The Death Blood sputtered out a sound of agreement, then spat blood onto the floor. Zeph’s enchantment had been the equivalent of a few stern kicks to the most painful parts on the torso. I knew from experience that it hurt like hell. And Zeph usually held back when magically sparring with me.
With Shade, he hadn’t held back at all.
“What the fuck is going on?” my Guardian demanded. “Where’s Aflora? Why can’t I feel her?”
“You can’t feel her?” I stood up straighter. “At all?”
He fell silent, his green eyes flashing as he concentrated. “No. I feel her. But there’s… a block. And I can sense her struggling.” He went to the ground to take hold of Shade’s button-down shirt. “Start fucking talking, or I swear to the Fae, I will—”
“Destroy me,” Shade rasped. “I know.”
Kyros smirked. “Seriously, Shadow. You’re going through a lot of pain for something we both know is inevitable.”
“Fuck you,” Shade spat out at him.
“Not my type,” Kyros drawled.
“Give him a second to breathe,” I said, touching Zeph’s shoulder again. “I want to hear what Shade has to say.” My instincts were firing on all cylinders, the sense of déjà vu a very real presence in my mind.
I’d lived this moment before.
An obvious expectation, given Kyros’s presence, but it went deeper than that. I could feel the familiarity of this situation.
Just like that time when Aflora threatened to undo our bonds. Sir Kristoff had gone off about a sword-wielding fae. I’d just brushed off his commentary as a consequence of whatever the fuck Shade had done to him that day.
But that hadn’t been it at all.
“You’ve been fucking with our lives for a while,” I said to the Paradox Fae.
“Have I?” he countered, his dark eyes glimmering with knowledge.
“You were there the day Aflora threatened to dismantle our mating bonds.”
He considered me for a long moment before looking at Shade. “I stand corrected. You were right to bite him.”
“She succeeded, didn’t she?” I added, my heart racing with the knowledge. “She destroyed our bonds.”
“She did a lot more than that,” Shade muttered, his rasp lessening with each word. He shoved himself up into a seated position, then scooted over to the wall to lean his back against it as he swallowed on a grimace. “Well played, Kristoff.” He saluted my gargoyle with his middle finger, then dropped his hands to his lap on a sigh.
I slid down the wall to sit across from him. Zeph joined me, his stance guarded but his expression carefully blank.
“When did he bite you?” Zeph asked me.
“Just before you woke up,” I replied, my gaze on the Death Blood.
“You’re bonded?” He didn’t sound wounded so much as concerned. And rightfully so. There was no way I would be able to ascend whilst tied to Shade.
Granted, I couldn’t ascend while mated to Aflora, either.
And frankly, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to ascend anymore after everything I’d learned over the last few weeks.
“On the first level,” Shade said quietly. “It provides him with necessary insight.”
“Except I can’t read your mind.”
“No, but you can sense my intentions,” he replied, his icy eyes displaying an exhaustion I hadn’t noticed in him before.
I don’t like this, I thought, uneasy with the insight I seemed to have inherited with his bite.