Page 96 of Season of Naga: Volume 2

Then she motions for our hands. Lurok extends his first. His palm is broad and scaled, the cut still glistening darkly across it. I place my hand over his. My breath catches the moment our flesh touches.

Warmth surges through me, swift and overwhelming, racing up my arm and straight into my chest. It feels like standing in the center of a storm and somehow being perfectly safe inside it.

“As your blood entwines, so too do your paths,” Eira intones. “No distance shall sunder it. No discord shall unmake it. Not even death shall sever it.”

She binds our joined palms with a length of pale grey silk. It tightens then dissolves into our flesh, leaving only the sensation of connection. When she withdraws her hands, our wounds have healed into matching crescent scars. Silver on his palm and pink on mine.

“Let the bond be sealed,” Eira pronounces and draws a glowing sigil in the air. “So it is spoken. So it endures.”

When she lowers her hands, the cuts on our palms are gone. In their place is a matching scar. A slender crescent rests in the center of my palm, pale pink and faintly luminous. Its twin gleams silver against Lurok’s scaled palm.

“Present thyself to your bonded mate,” Eira commands.

I lift the aetherveil from my face. The gauzy fabric slips away, falling over my shoulders. Lurok looks at me as though he has never truly seen me before. Wonder fills his expression. Awe. Something fierce and unbearably tender.

Eira lifts Wyndren by its chain and offers it to him. Lurok takes the pendant carefully, almost reverently. The crystal serpents spin slowly around one another as he moves closer.

I hold my breath as he reaches behind me, his claws impossibly gentle as he slides the silver chain around my neck. His knuckles brush the nape of my neck, sending a shiver racing down my spine. The pendant settles against my skin just above my heart, warmth spreading instantly through my chest. The mist within the stone stirs, moving faster and brighter until it feels as though the wind itself now lives beneath my skin.

Eira steps back, turning toward the gathered witnesses. “Witnessed by coil and flame, by blood and stone—you are bound for all time.”

Cheers erupt in the chamber. But I hear none of it because Lurok is still looking at me. Slowly, he lifts one clawed hand to cradle my face. Then he bends his head and kisses me. The kiss is soft at first, as though he is afraid I might disappear if he touches me too quickly. But then I melt against him.

His other arm slides around my waist, drawing me against the hard strength of his body. I curl my fingers against his chest, feeling the powerful beat of his heart beneath my palm.

The world falls away.

There is only him.

Only us.

His lips move against mine in a kiss full of everything he has never known how to say—the fear, the longing, the regret, and the fierce, impossible love that has always been there beneath it all. When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.

“My heart knew you long before my mind was wise enough to understand it,” he murmurs, so quietly only I can hear. “In every life the Ancients grant me, I will find you. And I will choose you.”

I rise onto my toes and press my forehead to his, my fingers curling against his chest.

“Then choose me now,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “Choose me tomorrow. Choose me every day after that.”

A raw, aching sound escapes him, somewhere between a laugh and a broken breath. He gathers me closer, as though he cannot bear even the width of a hand between us.

“Always,” he vows.