Page 62 of Iridian

“How so?” I asked because I wanted him to choose what to tell me himself, hoping that would make this whole thing easier on him. It was obvious that he was…strugglingwith something.

He turned around, turned his back on both me and the soldiers. He seemed to be more at ease when they weren’t in his line of vision at all, and I didn’t mind. I went to stand beside him.

“If you don’t want to talk about it,” I started, even though I wanted to know so badly.

“I always want to talk to you about everything,” Taland said, and my heart tripped all over itself. I wrapped my arm around his and rested my head on his shoulder, waited until he thought about what to say.

“I hear them.”

“Yes, but how?” He’d said so before and I had no idea what he meant when the soldiers were so perfectly silent.

“In here.” He reached up his fingers and touched his temple. “I hear their voices. It’s…I don’t know how to explain it, but they’re talkingto me.”

Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps. “Taland, you’re scaring me.” I wrapped my arms around his tighter.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of—I just hear their thoughts, that’s all. I hear their voices. It’s like we’re connected on a deeper level.”

“You mean likementally?”

“Mentally, too.”

Too,he said. “But that…that’s…”What?!

I had no word for something as twisted, as scary, as fuckingimpossibleas this.

“The curse,” Taland said, lowering his head. “That’s the curse, sweetness. This thing—this whole thing is not what we thought it was. It’s more, so much more.” His eyes squeezed shut, and he clenched his jaws so hard his teeth popped. “Hetetheredthese people’s souls to his own. He linked them to his mind, to his magic.”

“Like bonding?”

Taland turned to me, suddenly excited, and said, “Yes, exactly. Exactly like bonding.”

And suddenly I understood him better.

Even though only Greenfire mages were able to bond with familiars, I had experienced the whole thing in the Iris Roe, too. Whether it had been fake or real, I was made to bond to that vulcera, and the emptiness her disappearance had left me with was still there. I doubted it was ever going to go away.Shewas still with me every time I closed my eyes to sleep. Every time I thought ofgreen.Every time I didn’t know what I missed, until I remembered her face.

“But you can’t bond withpeople,” I said, trying to make sense still. “And Titus was Whitefire, right?”

Taland nodded. “Laetus, but his primary color was White. But all Laetus could bond if they chose to. And when he created this curse, his basis was the bonding ritual. That’s the very foundation of this…connection.” It sounded like he was figuring all of this out, too, as he spoke.

“Fuck, Taland,” I whispered, throwing a look back at the soldiers—they hadn’t moved a single inch. Not even a little bit. “I don’t get it.Howare they able tobe alivewithout actually being alive? They don’t breathe—do their hearts beat?”

“Magic,” Taland said. “They function solely on magic. The curse is a sort of self-maintaining system. It uses magic to produce magic—it all started with the initial burst. That’s all Hill needed to bring them back—a burst of Laetus magic.”

“The bracelet. Just the bracelet,” I said, shaking my head over and over.

“Just the bracelet,” he confirmed.

“But…but hewasn’tMud, was he? He wasn’t Laetus. It wouldn’t have worked for him!”

Taland thought about it for a moment. “Unless he had already drained himself, turned Mud. Then consumed a massive amount of energy to fire himself up—like you did with the Rainbow.”

“You think?” Because I had a very hard time picturing someone like David Hill rendering his own magic useless and counting on someone else to help him get it back. I had only been able to drain the Rainbow because of Taland. Whom did Hill have that he could trust so fully, I wondered?

Was it Madeline?

“I think so based on his behavior,” Taland said. “Think about it—he had everything else prepared. When he told you he was going toneed his bracelet,he seemed very certain that he could make it work. I don’t know—he just did everything else exactly right, and he would have known that hecouldn’treactivate the curse without Laetus magic. That’s why he even had that bracelet in the Vault to begin with.”

And it absolutely made sense. Sounded like Hill.Exactlylike Hill.

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