Soulbound
to me, Trayton?”
    Trayton leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His soft hair fell forward, hiding his face like a curtain. After a long silence, he said, “Did you know the one you were Soulbound to?”
    “Don’t change the subject.”
    “I’m not.” He lifted his head to look at me. The curtain drew back, revealing his pale, handsome face. “Did you?”
    I debated for several seconds what to tell him and finally settled on the absolute truth.
    “No. But when I learned he’d died, I felt…broken. I didn’t leave my room. I was just so sad.” I shook my head. “It sounds crazy, but I can’t explain what it felt like to lose him…and I don’t know why I felt that way over a total stranger. I’ve never talked about it until now.”
    He watched me for a moment, and I couldn’t tell if he was gauging my sanity level or empathizing with my loss. When he spoke, his voice sounded gruff, as if he were on the verge of tears. “Now imagine having known him, having been there to hold him when he cried, having held him and kissed him and dreamed of a life together. Imagine how much bigger the pain of that loss would have been if you had counted on himalways being there for you, if you had loved him before you lost him.”
    A tear escaped his eye and rolled down his cheek, glistening in the light of the moon.
    It was all I could do to keep our promise to Maddox, to not reach out and wipe his tear away, to offer him whatever comfort I could. “Oh, Trayton…I’m so sorry.”
    “When Samantha—my Healer—died, I sank into a deep depression. After her funeral, I wouldn’t leave my parents’ home to return to the academy, wouldn’t even receive any visitors. I was broken and nobody could fix me. After a month, my father brought me into his office and told me that he had offered the headmaster a substantial amount of money as a show of gratitude for treating our family so well. But I knew what he meant. It was a bribe to move my name to the top of the list of those who were waiting for Healers.” He clenched his jaw. “I hated him. And when I learned your name, I hated you too.”
    He took a deep breath and wiped his tears away, something I couldn’t do. “But the hate, the reluctance, the fear went away with time. And now, I’m just hopeful that maybe we’ll find even a small part of the happiness, the closeness that Samantha and I shared.”
    He met my eyes then and his became warm, all tears gone, all sorrow tucked neatly at the back of his mind. It had to be unbearable to live with that kind of pain.“You’ll never replace her, but if I had to choose someone to stand by my side, I can’t think of anyone more fitting than you. So…yes. Yes, I do want to be Bound to you, Kaya. But something tells me you don’t feel the same way.”
    I nodded, not wanting to lie. Trayton deserved better than that. “Up until this evening, I would have said that you were right. I mean, I was threatened away from my home, forced into training for a war I don’t have anything to do with, and given no choice of who I’ll spend the rest of my life with. It’s awful.”
    I fell silent.
    After several minutes, Trayton cleared his throat, as if preparing for the worst, and said, “And now?”
    “Now I’m not so sure. Now I’m wondering what tomorrow will be like. Now I’m…” I dropped my eyes to the floor. “Now I’m curious about what it will be like to be Bound to you.”
    When I looked back at Trayton, he was smiling.
    “We should get going before Maddox has a heart attack.”
    I chuckled. “Should you walk out shirtless, just to make her wonder what we were doing?”
    “I like the way you think. But I think we’ve caused her enough stress for one evening.” He smirked as we made our way out of the room and down the grand staircase. After a pause, he said, “Maybe tomorrow.”
    Trayton locked the door and we stepped outside. Thesky had grown overcast with clouds—gray puffs against the black nighttime sky

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