felt something like that before—it was like when we had marked each other. That had been a much more obvious display of power—this was more subtle, but even stronger.
“What is this?” I asked him uncertainly. “What are you doing?”
“Blood-bonding you to me,” Ari said evenly. “Say the words, Kaitlyn—bond me to you as well.”
“But…” I didn’t know a whole lot about Blood-Bonding, though I knew much more than I had before Megan and Griffin had bonded each other. I knew it tied a couple together for life but wasn’t it also true that if one of them died, they would drag the other down with them into death?
“Ari,” I said, frowning. “If we get Blood-Bonded and they…they burn me to death…” I could scarcely get the words out and it took me a minute to continue. “If we do that then you’ll die when I die, won’t you?”
“Yes.” He gave me an intense look. “Yes, Kaitlyn, my L’lorna—I don’t want to live if you die. So bond me to you now!”
“I don’t want to take your life in some kind of Romeo and Juliette lover’s pact!” I exclaimed in a low voice. “I don’t want to kill you with my death, Ari.”
“Dios!” He looked frustrated. “Don’t you understand? I’m dead anyway. Sanchez plans to kill me and my entire family. If you Bond me to you, at least I can help you bear the pain when they put you to the Trial of Flame. Please, Kaitlyn…” He looked into my eyes again. “Please, just say the words.”
I couldn’t resist his plea any longer. And I knew that if we were both going to die, I wanted to do it bound to the man I loved. I took a deep breath.
“All right, that’s enough! You’ve had your time to say goodbye,” a voice behind me said and rough hands grabbed me by the shoulders and started dragging me backwards.
“No!” Ari’s eyes went wide and golden. “Say it, Kaitlyn!” he begged me. “Say the words!”
“Blood of my blood and breath of my breath, nothing can part us now except death!” I cried, giving him what he wanted as the men dragged me away.
Another wave of power—this one much stronger and more obvious—rippled through the room like a crashing wave. For a moment the entire huge marble Feasting Hall seemed to tremble. People stumbled and nearly lost their footing—some actually fell over.
Pedro Sanchez, who had fallen to his knees, looked around with an expression of stupid surprise on his lumpish face.
“Dios! What just happened?”
It was his mother who figured it out.
“The fools just Blood-Bonded themselves together!” she spat, glaring angrily at Ari and me. She rounded on her husband. “Mierda! I knew letting them have time together was a bad idea!”
“Callate, woman,” the older Sanchez growled irritably. “It doesn’t matter if they’re bonded or not.”
“Yes, it does, idiota!” she snapped. “For now if the girl turns out to be valuable, we can’t kill the Reyes brat without risking her life too! And how can she become L’lorna to our son if she is bonded to another?”
“I said shut up!” he snarled at her and for a minute, I really thought he might slap her. He seemed to restrain himself only by force of will. “If it turns out she has a Drake inside, we’ll bring her to the same bruja who spelled the manacles for us—she can break the bond. And if she doesn’t have a Drake and fails the Trial of Flame, well then…” He shrugged. “Then that’s one less Reyes we have to kill.” And he nodded meaningfully at Ari, who was glaring back at him with glowing, golden eyes.
His wife still didn’t look happy but she finally stopped talking about the new Blood Bond between me and Ari.
“Fine.” Her words were terse and she crossed her arms over her chest tightly. “Then let the Trial of Flame begin.”
“You heard your new queen!” Sanchez bellowed at the men who were holding me. “Push the girl out into the middle of the floor. And you…” He looked up at the four Drakes—one green, one yellow, one blue, and one orange—who had arranged themselves in the four corners of the large square space between the feasting tables. “Be ready with your flames. Hit the girl with everything you’ve got the minute they drop their hands.”
Four huge heads nodded and then the two men holding me were dragging me forward, into the middle of the white marble floor. And I do mean dragging because my legs had suddenly gone weak with fear and I couldn’t seem to make them move properly.