Page 61 of Prince of Never

If she was going to keep talking in riddles, then I was going to get nowhere.I changed tack, deciding to ask her outright.‘How do I break a mate bond?’

Her face contorted like she’d tasted something disgusting and she withdrew to look down her nose at me.‘Fool.So much power and so little sense.I’ve half a mind to beat some into you.The little one who’s stars I cast so many years ago was not so stone-headed.What has happened to you?’

‘Funny you should ask.Those stars you cast have a lot to do with the answer.’I was starting to get angry now.I could feel the years of resentment rising.

‘Only if you are stupid and narrow-sighted,’ she snapped, flapping her hands at me.

I rose to my feet to loom over her.‘Don’t you remember the fate you wrote me?In the shadows of the realm of night, fate-pressed steps touch sunlit sight, a crown decays, a throne in keep, beware of she whose might now sleeps, a dark prince falls when she awakes, for her existence seals his fate.’

She seemed unperturbed by my rising temper.‘Exactly.A heavy fate, but a worthy one if you can carry it.And now you wish to just throw it off?’But she didn’t stay to wait for an answer, instead scuttling back to the door she’d entered the room from and wrenching it open.She crooked a finger at me.‘Follow me, then, prince.I’ll show you how your bond may be broken.’

She darted up another of those cursed staircases with the agility of a cat, and I fumbled along behind her, clinging to the wire railing as we headed higher up the tree to a hollow in the trunk that was big enough to for me to walk through standing.Within was some sort of storage room, shelves upon shelves of bottles and vials and jars.She flitted around, picking up different vessels and putting them down again, muttering to herself as she went.Finally, she handed me a small vial of a white, pearlescent substance.

‘Take this to numb your bond,’ she said as I turned it around in my fingers.

‘Numb it?’

‘Mm.Distilled starlight can temporarily deaden ties of fate.Floods the system.’

‘I don’t want to numb it temporarily.I want to break it.’

‘You will.’Her expression sharpened, a grim smile stalking the corners of her mouth.‘When you cut out your mate’s heart.’

I studied her face, trying to decide whether or not she was being serious.‘I thought this was aboutbreakinga mate bond?’I said slowly.

‘It is.You can’t be bonded to someone who is dead, stupid boy.Take the tonic, numb your instincts, kill the girl.No more bond.’She shrugged.

Nausea twisted my stomach at the very thought of harming Imogen, of taking a knife to her, ofcutting out her heart.

Dhrigada waggled a finger in my face.‘I can see the beast in you disagrees.Take that and it will sleep.’

‘That can’t be the only way,’ I choked out.

‘Tis the only one I know of.What, did you think it would be easy?If you are to do something so unnatural, the payment must be in blood on your hands.’She looked out at the stars for a moment, seeming to think.‘And all over the rest of you by the end of it, too.’

I wanted to make her take the vial back.Actually, I wanted to hurl it to the faraway ground, watch it fall through the air and disappear beneath that black water.But I didn’t.

‘Dhrigada,’ I began quietly, ‘is Imogen the one the prophesy is talking about?’

‘Oh yes,’ she cackled, nodding vigorously.‘Star-marked from birth as the downfall of the Unseelie Court, your mate.There is a great destiny about that one.If she lives, that is.’

I stared at the vial as all the colour and warmth drained out of the world around me.‘How does she do it?’

Dhrigada’s smile widened.‘I guess we will never know now, will we?’

Chapter 27

Tarian

Icouldn’tgobackinto the castle.Not yet.I sat on the roof of the north tower, dangling my legs over the edge, staring at the vial Dhrigada had given me.Melaie perched nearby, preening her feathers and occasionally chirping at me as the sun sank lower on the horizon.The Shadowmire was quiet while most of its dangerous inhabitants were sleeping, just a vast stretch of boggy ground and spindly trees, hemmed in by distant mountains behind me and the faraway sea in front.If I turned my head, I could almost see the palace and the Unseelie Court.

I was glad I couldn’t.

I turned the vial in my hand, watching the sun filter through the cloudy liquid.I’d been a fucking fool to think I’d be able to send Imogen home.As if breaking a mate bond was like cutting the thread that fate had used to tie us together.Magic was never so straight forward, and fate protected her schemes.

Take the tonic.Numb the bond.And cut out her heart.

Maybe my reluctance, my revulsion, would fade once I’d taken the noxious stuff.Maybe this feeling I was sitting with now was all just part of the compulsion to protect my mate.Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all, just some primal instinct I couldn’t control that had no meaning behind it.Maybe I’d empty the vial and I could go back to the unflinching certainty that I’d had before I’d touched her for the first time: that she was a threat to my reign, and nothing more.

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