“Kaelen,” Riven said, and her name in his mouth was a velvet trap. “Come forward.”
But she had learned something he did not expect: a bound thing can still hate.
For the first time in three years, Kaelen breathed freely. court of blood and bindings vk
She thought of her father, who had sold her for a field of grain. She thought of the court, which would have eaten her alive. She thought of Riven, who had given her a window when he could have given her a coffin.
“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,” Riven said, and her name in his
Three years ago, on her eighteenth birthday, her own father had sold her bloodline’s last debt. Not with a sword or a cage, but with a single cut of a silver knife across her palm. Riven had tasted the droplet, whispered a word in a language older than the mountains, and just like that, Kaelen was no longer a person.
The binding.
The court of blood and binding would never be the same.
“Kaelen is free,” he said. “Any who harm her will answer to me directly. And I am no longer your prince.” She thought of her father, who had sold
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