A Cruel Kindness

Chapter 8

Soren

For the first time in my life, I was nervous to Cross.

The Bridge was an old friend, and Carson and I had jumped across it like rowdy kids hundreds of times. I’d lost count when I was twenty-two. Four years ago, so surely the number had at least doubled since.

But sitting here, crouching in the corner of the training room, twirling a knife so that it balanced on the tip, I found myself nervous.

Despite the rumors swirling around the base—on both sides—that I was a psychopath who was excited by little else other than bloodshed, I actually did have emotions. I was intelligent enough to call them what they were when I felt them.

It was nerves. The urge to consider the worst possible outcome the likely one. The rapid heartbeat. The small bead of sweat building on my brow.

Every single one of those symptoms swelled when I looked at Bellamy. Right now, she was running circles around a soldier thirteen years deep into enlistment on the sparring mats.

She was quick, with a foresight for her opponents moves that made her reactions seem calm and calculated. Seeing her so steady on her feet should have calmed me, but all I could picture was something going wrong.

Her horse tripping over a branch and crushing her beneath its weight. A Muli soldier firing an arrow right into her chest. Her leaving like Carson did.

The knife I was spinning clattered to the floor. It wasn’t loud, but Bellamy turned toward the sound anyway.

YAHOO, she’s paying attention to you! The Bond yelled into my head. I’d wondered what it would sound like. My Match with Carson didn’t come with this pesky little nuisance. He’d just always been my brother, without having to try for a relationship.

With Bellamy … God, I needed to take a page out of Ford’s book and learn how to fucking control myself. As if to prove my composure, I grinned at Bellamy, who was still staring.

She would have to be the one to turn away. My eyes hadn’t left her form in at least twenty minutes, and I’d guess it would be at least twenty more before they decided to take a break.

After a moment, she turned back to her opponent, and I could have sworn there was a blush warming her cheeks. A sudden lash of heat ran through me, tightening my chest all the way down to my stomach.

I could still hate her family and want to fuck her. That seemed rational.

The only problem was, I could tell she wouldn’t let me have both. Bellamy seemed to hate the fact that I hated her, and if I wanted anything from her other than irritated glares and poorly restrained blushes, I’d have to change course.

I had no plans to get over the anger, though. Not when my fate had just been made worse.

The Bond wouldn't let me hate her. Every time I tried to reach for the rage, it felt too far away. Every time I thought the word hate in the same sentence as her, the Bond would hit me with a little zap of pain like I was wearing a damn shock collar.

I was surprised Bellamy didn’t harbor anger for her own father. But then again, she’d all but admitted she’d volunteered for this.

I’d been too busy staring at her and trying to quiet the Bond to follow up on what was important. That she'd come here willingly. That would change today.

“You’re staring,” Ford’s low, deep voice said from next to me. He walked over to the wall and crouched next to me, matching my stance.

“Fuck, it's like you knew I was thinking about you,” I said through a laugh, shaking my head towards the floor.

“How romantic,” Ford drawled. While I’d always been tighter with Carson—hard not to—Ford had been there from the beginning. We’d seen some serious shit together.

“I think I have a right to stare,” I said, responding to his first statement. My eyes found Bellamy again, watching as her strong, beautiful leg snapped up to hit her opponent in the shoulder.

Good girl , I thought, the voice entirely my own. Though the Bond seemed to agree.

Ford’s low chuckle pulled my attention back. “That you do.”

“You don’t.” Well, that was ill-advised. Ford was notoriously close-lipped about Esme.

“It’s different. You know that.” His voice was surprisingly level, none of the bite I’d expected.

“How?” I dared to ask.

I wasn’t looking at him—my eyes still glued quite firmly to Bellamy—but I could tell he was shaking his head. “It just never woke up.”

It being the Bond. “Lucky bastard.”

Ford’s derisive laugh was all I got in response. Then, just because he could, he leaned down and knocked my knife over, laughing louder as it clanked to the ground.

That pulled my gaze from Bellamy. No one touched my knives. “You know I could stab you with this. So easily.”

“Good luck, man,” Ford said in return, something close to a smile on his face. I guess that was the best he could do. He never smiled. The few times I’d seen him do it, all of which had to do with his niece and nephew, it was impossible to miss how his scar had changed him. The left side of his face couldn’t move as well as the right.

He walked away as a pang of remembrance, of moments I was sworn to secrecy about, rang through my head. I wondered if he’d ever learn the full truth surrounding those dark days that he’d been taken prisoner, then rescued.

I certainly wouldn’t be the one to tell him.

My eyes snapped back to Bellamy on their own accord, like the Bond sensed something before it happened. A second later, Bellamy’s opponent got a rare advantage on her and kicked his boot into her knee, making her fall to the ground with a restrained whimper.

Oh, that fucker was dead.

