19. Chapter 19

Too much. It was all just too much.

I spent the next couple of days hidden away in the workroom, focusing on a spell to give Bis a voice. It was a complex undertaking, and one that took all of my mental capacity. Which was perfect, because then I couldn"t worry about all the other shit I was currently avoiding.

Stacks of books were piled precariously here and there throughout the room, with little notes sticking out of them where I"d found bits of information that I thought might be helpful. I had some serious doubts about my ability to pull this off, but an idea was forming in my brain, something that wasn"t quite tangible yet, but that told me I was probably on the right track.

I might not have all kinds of fancy formal training, but I excelled at making shit up on a whim.

At least, usually.

Hopefully, whatever spell I concocted for Bis didn"t end up with a giant fucking hole in it like the one in the pocket world spell… but no. We weren"t thinking about that right now. I still hadn"t told the others about it. I felt like there was no sense in making them live in terror when I had no solution.

I stared at the array of spell ingredients that were scattered across the workbench. Planting my hands on my hips, I muttered to myself as I tried to think. "Throat chakras, translation runes, smoke to carry intent… what else?"

"What kind of disaster are you plotting now, Lovell?" Dyre"s deep voice startled me, and I turned to glare at the tall, skinny goth who had power over life and death.

"I"m going to make it so Bis can talk," I informed him.

He arched one blood red brow at me, crossed his arms over his chest, and glanced at my rodent friend. "Don"t you think the poor thing has had enough of Lovells experimenting on him?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What do you want? You usually go out of your way to avoid talking to me, so there must be a reason you"re in here now, interrupting. Did you finally decide to get your head out of your ass and talk about our relationship?"

He stepped into the room, crossing to the workbench to look over the pile of ingredients I had come up with so far. "I want this life bond between us dissolved," he said flatly, not looking at me.

I huffed. "And I want magic rainbow sparkles to shoot out my ass every time I fart. Sometimes it"s better if we don"t get everything we want."

He finally deigned to look at me, his sharp violet gaze cutting like a knife. "Stop being an idiot for five fucking minutes and talk to me like an adult, witch! I want this shackle that is connecting me to you removed. Now."

I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. I was so damned tired. Tired of every-fucking-thing. "Why?" I said flatly. "Why now? Are you so dead-set on giving up on me? On us? I care for you, Dyre. You and Sunny both. I can"t just turn that off and pretend like it never happened. So… why is it so easy for you to throw me away?"

I was trying to have patience with him, to have empathy for his situation and the fact that I was being beyond greedy by demanding that he not give up on what we had. But today was not the day. I was fresh out of patience and understanding.

Dyre scoffed. "Why? Because I created your family line, Oleander. I"m your goddamned ancestor." He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment. Or maybe with his wraith passenger. But eventually his shoulders slumped, and some of the tension went out of him. "Because I haven"t given up on you at all, but I should. And that makes me think that something inside me is broken." His deep voice was soft, almost a whisper now, but full of conviction. "I don"t know if these feelings I have are really my own, or if I"m being influenced by the bond. You, me, and Sunny, we"re all mixed up together in this connection, and I think it"s clouding my judgement. I want to know that my thoughts are my own."

I stared into his eyes for a long moment. It hurt. I thought if I just gave him more time, he"d sort things out in his mind. That we"d figure out this thing between us and get back to growing the connection we had formed. I"d grown attached to him.

I loved him.

But clearly, he didn"t feel as strongly as I did. He thought any feelings he might have for me were only because of the lifebond. And who knows? Maybe they were. Maybe he was right, and I was just being a stubborn, stupid Lovell.

And I was getting really sick of my decisions coming back to bite me in the ass. It seemed like lately everything I did was destined to fall apart. Sadness, frustration, and anger all churned up inside me, and I was suddenly just sick of fighting for every little scrap of happiness I could manage to scrape up out of the dirt.

"Fine." I turned to the table and grabbed my athame. Turning back to Dyre, I called up my magic and sent it out to light up the spell circle that was carved into the floor around us. Then I sliced my palm open and held out the knife for him to do the same. "Let"s get this over with. I"ve got shit to do."

He stared at me for a moment, as if he was surprised that I had given in so easily. Maybe he wanted me to fight, so I could be the one to cling to the things that he was adamant he couldn"t have. So I could continue to be the bad guy. Well, tough titties. Because I was done.

He took the knife and sliced open his own palm. I held up my bleeding hand. Dyre mirrored me, reaching out to press our palms together, but he froze before we could touch. His body went rigid, his eyes went black, and a dark aura filled the room as Sunny came raging to the forefront.

"What are you doing, my witch?" the wraith demanded. "We agreed Dyre is wrong about this. We agreed we will make him see the error in his thinking. Now you are seeking to destroy the bond between us? Why?"

I looked up into those black eyes and my heart ached. But that was just another sign of how far I"d fallen. Of how much I had fucked up. I had bonded myself to an ancient evil entity and let myself develop feelings for it. How very Lovell of me.

"Dyre doesn"t want this bond," I told the wraith firmly. "And I"m not going to force him to love me. Take good care of him." Then I closed the distance between us and smashed our palms together, mingling our blood and our magic.

Dissolving a lifebond took the agreement of both parties. Or, all three, in this case. I unwound the tendrils of my magic from the cord connecting us. For an instant, I thought Sunshine would keep us tethered, that he would refuse to let me and Dyre sever the connection. But after a moment of resistance, his dark power receded, uncoiling from my own as if it had never been there.

Dyre pulled back his own magic essence as well, and it was done.

The necromancer stepped back, removing his hand from mine, and sucked in a breath as the magic within and around us settled. His violet eyes searched mine, his expression unreadable. Then he just turned and walked away.

The moment he was out of the room, I sent a wave of magic after him to close the heavy wooden door. Then I curled my fingers inward, squeezing my bleeding palm closed as I sank to my knees and sobbed my heart out.

The connection to Dyre and Sunshine was gone. But my feelings definitely were not. And my broken heart felt like glass shards in my chest.