Chapter 7: The Cost of a Broken Bond

The walk home from the Moonstone Tavern was a blur of cold air and hot tears. Kael’s words—“hardly worth the silver”—echoed in my skull, a taunting mantra that drowned out all other thought. The contempt in his eyes, so absolute, so public, had carved a hollow space inside me that even the bond’s ache couldn’t fill. This was a different kind of pain, deeper and more debilitating. Lyra was silent for once, curled into a miserable ball of shame and confusion. The part of me that...