Eve’s POV
The throne was closer than she expected.
Not the distance, she knew the distance, had asured it with her eyes from across the room. But the feeling of it. The warmth coming off it got stronger with every step and by the ti she was ten feet away it was almost overwhelming.
Not painful.
Just...full.
Like walking toward a fire on a very cold night.
She kept walking.
Behind her she could feel her mates moving with her. Damian at her right. Damon at her left. Silas directly behind. The three bonds warm and steady and present.
Raphael had told them where to stand.
Damian at her right hand when she sat. Damon at her left. Silas directly behind the throne. Three points of a triangle. The bonded mates anchoring the binding completion from three directions.
Nobody had ever ascended with three bonded mates before.
Nobody knew what it would do to the completion ti.
They were about to find out.
She was five feet away when Varek moved.
She felt it before she saw it.
The cold thing that had been circling the edges of the room rushed inward all at once.....not gradually, not patiently. All at once. Like it had been waiting for exactly this mont. For her to be close enough to the throne that stopping her would matter.
The temperature in the room dropped.
Her breath ca out visible.
The candles along the walls guttered and went out.
And then sothing was in front of her.
Not a body. Not a shape she could fully look at. More like an absence. A place where the light didn’t reach. A darkness that had depth and intention and the specific cold patience of sothing that had been waiting for twenty years and was done waiting now.
She stopped walking.
It was between her and the throne.
Four feet of distance between her and the seat and this thing standing in it.
"Eve," Damian said behind her. His voice was controlled but she could hear what was underneath it.
"I see it," she said.
She looked at the darkness directly.
It didn’t have eyes.
But it was looking at her.
She could feel it, the weight of its attention. Ancient and cold and entirely focused. Twenty years of patience arriving at this single point.
She thought about her mother in a corridor at midnight moving fast with a choice already made.
She thought about Sable knocking on a door.
She thought about Vessa keeping a pendant in her coat pocket for thirty two years.
She thought about all of it.
Every choice that had led to this room.
Every person who had made a choice that kept her alive long enough to be standing here.
She looked at the darkness.
"Move," she said.
It didn’t move.
Of course it didn’t.
She hadn’t expected it to.
She took a step forward anyway.
It hit her like a wall.
Cold and flat. The sa pressure she’d felt at three that morning but a hundred tis stronger. It pushed against her chest and her mind and the throne bond simultaneously....pressing, insistent, trying to find the thread and use it the way it had used it last night.
She felt it locate the thread.
Felt it pull.
She held on.
Her feet stayed on the ground.
One more step.
"Eve." Damon’s voice. Tight. "Eve what’s happening."
"It’s pushing against the bond," she said through her teeth. "It’s trying to use it to pull back."
"Can you keep moving," Silas said.
"Yes," she said.
She took another step.
The cold got worse.
It was in her chest now, not just pressing against it but inside it, wrapped around the throne bond, pulling in the opposite direction from the throne. She could feel it trying to drag her back. Trying to put distance between her and the dark stone seat that was three feet away now.
Three feet.
She could see the surface of it clearly.
She could feel Avara’s binding reaching for her from inside it, warm and desperate and pulling just as hard as Varek in the opposite direction.
Two forces.
Her in the middle.
She gritted her teeth and took another step.
Two feet.
Damian moved.
She felt him before she heard him, the bond flaring, sothing in him that was all alpha and all mate and completely done standing still while sothing hurt her.
He put his hand on her back, the bond between them flooded warm and imdiate and the cold retreated slightly. Not much. But enough.
She felt Damon take her hand.
His fingers wrapping around hers.
The second bond flooding in alongside the first.
The cold retreated a little more.
One foot.
She was one foot away from the throne.
She reached out.
Her hand touched the armrest.
The warmth hit her like...she didn’t have a word for it. Like stepping out of the cold into sowhere that had been waiting with the fire on. Six hundred years of Avara’s binding recognizing the heir it had been waiting for and responding with everything it had.
The cold scread.
Not a sound. Not sothing her ears heard. Sothing her chest felt, a tearing, furious pressure of sothing that had been patient for twenty years and was now, for the first ti, afraid.
She sat down.
The binding opened.
She felt it happen like a door swinging wide inside her chest, sothing ancient and enormous and warm flooding outward from the throne in all directions at once.
This was the window.
Sixty seconds.
The binding open and completing and Varek sowhere in it looking for the gap.
She felt her mates.
All three of them.
Damian at her right hand, his hand on her shoulder, the bond between them blazing. Damon at her left, still holding her hand, his bond a warm flood of everything that was Damon. Silas directly behind the throne, both hands on the high back, his bond the steadiest of the three. Deep and quiet and immovable.
Three bonds.
All of them open.
All of them pouring into the binding completion simultaneously.
She had never felt anything like it.
User Comments
0 comments from readers