Page 52 of Branded By Shadow
“Nonsense. You both have more strength than you realize.” She moved closer, kneeling beside me, and her expression sobered into one of clinical focus. “But that being said… How are you feeling? Really feeling.”
I groaned, not even bothering to hide the profound weariness that had settled in my bones. “Sore. Like I’ve been turned inside out and put back together wrong. But... relieved. Like we actually won.”
“The bond is strong,” Damon added, a note of grim pride in his tone. “Stronger than I’d hoped.”
Helena nodded, but a flicker of uncertainty swept over her face as she studied the dark, angry-looking mark on my throat. “It is strong, Damon. That’s what worries me.”
The relief I’d been feeling started to curdle in my stomach like soured milk. “What do you mean?”
“The stress of a forced claiming... it can create inconsistencies,” she said carefully, her words chosen with a healer’s precision. “Your bond is trying to reconcile two opposing forces—the life of Demeter and the void of Hades. It’s doing so by drawing on the only fuel source it has.” She met my eyes, her gaze full of a pity that terrified me more than any threat. “You.”
Damon was suddenly more alert, his protective instincts stirring like a beast from its slumber. “Are you saying it’s poisoning her, like the temporary bite did?”
“No, nothing that dramatic,” Helena reassured him, though her eyes never left me. “It’s more like a slow starvation. It’s pulling the strength right out of your bones, isn’t it, Cora? A fire with no fuel, burning you away.”
Her words were a perfect echo of my own thoughts, and the validation sent a chill down my spine. “Yes,” I whispered. “That’s exactly it.”
“If this continues,” Helena said, her voice dropping to a grave whisper that seemed to suck the air from the amphitheater, “the exhaustion you are feeling could become… permanent.”
Permanent. Pure terror rushed through me, stronger than ever before. I saw a future of perpetual twilight, of a mind too tired to think. I would be a plant in salted earth, forever chained to this beautiful, ravenous thing that was drinking me into nothingness. “What can we do?”
“A Blessing of Hera,” she said, her confidence a force of nature in itself. “It will give the bond a foundation, teach it how to draw from the world around it instead of just from you.”
A way to tame the wild walnut tree. If anyone could do it, it was House Hera. They were the guardians and protectors of marriage, a duty they’d inherited from their patron goddess. Even before having a real connection to the Olympian Houses, I’d heard about their legendary blessings.
I looked at Damon. Through the bond, I could feel the war inside him. It was the possessive Alpha—snarling at the thought of another’s magic touching his claim—against the desperate protector who would do anything to save me. He saw me looking, and the protector won. He turned his head to Helena, his voice a low, guttural command.
“Her safety is all that matters,” he growled. “Do it. And… Thank you.”
Helena’s gaze softened with genuine affection. “You’ve both earned this. After everything you’ve survived... It’d be my honor to help you protect it.”
The tension in my chest released in a single, shuddering breath. Helena placed one hand on my forehead and the other on Damon’s. “This might feel a bit intense at first. But don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal.”
I gave her a small, trembling nod. “I understand.”
A pressure, steady and sure as a mountain, settled over my heart. I closed my eyes, letting the energy flow through me. It wasn’t a fire, but a deep, grounding warmth, tracing the new pathways of our bond. It felt like coming home to a place I’d never known existed, a quiet harbor after a lifetime at sea.
“This binds what is separate,” Helena said, her voice washing over me like a warm tide. “This stabilizes what is joined.”
The energy built slowly, carefully. From beyond his deep contentment, I felt his exhausted relief that we were finally, truly safe. For the first time, a seedling of hope began to sprout, one the weight of the bond couldn’t suffocate.
And then the world tore in half.
It was more than a physical feeling. A violent, metaphysicalrip, like the soundless shriek of a soul being torn from its moorings. The root system in my chest was torn away, the brutality leaving a gaping, hollow void behind.
The thread connecting me to him was pulled unbearably taut, and then snapped. One moment, he was there, a solid weightin my soul. The next, nothing. A clean, perfect, agonizing amputation.
A scream built in my throat, a pressure of absolute, crushing horror, but it never found a voice. At the exact moment of the attack, another wave of Helena’s power washed over me.
It was a cool, numbing balm, a syrupy, artificial calm that flooded my system like an injection. It didn’t heal the gaping wound. It just told my body the wound didn’t exist. It was a magical lie, pumped directly into my nerve endings.
My soul cried that a part of me had just been murdered.
Helena’s magic whispered that I had never felt more at peace.
It’s gone. No, it can’t be gone. I feel… calm. But it’s gone. My body is lying to me. Or my soul is. Which is real?The signal—from my brain to my limbs, to my lungs, to my voice—got lost in the static between the roaring void and the placid lie. The contradiction was a system overload, a short-circuit that left me completely frozen.
In front of me, Damon made a sound that was not human. A raw, guttural cry of pure agony. Before, I would have felt the pain behind it. Now, it was just a sound, alien and terrifying, the noise of an animal caught in a trap.
