hadn’t yet put it together. It felt incredibly sad that she should celebrate life on the day she’d lost her mother. The day her entire world changed forever. While Avalkyra and Pheronia shared their birthdays—if not both their birth parents—and their death days, Veronyka shared a death day with her mother and a death day and birthday with her aunt. Again, the lines between herself and her mother, between Avalkyra and Val, blurred, and Veronyka’s breath grew sparse in her chest.
She shoved the box aside and put her head between her knees, forcing air in and out through her lips.
“Veronyka—are you okay?” Tristan asked in alarm, crouching to get a better look at her. He held something in his hand, a package of some sort—she could see it pressed to the earth in his haste to scrabble down next to her. His presence, the feeling of his other hand against her back, drew her away from the shallow darkness and back into the light. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m fine,” Veronyka said, forcing herself to sit up. Fine, she added to Xephyra, who had abandoned her breakfast with Rex to flutter nearer, anxiety thrumming in their bond.
“Are you sure?” Tristan pressed, eyes roving her face.
“Yes,” Veronyka insisted. Whether she was fine or not, she willed it to be true. “What I’m unsure about,” she said, nodding toward Tristan’s hand and forcing lightness into her tone, “is what’s in that package?”
He stared down at it, then eased himself more comfortably onto the ground next to her. He turned the package over in his hands. “It’s a gift. But I’m not sure you’re in the mood to celebrate….”
Veronyka wanted to make a joke, but instead she gave him the truth. “I want to celebrate. It’s just strange…. I thought I was born early in the year, in the winter, to Phoenix Rider parents who died in the war. I thought I was nobody.”
“You’ve never been nobody to me.”
Fire, golden and warm, spread through her body at his words. When she looked at him, their eyes met, and the surge of feeling she sensed there was staggering.
His expression turned guarded as he watched her reaction, but curiosity colored his voice when he spoke.
“Can you hear it?” he whispered.
“Hear what?” she asked, disoriented.
He glanced away from her, enough to break the strong connection and allow Veronyka to get ahold of her magic again. He shrugged, the movement determinedly nonchalant, and swallowed. “What I was thinking.”
Veronyka could tell that he’d opened himself deliberately to her, that he wanted her to know—and yet he knew that it was dangerous and that he probably shouldn’t have done it. “Not your thoughts…,” she began, trailing off as she tried to remember the sensation. “Your emotions.”
“And what were they?” he asked. He wasn’t looking at her, still forcing that casualness into his demeanor. As if this were idle chatter and not the invasion of his heart and soul.
“Tristan, we shouldn’t—it’s not safe.”
“You’re right,” he said hastily. “It’s just… It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? It’s like what we have with our bondmates. Seems a shame to block something so…” He frowned, looking at Rex and Xephyra in the distance, though she could tell he wasn’t really seeing them but was searching for the right words.
“Pure?” Veronyka offered, and immediately regretted giving voice to the idea. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. The fact of the matter was, her bond to Tristan was—and should be—as wondrous and awe-inspiring as her bond to Xephyra. It should be cherished, protected, and honed—not treated with such fear and anguish. It shouldn’t be a vulnerability but a gift.
The problem wasn’t with the bond at all; the problem was with Val. Veronyka was punishing herself and Tristan because of her inability to control her own mind.
Resentment flared up inside.
She shouldn’t have to sacrifice Tristan in order to keep Val at bay.
“Yes,” Tristan said softly. “So… what emotions did you sense?”
Veronyka swallowed, dread and anticipation battling within her. “I… It all happened so fast,” she whispered. This was wrong. This was dangerous. This was thrilling and desperate and achingly illicit. “It’s hard to pull the threads apart—to really know what I’m sensing. But I know your words were genuine.”
“What else do you know?”
It was Veronyka’s turn to look away now, her throat thick. “I know that you feel the same way about me as I feel about you.”
The air stilled between them, the distant sounds of the camp and the forest fading away.