My name is Siri, and I used to believe that seeing the future would give me control. I was wrong. The visions came after the fever took my sight, a cruel trade—I lost my eyes, but gained glimpses of what was to come. I thought I could use them to protect the people I loved.
I thought I could prevent the worst. I was married to Fergus then, a man who claimed to love me even when I was blind and sick. My stepmother Ariadne and my stepsister Cordelia pretended to care for me, bringing soup and comfort. My little brother Oz was the only one I trusted with my whole heart, until he got sick too, and died.
Or so I was told. The morning I woke to find Fergus holding my hand, I felt safe for the first time in months. Then the vision came, and I saw him with Cordelia in the library. I saw her silk dressing gown fall to the floor.
I saw her climb into his lap, completely bare. I saw him pull her closer and groan her name. I tried to scream, but I had no body to scream with. I could only watch, trapped in the vision, as my husband betrayed me with my own stepsister.
When I came back to myself, my hand was still in his, and he was still pretending to love me. I knew I had to escape. I waited until night, slipped out of the house in the rain, and ran until my lungs burned. I had no money, no sight, no plan.
I only knew I had to get away from them all. I found myself on a road, soaked and shivering, when a carriage stopped beside me. The man who stepped out was tall and golden-eyed, dressed like a king. He introduced himself as Roman, the Alpha King of the northern territories.
He looked at me like he saw something no one else could see. He called me his mate. I didn’t believe in fate. I didn’t believe in love.
But Roman offered me shelter, safety, and a place to heal. He gave me a room in his castle, healers to tend my body, and patience while I learned to trust again. He told me I was strong. He told me I was beautiful.
He told me he would wait for me, no matter how long it took. I wanted to believe him. But I was too broken, too afraid. I had loved once and been betrayed.
I had trusted once and been poisoned. I told myself I couldn’t let anyone close enough to hurt me again. So I pushed him away, even when I could see the hurt in his eyes. Even when I felt the pull between us, the mate bond that hummed beneath my skin, I refused to acknowledge it.
I was learning to live in the castle, learning to use my visions to help Roman with his kingdom, when a new vision came. It wasn’t about the future. It was about the past. I saw Oz, alive, locked in a cold stone basement, counting the days by scratching marks into the wall with broken pottery.
He was my brother, and he hadn’t died. He had been imprisoned. Ariadne had done it. My stepmother, the woman who poisoned my father, poisoned me, and supposedly lost my brother to the same illness, had hidden him away in a hunting lodge.
I had been grieving a living boy while she had been holding him prisoner. Roman didn’t hesitate. He assembled his guards and we rode for the lodge within the hour. When we found the basement door with its three locks, when we opened it and saw Oz huddled in the corner, thin and afraid, the relief nearly broke me.
We brought him home. I held him in the infirmary while the healers fed him and wrapped him in warm blankets. I stood over his sleeping form and felt something harden in my chest. I wanted Ariadne dead.
I wanted to watch her suffer. Roman told me that death was mercy, and that true punishment was living with the consequences. I didn’t believe him at first. But the council listened to Oz’s testimony, and the evidence was overwhelming.
Ariadne was arrested at sunset, screaming that we would pay. I watched her dragged away and waited for the satisfaction to come. It never did. Three days later, I was walking through the palace gardens when a vision hit without warning.
I saw Roman reaching for a glass. I saw his face change. I saw the glass shatter against the floor as his hand clutched at his chest. I ran.
I found him in the corridor, dressed for a council meeting, and I begged him not to go. I told him he was going to be attacked. I told him to cancel the meeting, to stay where I knew he was safe. He listened.
He looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered and ordered the meeting postponed. We went to his chambers, surrounded by guards, and I paced the floor, my hands shaking with fear and guilt that I had let Ariadne live. Roman tried to comfort me. I wouldn’t let him.
I was so angry, so terrified, so convinced that my weakness was going to cost him his life, that I pushed him away again. I told him I was being realistic. I told him her revenge was coming, and it would be my fault. He looked at me then, tired and worn down, and he said, “My instincts told me you were my mate.
That I just needed to wait, to give you what you needed, until eventually, you’d want me too. ”
I challenged him. I told him I didn’t want him. He poured wine, and I saw the vision again.
I tried to stop him. I tried to scream. But he had already swallowed. I watched him fall.
I caught him in my arms as the healer flooded in, as the guards surrounded us, as his heartbeat faded beneath my palm. I begged him not to leave me. I told him I loved him. I told him I was sorry.
The healer said the mate bond could save him, but only if it was complete. An incomplete bond wasn’t enough. I didn’t hesitate. I bit down at the junction of his neck and shoulder, and the bond exploded through me like lightning.
I felt him anchor to me, felt him start to heal, felt him pull me into his mind. “Stay with me,” I thought. “I just found the courage to love you. Don’t leave me.
”
“You are mine,” he thought back. “I will never leave. ”
He survived. By the next morning, he was healed.
By the next month, I was his queen. And we ruled together, bound by love and fate, and I finally understood what it meant to be whole. But I never forgot that the price of that wholeness came from letting go of the girl I used to be.
