“You’re afraid,” Riven observed softly. His thumb brushed her jaw, and she hated the way her skin warmed at the touch. “Good. Fear keeps the blood hot.”
“Why?” Kaelen asked, stepping closer. She could feel it now—the absence of the binding. A hollow space where the pull used to live. It should have felt like liberation.
“Kaelen is free,” he said. “Any who harm her will answer to me directly. And I am no longer your prince.” court of blood and bindings vk
Kaelen’s stomach tightened. The Tithe was a ritual she had heard whispered about by servants who had no tongues—a ceremony of unbinding and rebinding, where the bound could be broken, reforged, or consumed .
“A cage to protect you from worse cages.” He placed the dagger in her hand, curling her fingers around its hilt. “Cut me. Freely. And if you choose not to, I will walk you to the mortal border tonight and break the binding myself—damn the cost.” “You’re afraid,” Riven observed softly
“I said no.” She walked up to him, took his wounded hand, and pressed her own bleeding palm to his. Their blood mixed—red and black—and the magic that rose between them was not a binding of servitude.
She was taken to the bone gardens that night—a labyrinth beneath the court where the roots of the great thorn-tree grew like fossilized veins. The air was cold and still. Riven met her alone, divested of his crown and his court, wearing only a simple black tunic and bare forearms crisscrossed with scars that glowed faintly silver. Fear keeps the blood hot
She sat. Not because she wanted to. The binding pulled at her joints like invisible strings.
He removed his crown—a circlet of thorns that had grown into his brow—and set it on the throne. Blood welled from the punctures, but he did not flinch.
“Then release me.”