Some chembonds only lasted a couple of hours, while others could linger for a couple of weeks or longer. But once a person’s body started metabolizing the chemicals, the bond would start to fade. And the stronger the initial chembond, or the more you used them, the greater the danger involved. Even with a short, common chembond, the withdrawal could still be as bad as an alcohol-induced hangover—or worse. And with the military and academic chembonds, well, more than one person had gone mad from them, which was why chembonds were mostly used for brief recreational fun.
Conrad had sweet-talked me into trying a chembond once, a few weeks before he’d dumped me. I’d gotten sick within five minutes of taking it and had spent the rest of the night vomiting, while he’d gotten bored and gone out clubbing with his friends. I should have realized then what a selfish dick he was.
Still, all this talk of chembonds made my mind start churning. “Maybe it was something in the lava field. Maybe the Techwavers saturated the air with some chemicals from the production plant before the battle began. That could explain why we’re bonded.”
Kyrion shook his head. “I don’t think so. My helmet didn’t pick up any chemical readings from the refinery itself, only smoke and natural gases from the volcanic activity. Also, certain things don’t happen with chembonds.”
“What things?”
He held up his cut hand. “Things like this.”
I frowned. “Okay, so what do you think it is?”
“Well, if it’s not a chembond, then it has to be . . .” His voice trailed off, and uncertainty filled his face.
“What?”
He drew in a breath, then sighed, as though he was going to confess some deep, dark secret. “If it’s not a chembond, then it has to be a truebond.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed again.
My chuckles were even louder and stronger than before, and the force of them shook my entire body and made my ribs ache even more than they already did from our earlier fight and being slung around the ship.
Kyrion gave me a sour look, and my chuckles faded away.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” I flapped my hand back and forth again. “There’s no way that we have a truebond. Besides, such things don’t really exist. Truebonds are just fairy tales people tell themselves to justify their actions.”
An image of Conrad and Sabine flickered through my mind, but I shoved it away.
Kyrion’s eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean?”
I clasped my hands to my chest, batted my eyelashes, and let out a loud, overly dramatic sigh. “Even though I’m married, I’m going to cheat on my partner because I have a truebond with someone else. A truebond is true love! It’s our destiny!” I dropped my hands to my sides. “Bah! Truebonds are just an excuse people use to do something they know is wrong.”
Kyrion snorted, almost as if he agreed with me. “Despite what most people think, truebonds aren’t always romantic in nature. They can form between friends, relatives, even complete strangers who despise each other.”
Given what had just happened, the two of us definitely fell into that last category.
“But no matter their origin or nature, truebonds aren’t about feelings,” he continued, a derisive sneer creeping into his voice.
“Then what are they about?”
He shrugged. “Magic.”
For the third time, I started laughing. Kyrion quirked his head to the side. No doubt, he could hear the desperate hysteria in my chuckles.
“You do have magic? Some sort of psionic ability?” he asked when my laughter finally died down again.
The arrogance in his voice rankled me. Condescending Regal lord. I opened my mouth to snap back, but he stabbed his finger at me.
“You do have magic,” he said, making it a statement rather than a question. “I sensed it when you were dragging me across the lava field.”
“I don’t know what you sensed. Perhaps you were just light-headed from the heat and blood loss and killing people and not feeling very steady.”
He peered down his nose at me. “I can assure you that I am quite steady when it comes to battle, and I have never, ever killed anyone I didn’t intend to.”
The memory of him slicing through the heavily armored Techwavers like they were as harmless as wisps of black smoke filled my mind, and I had to hold back a shudder.
“What kind of magic do you have?” Kyrion asked. “My guess is that you’re a seer, given what you did earlier.”
“What was that?”
“You knew exactly how to get across the field without running into any of the lava streams. Even with all my psion power, I couldn’t have managed that. But a seer could have.”
He was right. I had used my seer magic to get us across the field, something I was still trying to wrap my mind around.
“So what family, what House do you belong to?” he asked. “Takahashi? Gonzalo? Park?”
He rattled off the names of several famous seer families among the Regals that I recognized from the gossipcasts.
I shook my head. “My name is Vesper Quill, and I don’t come from any fancy Regal family. I only have a bit of magic. Nothing particularly grand or exciting.”
His mouth turned down, as though he was disappointed. He wasn’t the only one. “What, exactly, can you do with your power?”
I gestured over at the mass of wires still hanging out of the open panel. “I see how things work. How to fix things and make them better—stronger, faster, more efficient.”
“But that’s not what you did on the lava field,” he countered. “There was nothing to fix there.”
I turned his words over in my mind, thinking about how to explain my magic. “I also see . . . possibilities. Sometimes I get these . . . instincts, and I see these . . . flares of light. They’re almost like silver arrows pointing me in one direction or another, although it’s up to me to figure out what they mean. But that’s the extent of my magic, such as it is.”
I didn’t mention the beautiful, dilapidated castle that filled my mindscape or the round room with doors I couldn’t open. He didn’t need to know about any of that, especially since I had never been sure what to make of it myself.
“How do you know so much about truebonds?” I asked.
His jaw clenched, but after a few seconds, he answered me. “My parents had a truebond.”
Ah, yes, that was right, and something else I should have remembered from the gossipcasts. Chauncey and Desdemona Caldaren had had one of the most famous romances in the Archipelago Galaxy, every aspect of which had been breathlessly covered by the media. The gossipcasts had absolutely adored the epic tale of the poor farmgirl who had joined the Arrows and caught the dashing lord’s eye.
For years, right up to their deaths, Chauncey and Desdemona had been held up as a bright, shining example of what a truebond could be, what it should be. Even now, the gossipcasts still mentioned their bond, especially on the anniversary of Desdemona’s death.
I’d thought it had been another fairy tale spun by the Regals to make their wealth, power, and excess seem more palatable to everyone who had less than they did. I’d thought the Caldarens—or anyone else—having a truebond was about as likely as my suddenly sprouting wings and flying around like a giant ice owl.