When Aidyn regains consciousness, the gaping hole in his mind where his Mental Bond used to be fills his awareness. Aidyn has spent every waking moment for the last two decades feeling his brother’s consciousness alongside his own, and now there is only emptiness. Erron isn’t there! 

Not only is his brother gone, but so is the warmth Aidyn now realizes came from his Healing Bond. He was born with that bond. Everyone is. The entire Embermoorian population is connected through their Healing Bonds. Without it, he is alone.

Panic makes Aidyn bolt up and fight against the hands that try to hold him back.

“Lay down, Your Highness!”

He fights harder.

“You need to try to remain calm!”

But Aidyn can’t remain calm. His head and heart feel too empty without his missing bonds, and somehow also too full of everything else. He needs to find his brother! He needs to figure out what happened! He needs to remember how he got here, wherever “here” is—but he can’t! He can’t remember. He can’t think straight. There are too many people crowded around him, too many thoughts and fears collecting, and too much pain pressing in all around him. He has to fight, has to break free!

Just as it feels like he’s about to explode from the internally building pressure, it starts to release.

Aidyn squeezes his eyes shut and takes deep breaths, trying to track the sudden shift he senses within himself. His panic and pain aren’t disappearing. They’re still there, but the overwhelming pressure of them lessens. He traces the sensation to his remaining bonds and his blood runs cold.

“I have a Love Bond.” The words feel like stones falling out of his mouth, stones that crush him no matter how fast he tries to leap away.

“Yes,” a familiar, steady voice answers him.

Aidyn flicks his eyes open.

His mother, Queen Maryn of Embermoore, leans over the side of the bed. She grips his shoulders, helping a group of Healers and royal guards wrestle him back into bed.

Aidyn stops resisting when he notices her eyes are glazed with tears. She never cries.

“Do you remember what happened?” she asks softly, adjusting his blankets and pillows before sitting down. She has to pull the chair several paces closer. It must have gotten shoved aside in her attempts to help calm him.

“It’s coming back to me.” Aidyn nods slowly, before lurching forward again. “But Erron!”

His mother grabs the hand he tries to use to sit up again, and speaks quickly. “He’s alive, Aidyn! He’s alive.”

Aidyn collapses with relief back into his pillows.

“The bond between the two of you was broken from the outside—not intentionally from within, or unintentionally from death—and his Healing Bond remains intact. He was not physically injured like you were either.”

Aidyn takes a shuddering breath. He tries to speak, but no words come out.

“We are still in the process of gathering information and reports,” his mother continues. “There were dozens of attacks on high ranking officials, all at the same time. So far, it seems breaking bonds was the purpose. No one died, thankfully, but many were made vulnerable.”

Aidyn nods, feeling the gravity of the situation. The same thing happened three and a half years ago during The Battle. “Is it related to The Immortal War?”

“We are still looking into it, but it’s likely.” His mother sighs wearily, showing another unusual display of emotion. “We will need reports from you about what happened, but that can wait. You need to rest.”

“What about my team? Where are they?” Aidyn can tell his Team Bond is still intact and undamaged, which means they are all at still alive.

The weary expression on his mother’s face disappears behind her usual mask of regal calm. “Guards escorted your colonels back to the capital and will keep them… safe…until they are cleared for duty again.”

In other words, that’s her polite way of saying they’re under house arrest for now. 

“Your newest member, however, Noelle Allendale—”

“Mage Noelle Allendale,” Aidyn corrects. As much as he hates his titles, Noelle loves hers.

His mother’s eyes narrow. “Mage Noelle Allendale is currently being monitored and held for questioning in a nearby, but secure, location.”

“Mother, she saved me!”

“Prince Aidyn, she formed an unsanctioned bond with a member of the royal family.”

“But—”

“And not just any bond, but the most personal one, one that can so easily be used against you, making it—”

“Mother!”

“—a matter of national security.”

“I was dying!”

“YES, YOU WERE!” his mother yells, momentarily losing all semblance of calm. “You were dying, Aidyn, as a result of a coordinated and premeditated attack, and we don’t know who was a part of it yet!”

The fear that smashes through his mother’s normally rigidly regal demeanor softens him. 

“Mother…”

The thing is, right now, the woman sitting next to him is not just his Mother. In this moment, she is also The Queen.

She takes a deep breath. “Aidyn, we have to figure out what happened, and like it or not, your team is involved, as witnesses at the very least.”

“I understand that, and I also know Noelle didn’t do anything except save my life.”

