Page 261 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

His smooth hands moved over my face, my neck, my arm, until his thumb traced the runes at the crease. Realization dawned, his eyes widening as he growled, “No.”

Blythe

“The raven comes crying, crying, crying.”

With every minute Adrastos and Bartholomew were gone, Alvara’s sing-song voice grew eerier, more ethereal. Goosebumps raced over my skin.

I was pacing a trench in the rug when she softly sang, “With me, he says. On the front.”

I didn’t interrupt or try to reason with her. My mind was too busy parsing the pieces she gave me. I wouldn’t have time to make sense of them anyway, because the cousins reappeared as abruptly as they’d vanished—and looked infinitely worse for wear.

Barry was in one piece, albeit soaking wet.

Adrastos’ eyes were so heavily lidded he could barely hold them open, his knees buckling the moment they appeared.

“Motherfucker,” Barry grunted, easing him toward the floor. Only then did the badly controlled thud of weight at his other side snap my attention to the limp form of Moros Balaskas.

Sprawled lifelessly across the floor. Or nearly so.

Hope skittered through my veins as my magic lashed forward and found his life force nearly spent. But…

But there was…

Adrastos lay on the floor, back arched in obvious agony. One arm stretched away from Moros, his head turned toward him, neck bent unnaturally as though he hung from an invisible noose.

A noose…

Horrified, I blinked the threads into existence. Adrastos sputtered for air, gurgling breaths tearing out of him as every trace of color drained from his skin.

“What’s happening?” I demanded, reaching for him on instinct as my magic probed.

“Him,” he rattled. “You⁠—”

The word was amputated by a cough, blood splattering across his face.

My eyes flew wide. He hadn’t been gone long enough to be this badly injured, yet every thread around him thrashed. Thrashed because the soul in front of me was being pulled in two directions. The braid around his neck—now biting into his throat—was drawn taut. My magic raced over the ropes of fate, following the power, the life force flowing up the leash… to Moros’ half-dead body.

His arm—bent the wrong way—was wrapped in that familiar braid, the one I’d known most of my life. Black, crimson, purple, and green twisted together. Like a loose thread snagging a door handle as you rounded a corner, it held fast.

Cold horror worked down my spine as the ropes pulsed. Slowly, as though the current had traveled too far and lost its force, life trickled toward Moros.

“Him,” he rattled. “Green.” Pleading eyes found mine, his mouth agape as blood leaked from his lips—injuries that weren’t his to bleed for.

The rope around his neck wasn’t familial.

It wasn’t soul or Magic or mate.

Blood.

The betrayer was bound to the king by blood.

“Godsdammit.” The absolute hell we’d landed in clicked into place. Magic was in the blood. Life and death, strength and power—willingly or unwillingly given—were at the behest of the Bonder.

My gifts swept Moros’ limp body, finding countless fractures, a collapsed lung, swelling in his brain. A chill slid through my chest. Moros was undoubtedly the most masterful of the three when it came to wielding his gifts.

He would’ve known exactly how to weave the Bond most advantageous to himself. For whatever reason, Adrastos had agreed to it. Had tethered his life force to his king. Unless…

There is no crueler punishment than removing a soul’s free will…