“Excuse me?” the commander said, taking a step closer to his son. Ersken looked between them, eyes wide. “Are you refusing a direct order?”
Veronyka could see Tristan’s throat work, even from a distance, but he didn’t lower his head or avert his glance. “Yes, I am.”
“This could cost you your patrol, Tristan,” the commander said, lowering his voice to a deathly whisper. “I want you to think carefully right now.”
“I am—and I have,” Tristan said, speaking at full volume. “You told me the best leaders do so by example. I don’t believe in this, so I can’t in good conscience participate in it. If it loses me the patrol leader position, so be it.”
The two stood nose to nose, staring at each other. Veronyka noticed for the first time that Tristan was actually a hair taller than his father. Maybe he had always been, but something about challenging the man was making Tristan stand straighter.
Pride in him radiated from her lungs, filling her up with each breath she took.
Commander Cassian’s lips were pursed, but rather than explode in anger, he merely shrugged. “So be it. If you don’t want to do what needs to be done, then I’ll find someone who will. Run and notify Elliot that he and his bondmate will be required at the breeding enclosure immediately.”
Renewed terror spiked inside Veronyka’s veins, and Xephyra screeched in response.
Tristan looked her way, face frustrated and apologetic, but the instant their gazes locked, something happened. Veronyka’s mental walls felt weakened by her sudden, visceral fear, and now her magic spilled blindly outward.
And it found Tristan.
Veronyka tried to pull back, but their connection was fast and strong.
It wasn’t like when she’d glimpsed his mind before, accessing him through the animals he was connected to, or in small, momentary flashes. She was linked directly to Tristan.
It had happened almost effortlessly, as if there was a place in her wall that led directly to him. Before, when she’d heard him at the obstacle course as he communicated with the animals, it had been like listening through a keyhole. Now she stood before an open window.
Of course, just like a real window, the opening she’d made wasn’t simply a way to see out, but a way to see in, too—a vulnerability that she had unknowingly cultivated, a weakness built from familiarity. Just as it did when she opened herself to the same animal over and over, it seemed all the times she’d skirted around Tristan’s mind made connecting with him now much easier than it should be. This was something she needed to examine more closely, but as Tristan’s thoughts came through the window in a deluge, it was all Veronyka could do to keep herself standing.
The high-stress situation was causing a rush of worries and fears to flood the surface of his mind. There was a shadow where the commander stood—watching, judging. Everything was a test in his father’s eyes, and this was no exception. But she sensed that part of his anxiety had to do with her. . . . He didn’t know Xephyra was her bondmate, but he’d known how much she hated the breeding cages. If it was challenging to understand a phoenix’s mind, trying to untangle a person’s felt near impossible. Tristan’s thoughts were like guttering candles, bursting to life only to flicker out a second later, one after another, impossible to string together or follow along.
Veronyka tried to disengage herself, to separate his feelings from hers, to regain her balance. It was like being underwater, drowning in him. . . .
Then there was a spark, a ripple of sunshine in the corner of his mind—not a guttering candle but a blazing torch.
It was her.
Veronyka focused on that light, extending herself toward it—only she reached too far. She lost the tether to her own mind—the solid ground upon which she always stood. She felt weightless, disembodied, and another wave of dizziness washed over her.
She was wrenched from her place of safety. Veronyka’s vision doubled, then split, and she was looking at the scene before her through Tristan’s eyes. There she was, a small figure in the darkness of the gallery, crouched near a pillar.
The sight of herself sent a jarring spasm of alarm through her.
Somehow, rather than just sensing Tristan’s mind, she’d slipped into it—mirroring, it was called. It was something Riders did with their phoenixes, and it allowed them to make use of their mount’s incredible vision and to essentially be two places at once if they happened to be apart. It was the skill Tristan and the other apprentices were practicing during the obstacle course, and apparently a gift that took many years for fully qualified Riders to master perfectly.
And Veronyka was mirroring with a person. With Tristan. Could he feel her there? Could he hear her thoughts at this very moment?
She reeled, blackness closing in. Tristan’s mind swirled around her in a whirlpool, swift and rushing and fathoms deep.
Distantly she heard a shrill squawk—it came from Xephyra—but before Veronyka could reach for her bondmate, the current pulled her under.
But I never had the chance. I made my decision; I chose my path, and there was no going back.
- CHAPTER 34 -
VERONYKA
VERONYKA AWOKE WITH A start. She’d been dreaming of fire and ash, and she couldn’t figure out what had jolted her awake.
Then it came again: a horn blast, shortly followed by another.
She scrunched up her face, trying to understand what it meant, when the events in the Eyrie came rushing back to her, and she lurched into a sitting position.
Veronyka wasn’t in the servant barracks, but rather, was laid out on a pallet in a darkened chamber. She looked around the scant, empty room, seeing a basin of water, a satchel against the far wall—and her sister watching her from the shadows.
Veronyka’s heartbeat hitched, picking up a painful, jagged rhythm. How long had Val been standing there?
“You’re awake,” she said, coming to kneel next to the pallet. Seeing Veronyka’s suspicious look, Val rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax, Nyka, I haven’t stolen you away. You collapsed.”
Veronyka flashed back to the last thing she could remember—the sensation of losing herself in shadow magic as she fell deeper and deeper into her connection with Tristan. She shuddered.
Val’s gaze roved her face, and inside, her magic nudged against Veronyka’s mental barriers. Veronyka had the feeling Val knew—or at least suspected—how she’d managed to lose consciousness, but she made no comment.
“What happened? How did I get here?”