Roark pressed a hand to his chest, then with a bit of hesitation, reached across and touched the place over my heart. You brightened my soul and I knew.

Blood thudded between my ears. “Knew what?”

He held my stare for a long pause. You were mine.

Mine. Skul Drek said my soul was his; Roark claimed the rest.

With the heel of my hand I swiped away a stray tear. “How could you know?”

Soul craft is in my veins, Lyra. Because of it, soul bonds are felt so fiercely it is undeniable. They are sacred in Dravenmoor. I felt it the moment you touched me that night.

“But you hated me in Skalfirth.”

Roark dropped his chin and traced the long trail of his scar. The bond was shadowed. For a moment. That first damn star plum you threw at my head cracked the shields against you. I could not take my eyes off you. If I hated you, it was because I could not understand why I wanted you.

It had been much the same for me, from the way Roark had pinned me to him in the great hall in Skalfirth, to moments on the longship. I’d yearned to detest him, but found a calm around him in the same breath.

“I lied to you,” I said slowly. “About learning your words. I felt them from the beginning.”

Roark’s jaw worked for a breath before he looked to the soil, as though he didn’t know what to say.

I cleared my throat. “You say you were punished because you got the prince killed. Is that the truth?”

His palm rubbed the side of his neck. Prince Nivek saw me speaking to you. When he cornered me in the wood, I told him the truth. The melder was supposed to be a monster, a brute we should delight in killing. Not a girl who burned through me. Once the prince believed me, he agreed to help hide you.

“The arms in my dreams,” I whispered more to myself than Roark. “Why don’t I remember?”

The prince was called the soul shadower. Roark’s eyes burned with regret. His craft helped him darken experiences a soul has endured.

“And doing so takes the memory?”

Shadows it.

I coiled a lock of hair around my finger. “Until you. The memories returned the more I was around you.”

Perhaps I was not the only one who brightened a soul.

“The prince took me to the sea. He saved me.” I didn’t want to ask the question. “How did he die?”

Roark raked his fingers through his hair. My uncle discovered what we had done. Our people determined the prince was a traitor, and…slit his throat before he could even get a trial.

All gods. Bile burned on my tongue. An enemy prince saved me, then lost his life for it. “And you? They did this to you?”

My fingers gingerly touched the cursed scar.