“What?” Averting his eyes to the road, he continued walking along the busy Ermou Street—in English, Hermes Street. It was particularly cold outside tonight, and Vlad tugged the collar of his jacket closed to keep out the night breeze.

“You didn’t answer my question from earlier. You were in the middle of saying that there’s a way to break a soul-mate bond, but Adrian interrupted you.”

He kept his mouth shut as we continued walking, our breath visible in puffs of air against the cold.

“Are you really not going to give me the answer?” I asked again.

Vlad came to a halt on the corner of the busy street. We were standing in front of Royal Bar now. “Look, Avy, it’s not that I don’t want to give you the answers, I just don’t see the point. Why does it matter?”

“Because I’m curious. People like Adrian, maybe like me, I wonder if they’re better off without the gift.”

“I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but we learned at the Royal High Court Academy that in the past, someone—seeing the soul-mate bond as a curse—managed to find a way to return it to Apollo, the god who had given it,” he said quietly, probing for my secret agenda.

“How?”

“No idea. We don’t even know who this person was. We’re supposed to cherish our gift of clairaudience. Why would they teach us anything about throwing it away?”

He was right. And I had assumed this would be the case. But that didn’t mean the Court hadn’t kept any files on the subject. And it didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to find out more about it.

“Let’s head inside before Adrian calls again.” Not even two seconds after he’d said that, his phone rang. “See. Told you.”

Royal Bar turned out to be the actual name of the bar, not a supercilious nickname used to keep us Regulars away, like I’d assumed. Vlad and I met up with Adrian, who had been waiting for us at the entrance, and the three of us walked into the dimly lit space. It was simple and minimalist. Along the wall at the far back were inverted bottles of amber liquid in every hue. A sharp smell of alcohol wafted toward me, like black plumes billowing from the windows of a burning house. A faint smell of vomit rose from the crowd of drunk and mingling Hellenicus, which tainted the fragrance of the room.