Page 30 of Crown of Storm and Silence
"You're not—" she begins, then stops, color rising in her cheeks.
"Not what? Not a monster?" I turn to face her fully, and suddenly the truth crashes over me with devastating clarity. The bond severed, the poison spreading unchecked, transforming me into something even darker than before. Five months of escalating violence, and I blamed it all on grief. "Actually, I am becoming one. Without our bond, without your light containing the poison..." I sway on my feet as the realization hits. "I've been turning into my father all along."
"What's going to happen to you?" she asks quietly, and I can hear the healer in her voice—that instinctive need to understand, to fix what's broken.
I look at her—really look at her—and see the woman I fell in love with staring back at me through Elif's borrowed features: the same compassion, the same need to heal.
"I'm dying," I tell her simply. "The bond we shared wasn't just emotional. It was magical, mystical, designed to balance our opposing natures. Your light contained the poison in my system, kept it from consuming me completely. Without that balance..."
I don't need to finish. She's intelligent enough to understand.
"How long?" she asks quietly.
"Weeks. Maybe a month before I become something that can't be reasoned with or contained." I laugh bitterly. "The irony is exquisite, really. You fled to protect yourself and our child from the monster I might become, only to guarantee that's exactly what I'll transform into."
She's silent for a long moment. When she finally speaks, her voice is barely audible.
"Is there a way to stop it?"
"A new blood bond," I admit. "Your light magic could contain the poison again, keep the monster at bay. But binding yourself to me again would trap you with a creature you don't remember loving, don't remember choosing." I meet her eyes, letting her see the desperate hunger there. "It would make you my prisoner to save us both."
Terror flickers across her features. She takes a step backward, her hand pressed protectively to her belly.
"I can't," she whispers. "I don't—I can't make that choice. Not without remembering what we were, not without understanding what it would mean."
"I know," I say softly. "I wouldn't ask it of you." I meet her eyes, letting her see the desperate truth there. "But you should know what the poison is already doing to me. I've destroyed villages, painted landscapes in blood and ash while searching for you—not because I'm evil, but because I'm literally transforming into something that can't help itself."
Her face goes pale, and I see her thinking of something—the burn victims, perhaps, the refugees who've been flooding into peaceful villages with stories of shadow and flame.
"I needed you to know," I continue quietly. "Before the end, I needed you to understand what's coming."
"I should go," she says finally, but she doesn't move.
"Yes," I agree, but instead of stepping aside, I move closer. Close enough that her back hits the old stone wall behind her.
"Kaan—" she breathes, her hands coming up to press against my chest, but she doesn't push me away.
"Five months," I whisper against her temple, my control fraying. "Five months of dreaming about this scent, about the way you fit against me. Do you have any idea what you've done to me?"
"Please," she whispers, but her pulse is racing beneath my lips as I trace the column of her throat. "I can't?—"
"Can't what?" I pull back to look at her, and whatever she sees in my eyes makes her breath catch. "Can't remember how you used to beg me to touch you? How you'd arch against me and?—"
I lean down, drawn by instincts older than thought, my lips almost brushing hers when she gasps—not with desire, but with something else entirely.
"Oh," she breathes, her hand flying to her belly. "Oh, the baby—it's kicking."
The words shatter everything. I freeze, my mouth inches from hers, and suddenly I can't breathe—the baby. Our baby is moving. Responding.
I drop to my knees so suddenly she gasps, my hands hovering over her belly. "May I?"
She stares down at me, shock written across every feature, but nods.
The instant my palms connect with her skin, the world explodes into sensation. Not just movement—connection. A golden thread I thought was severed forever suddenly blazes to life, but different. Deeper. This isn't the bond Nesilhan and I shared; this is something new, something that reaches through her to the impossible life we created together.
My child knows me.
"Yavrum," I whisper, my voice breaking completely. "Benim küçük mucizem. Your father is here. Your very dangerous, completely unhinged father who would burn down creation itself to keep you safe."