“Be that as it may, there are consequences to every action. The consequence of this one is that she must be proven innocent beyond any hint of a doubt before we can risk releasing her.” Some of the hardness in his mother’s voice dissolves. “Not that distance will keep you from seeing her, I’m sure. Your father loves telling me about updates to the ‘mental construct’ she shares with you and your team.”

Aidyn gives her a feeble grin. “And here I thought he never read my reports.”

A smile that looks more mischievous than regal slips through his mother’s Queenly mask. “Only when they are interesting.” 

Aidyn squeezes her hand, wishing, like always, that she’d remove that mask more often. 

“We weren’t expecting you to wake up so quickly,” she says, further softening her voice. “How is the pain? The healers immediately took care of everything physical at the transport location.”

Aidyn rubs his chest where the arrow pierced him, but it’s as if that wound never existed. “How did we end up getting here? I don’t remember anything after…” he trails off as flashes of memory remind him of Noelle’s soul wrapping around his own. “…after our bond activated.” 

Noelle doesn’t like physical contact. She and Aidyn have exchanged only a handful of hugs the entire time they’ve known each other, and now their souls have literally touched. She held his life—his whole being—against hers, and used her own life force to sustain his… Considering how incredibly uncomfortable that makes him feel, he can imagine how much she dislikes this whole situation.

Aidyn doesn’t really want to think about their new bond anymore though, so he shifts his full attention to his mother’s explanation to his question.

“Mage Taryon shared your location via Mil-Net, and the army found a transport mage who’d been to a small village about ten miles from you. That’s as close as anyone could get. Your team used your magic to get to the village as quickly as possible, and then everyone transported here, to the Army Headquarters Hospital.”

Aidyn rubs his head. His chest wound may no longer hurt, but the bond breaks are overwhelming. Magical in nature, it’s a bizarre pain. Besides his head, there isn’t one place that hurts. The pain is everywhere and nowhere. Everything magical within him feels like it’s out of place and mixed up. Nothing fits the way it’s supposed to anymore, and the jumbled pieces feel both sharp and fluid at the same time, like…like everything slips through his fingers when he tries to grab it, but it still manages to cut him.

Aidyn tries to relax but still feels too agitated. He shivers, and doesn’t refuse the extra blanket a healer wraps around his shoulders.

“It will take time to heal.” His mother holds his hand tighter. “Do not rush yourself. We are all here for you. I plan on splitting my time between Navy Headquarters and here until your father concludes The Mortal Alliance conference in Seleone. All of our allies are concerned about this attack on us, and have offered their support. Even so, your father and I will use transport mages to alternate spending the nights here and at the palace, so you and your brother aren’t ever alone. Bellana and Dyane are managing day-to-day affairs from the capital, and are preparing things so you and Erron can both recover long-term with us at the palace.”

“My life is here, Mother. I’m not leaving.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line. “We don’t have to decide anything today.” 

She pats his hand and stands. “I need to return to the investigation for a while. A command unit has been set up downstairs, and I’ve been Summoned to join the briefing for the team assigned to investigate your teammates. We need to start collecting their memories. I won’t be far if you need anything.” 

A tiny bit of Aidyn’s tension relaxes as she strokes his hair like she used to when he was young. So much has changed in such a short time, but not all is lost. He’s still alive. He still has his family. He still has his team. 

Even though he’s only been awake for a quarter of an hour, Aidyn feels completely drained. Eyelids drooping, he tries to find a more comfortable position, but pauses when the squad of royal guards doesn’t follow his mother out the door.

At that moment, recognition clicks in his addled brain. He’s friends with a couple of the guards. They were in the squads assigned to him throughout his university years.

“Jonnsonn! Mackelvy! I haven’t seen you two in ages. What are you doing here?” His greeting comes out sounding much more strained and weary than he intends, but they don’t seem to mind.

Jonnsonn, the more senior of the two, smiles but doesn’t bow. He obviously remembers Aidyn’s decades old instructions. “We’re leading your new squad of personal guards.”

As much as it warms his heart that Jonnsonn also doesn’t use titles or honorifics, the guard’s news makes Aidyn less happy. “I don’t need—”

“Yes, you do,” Jonnsonn says, speaking as confidently as ever. “Until your Healing Bond reforms, having an escort of guards that includes mages with healing abilities, like Mackelvy here—” he places a hand on Mackelvy’s shoulder “—is absolutely reasonable.”

Aidyn rubs his throbbing temples. Broken Healing Bond or not, he doesn’t need an entire squad of babysitters. He’s thirty-two, for Realm’s Sake! Unfortunately, he’s too exhausted to reason with them right now. Maybe after a nap…