The Cursed Bond: Bound By Ruin

The bond was quiet.

Not silent… never silent, but… subdued. Like it had retreated somewhere deep inside her chest, listening from the dark.

Seraphina knew better than to trust it when it went quiet.

Elion noticed too. He hadn't said anything, but she caught the way he watched her: cautious, like she might vanish again, or worse, change into something he couldn't follow.

And she wasn't sure he'd be wrong.

Because the bond was changing.

And so was she.

---

"I need to leave the palace," she said over breakfast, without preamble.

Elion looked up from his tea. "No."

"I wasn't asking."

"I wasn't suggesting."

"I need answers, Elion. There's someone who might have them."

"Who?"

She met his gaze.

"My mother."

It was the first time she'd said that name out loud in weeks.

Not because she didn't remember.

Because remembering hurt.

She hadn't seen her mother in nearly two years, since the last time they argued, the last time magic cracked between them like a broken promise.

They didn't part on good terms.

But her mother was a historian. A gifted one. And she'd spent years studying forbidden soulbinding lore before the council banished her from the capital.

If anyone knew the origin of the curse, it would be her.

Elion didn't argue again.

He just said, "I'm coming with you."

Seraphina almost refused.

Almost.

But the look in his eyes was the kind she couldn't fight. He wasn't offering protection.

He was asking to bear witness.

---

They left at dawn through the east gate, cloaked in illusion spells and astral wards. The Queen said nothing when they told her, just handed Elion a dagger that hummed with old magic and said, "Bring her back breathing."

No one asked what she meant.

They both understood.

Seraphina's mother wasn't dangerous.

She was prepared.

---

They traveled in silence for the first few miles. Elion rode beside her on a black mare named Ember. Seraphina's was white, of course, fittingly dramatic, the way everything around her always seemed to be.

The countryside was strangely still. No wind. No birdsong. Just the occasional rustle of something watching from beyond the trees.

"Does the bond feel different to you?" she asked eventually.

Elion nodded. "It's holding its breath."

"What does that mean?"

He looked at her. "It means it knows something we don't."

---

Her mother's cottage stood alone on a cliffside, overlooking a dead stretch of sea.

It hadn't changed.

Stone walls, moss-covered roof, a garden that looked abandoned but hummed with buried enchantments. The door opened before they knocked.

Not magically.

Her mother opened it.

She was taller than Seraphina remembered. Paler. Sharper in the way war makes people sharper.

And her eyes...

Her eyes were exactly the same.

"Hello, mother," Seraphina said.

The woman's lips twitched. "I figured you'd show up eventually."

Then her gaze shifted to Elion.

And everything went very still.

"You brought him."

"He's part of this."

"Of course he is."

Her mother stepped back and let them in without another word.

Inside, the air smelled like crushed herbs and storm-salted parchment. Books were piled in every corner, notes scrawled across every wall, ceiling, even part of the floor.

"I see you're still unhinged," Seraphina muttered.

"I see you're still dramatic."

Elion stood silently between them.

Her mother waved a hand, and a teacup floated into it. "So. Tell me how it started."

Seraphina pulled her robe aside, revealing the mark.

That got a reaction.

Her mother's mouth parted slightly. "It chose you."

"I didn't ask for it."

"No one ever does."

They sat.

And Seraphina told her everything, about the palace, the ring, the dreams, the visions, the bond's sudden violence. About Lysandra. About the failed severing attempt. About the way the curse felt.

Her mother listened like a priest to confession.

And when Seraphina was done, she poured a second cup of tea.

"I'm going to show you something," she said.

From the wall, she took a folded parchment. It was so old it cracked at the edges as she unfurled it across the table.

It was a map.

Not of land. But of magic.

Lines, sigils, celestial diagrams that looked like they belonged on a summoning circle, not a family tree.

"What is this?" Elion asked, frowning.

"This," Seraphina's mother said, "is the original structure of the bond. From before it was cursed."

Seraphina's breath caught. "Before?"

"Yes. It wasn't always like this. It wasn't even a curse. It was a ritual. An ancient pact meant to bind two souls across lifetimes."

"So what changed?"

"Someone corrupted it."

The bond hadn't been forged by accident.

It had been made by intention.

And someone, somewhere along the line, had twisted that intention into punishment.

"Why?" Elion asked.

Her mother looked at him sharply.

"Because love is a dangerous thing to give to immortals. It makes them weak. It makes them loyal. So a god, one of the old ones, decided if mortals insisted on binding souls, they'd better suffer for it."

Seraphina swallowed. "And now?"

"Now you're wearing it. Which means either the god is dead... or it's watching again."

They slept in the cottage that night, if sleep was what you could call it.

Seraphina lay awake listening to the ocean beat the cliffside like a warning drum.

Elion lay beside her on the floor, not touching, not speaking.

"I hated her for years," she whispered into the dark. "I thought she abandoned me."

"She thought you were safer without her," Elion replied.

"She thought wrong."

---

In the middle of the night, Seraphina woke to find her mother kneeling at the foot of the bed, tracing the mark on her collarbone with a glowing thread of magic.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, sitting up.

Her mother didn't flinch. "Trying to see who else it's connected to."

"There's someone else?"

"There always is. The bond isn't just between you two anymore."

"Then who?"

Her mother hesitated.

"Someone older. Someone buried."

Elion stirred beside them.

"Say it," he said. "Who?"

But she didn't.

She just stood, backed away into the shadow of the door...

"You're not ready."

---

The next morning, the bond was… loud again.

It hummed with energy. Hot. Uncontrolled.

Seraphina's mother met her at the gate.

"You have three days before the next fracture," she said simply.

"Fracture?"

"The grid. The binding. The world. Call it what you like. You've triggered a countdown."

"Can I stop it?"

"You can try."

She pressed a sealed scroll into her daughter's hand.

"This will help. But only if you stop lying to yourself."

Seraphina met her eyes. "About what?"

Her mother's expression softened for the first and last time.

"About who you're doing this for."

---

They rode back in silence.

But the silence was different now.

Because for the first time in weeks, Seraphina wasn't afraid of the bond.

She was afraid of what lay beneath it.

Someone older. Someone watching.

Someone coming.

And if they didn't figure it out before the fracture came...

There wouldn't be a palace left to protect