The pain of his Mental Bond unexpectedly snapping knocks Prince Aidyn to his knees. The pain of a second bond breaking only moments later consumes the prince, to the point that he doesn’t even feel the punch of an arrow burying itself in his chest.

So great is Aidyn’s combined agony, he forgets that other people are with him until a woman’s face presses so close to his, their noses almost touch. Even so, her voice sounds muted and far away. She shakes him by the shoulders, clearing away enough of the haze of pain for her voice to reach him.

“Stay with us, Your Highness!”

The woman. Aidyn knows her. She’s a mage too. He works with her. They’re members of a Team Bond.

Why is she being so formal? She hasn’t called him by one of his titles since they were sixteen. He asked her not to the first day of classes. She’s a Memorizer, so she never forgets.

“Noelle,” he mumbles. That’s her name.

Another voice—a calmer one—reaches his ears. “Pull the arrow out so his Healing Bond can close the wound.”

Fear spikes through Aidyn’s pain.

That’s Brehanna. She doesn’t sound worried enough.

She doesn’t know Aidyn won’t heal.

Not this time.

Aidyn knocks away the hand that reaches towards the protruding weapon. “Leave it,” he groans through gritted teeth. “My Healing Bond broke!” Then the pain steals his voice, so “Mental Bond gone too,” comes out as barely a whisper.

It’s okay. Brehanna will hear him. She’s an Amplifier. She can increase the strength of all her senses. It’s very practical, just like she is.

Dizzy, Aidyn tries to hold on to the conversation that follows, but he only grasps bits and pieces. The main thing he catches is the rising level of panic in all the voices.

“We have to get him out of here!”

That’s Emmett, their jokester of an Illusion Mage. He rarely sounds as serious as he does now. 

“Not until we stabilize him, or he’ll bleed out!”

Aidyn recognizes that voice too. Ellyse. She’s a Connector, but no one except a Bondsmyth can put broken bonds back together.

There are more voices and more words, but the pain pushes him far away again.

More shaking follows.

Aidyn surfaces to find Noelle leaning over him, and he catches the last bit of a shouted sentence.

“… Love Bond, now!”

Love Bond. 

Those words yank Aidyn out of the depths and into the present. He forces a single word out as loud as he can.

“NO!”

Noelle’s face disappears and another teammate—Taryon—appears above him. “We have to, Aidyn. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Even if we use your magic to move fast, there still aren’t any Healer Mages close enough.”

 It’s so hard to form the words, but Aidyn forces them out. “Another way, please!” 

He puts as much desperation as he can into his voice. Taryon will feel it. He’s an Emotion Mage.

But Taryon shakes his head. “A Soul Bond is your only option at this point, and since those don’t work without an Emotion Bond, you’re going to have to form the full Love Bond.”

“No…Saving those…”

“I know, Aidyn, and I’m sorry, but you WILL die if we don’t do this.”

Dying from an arrow? How very un-Embermoorian of him.

The pain tries to steal him away again, but he fights it. “With who?” 

Noelle’s face reappears. “With me, Your Highness.” She looks as horrified as Aidyn feels, but keeps talking. “I’m the only one with available Emotion and Soul Bonds. Don’t worry though, I know how to combine them into the Love Bond structure since I’ve done it before. Trust me! I’ll be able to keep you alive long enough to find help.”

While Noelle starts structuring a Love Bond with her magic, Aidyn grimaces, forcing himself to drag out ragged breath after ragged breath as she weaves the bond pattern around her hand.

This can’t be happening. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. Aidyn wants to fall in love, for real, and then form a real Love Bond.

“But I don’t love you!” The words tumble out of his mouth before he can hold them back. It’s so hard to think with the pain pressing in on all sides.

“There are many types of love, Your Highness.” Noelle doesn’t look at him. She keeps her eyes on her magic. “Friends, family, co-workers; all relationships include love. We don’t need romance for the Bond to activate.”

The bond is almost complete now. All that’s left is for him to add his magic. He doesn’t have enough, but he feels his teammates use their shared Strength Bond to give him the amount he needs.

Darkness pulls at the edges of his vision as Noelle shifts her eyes from the magic to him.

She grasps Aidyn’s hand with her magic-covered one. “I don’t care if the only thing you love about me right now is my magic, or that we’re teammates, or the fact that I can save you. Whatever love you can muster, no matter the motivation, I need you to pour it into this bond, and I need you to do it now!”

Aidyn squeezes Noelle’s fingers and screams, as much in frustration as in pain. He funnels magic into the bond, watching with growing dread as it automatically threads its way through the pattern.

Pressure builds inside of him as the magic creates an internal link between him and Noelle. It builds and builds in his heart, creating a vacuum that tugs him towards the center of himself, towards the place where his soul resides. Once their magic fully combines, the internal pressure explodes, and a foreign presence bursts open within him. While tidal waves of his heightened emotions immediately rush into this newly opened space, something else shoots out of it.

Bright and warm and even more determined than his pain, the light of Noelle’s soul wraps gently around the rapidly fading glow of his own.