“What are you doing?” Seyn said, watching him curiously.
Harry turned off the cameras and then looked at him. “I don’t have the bond to Leylen’shni’gul anymore.”
Seyn’s eyes widened.
He left Harry’s room an hour later, a little angry, a little confused, and extremely excited.
The conversation with Harry had been very enlightening.
Apparently, Harry’s bond had gradually weakened while he had been on Sol III before finally breaking, probably due to a huge distance between Sol III and Calluvia. When Harry had come back to Calluvia, the bond didn’t rebuild itself. Harry was very confused—and very unwilling to get his bond back. Apparently, all of Harry’s senses, including his telepathy, were much better now that he didn’t have the bond, which…should have been impossible. And yet…
A half-forgotten memory niggled at the back of Seyn’s mind until he finally remembered what Harry’s words reminded him of.
When he was on Planet Bienr last year, Seyn had heard some disturbing rumors about Planet Bienr’s first Contact with Calluvia—they were scared of Calluvians, claiming that Calluvians could kill with their minds. At the time Seyn had obviously thought those rumors were ridiculous, but if the bond really dulled Calluvians’ senses…maybe they weren’t.
The thing was, it had been thousands of years. Anything was possible. Seyn had noticed many inconsistencies when he researched the bond. It was definitely odd that the sixty years between the end of the Great War and the introduction of the Bonding Law were barely documented. It was interesting that the Contact with Planet Bienr had happened around that time, too.
Allegedly, the Bonding Law had been introduced to protect telepaths from forced bonds like the one that had basically started the most devastating war in their planet’s history. However, there were side effects of the bond, side effects that were always mentioned as an afterthought, if mentioned at all, something that not many people knew. The only reason Seyn was so well versed in this subject was because he’d spent countless hours—years—researching everything remotely related to the bond.
It was well known that the biological weapons used in the Great War made the population nearly infertile. Desperate to save the race from going extinct, Calluvian scientists had started an experimental genetic program that aimed to fix people’s reproductive systems. It had fixed the problem, but nowadays few knew that due to limited testing, there had been unforeseen consequences. The genetic experiments had caused mutations of various kinds, bringing back extinct physical traits and affecting some people’s telepathy.
Those physical mutations still existed to this day but were rarely spoken about in polite company. Seyn knew that Harry carried the throwback gene only because Harry had told him about it.
But if the physical mutations were barely spoken about these days, the telepathic mutations weren’t spoken about at all. The strangest part was, even the historical records were all very vague when they mentioned the telepathic mutations, only stating that they’d disappeared when the Bonding Law was implemented. Allegedly, the disappearance of the telepathic mutations was just an unexpected side effect of the childhood bond. Allegedly.
It had been Harry who voiced his suspicions first.
“What if it’s a lie that the Bonding Law was introduced to protect us from forced bonds? What if the bond was invented specifically to get rid of the telepathic mutations?”
Seyn had stared at his friend, surprised beyond belief. The thought had occurred to him, but it had seemed too outlandish to contemplate seriously. But if Harry—the naive, trusting Harry who usually scoffed at conspiracy theories—thought that it was possible…
It meant that Seyn had been right all along. He’d always known the bond had no right to exist in the modern world, even though he’d had no idea it was actually messing up his body in more ways than one.
And he could break it. He could go to a very distant planet like Sol III, and finally get rid of his bond to Ksar that way. It should absolutely work if he stayed on Sol III long enough.
The mere thought of finally being free from Ksar made Seyn’s heart speed up, excitement coursing through his body.
Harry had been very upset when Seyn told him of his decision. “You know, it upsets me that you hate my brother so much and are willing to do anything to get rid of the bond to him. Why don’t you want to become his king-consort? It’s a huge honor and you’ll really be my family, then.”
Seyn had scoffed at the time. Harry was blind to his brother’s faults. Seyn didn’t want to be bonded for life to an asshole who looked at him as though Seyn was an annoying little bug beneath his feet, unworthy of his attention. Even thinking about that ugly not-wanted-keep-away wall blocking him out of Ksar’s mind made Seyn’s throat close up, and Seyn scowled, hating that Ksar’s rejection was still affecting him that much. He shouldn’t care. He didn’t care. Fuck that asshole. Fuck him.