He hit her way too hard for a friendly spar. He clearly had a thing against the Royals. Now that I thought about it, he’d always been particularly snippy with me.

Cut off his leg. I want it as a trophy. Gimme , the Bond agreed happily. While that seemed like a wonderful idea, I didn’t need to start chopping limbs off yet.

Not until Bellamy asked me to. Preferably with her tauntingly pink lips curved into a smile.

Before I could make my way over, I saw Bellamy lose her composure. It was an interesting thing, watching her underlying spirit break through the carefully crafted mask she always wore. Always poised, always proper, never an inkling of anything other than a cool disposition.

But watching that mask fall as she let her anger break through was … arresting.

My chest squeezed, and I was half sure that my heart stopped.

Bellamy looked fucking beautiful as she stood, taking a few jumping steps to dismiss the pain in her leg. Then, with a wicked smile I would fall asleep thinking about, she launched herself at her opponent.

He went down in seconds, pinned under the weight of her arm across his throat, her knees pining his arms into the floor so he couldn’t move.

He thrashed under her, trying to regain the upper hand, but Bellamy simply kneeled over him with a passive expression. So calm, so beautiful.

Fuck.

And when her eyes rose to find mine, like she was looking for me to congratulate her on a job well done, I almost lost my fucking mind. I walked over to her on brisk legs, swooping her off the pinned soldier and resting her on her feet.

My hands burned from the contact, and I kept them curled into fists by my side.

“Whipped, much?” the dumbass on the floor sneered at me. Yeah, he definitely had a problem with Royals.

“Now, now, I suggest you stay down while you know what’s good for you,” I said with a grin. Bellamy had put him firmly in his place.

The softness I found in Bellamy’s eyes when I turned around was fucking dangerous. She was forgetting her resolve to hate me.

Good. She’d probably get pissed at me for the questions I was about to ask, so it was as good a time as any.

“Coffee, princess?” I asked, giving us both an excuse to leave. The more I stared at that asshole on the floor, the more I was inclined to listen to the Bond and cut off his foot and keep it.

Bellamy managed a short nod, though she looked particularly breathless. Yeah, there would be no touching her right now.

I kept my hand at my side, even though it itched to reach out and take hers. I forced myself to jerk my chin at the door to the training room.

Bellamy turned, sauntering towards the doors with that Edelstenne confidence that was becoming increasingly more difficult to hate. Unfortunately, the Bond had proposed a lovely solution to ridding Bellamy of that horrid last name and her power-hungry family.

Simply replace it with mine.

I snuck a helpless look at her ass as she walked, my eyes trailing back up when she looked over her shoulder at her opponent, a secret smile blooming on her lips.

She liked to prove herself, to subvert what was expected of her. Interesting.

We made our way to the dining hall in silence, passing a fair amount of people who gawked at us like they were shocked we weren’t making out in the hallway.

The stories about paranimas were clearly able to override observation. People didn’t care that the only Soul Match they’d seen in the last three years hated each other. They remembered the stories of the ones who came before.

“He doesn’t like us,” Bellamy quietly observed as we stepped in to the open hall and made our way to the kitchen windows where there was an afternoon supply of coffee, nutrient bars, and—if we were lucky—fruit.

I spied a basket of apples. Lucky day. “No, he doesn’t.”

“I guess it makes sense,” Bellamy said, wisely stepping aside as I made her coffee. Three days into the Bond, and she’d learned quickly that the voice in my head got very, very angry when she tried to serve herself. It was a protective, possessive asshole that was fighting me for control with the fury of a feral animal. “We get a lot of privileges they don’t,” she finished.

“Like?”

Bellamy waited until we were seated in the far corner of the room, as much privacy as we could get, to answer. “The draft, for one.”

“Ah.” She really couldn’t given me an easier in. Maybe she even secretly wanted me to ask. “Something you wouldn’t know of, right?”

A blush stole over Bellamy’s cheeks, her gaze drifting briefly to the floor. Or maybe to where my hand was curled around the coffee mug. Both were in her line of sight. “No, I wouldn’t.”

There was a draft every year. Two levels—one for general service, one for special. If you were one of the lucky few selected for special service, you were sent to the priestesses of Muli, serving their Goddess on our planet, to get your Mark extracted.

They told you it was an honor to mask the darker truth, that you never got out once you were Matched. You either died while in service, or you were Matched over and over and over again until they begrudgingly had to discharge you with the wealth they promised. Only few made it far enough to claim that honor.

A lucky handful—a gift only reserved for paranimas— were discharged early, but only to be dragged around as propoganda for the Empire and Vir’s strength, showing off their love as publicly as possible.

Of course, the Royals couldn’t be immune from the draft, lest they further the divide between the public and the powerful. There was one Royal child chosen every two years, in what was officially a completely random draw.

In reality, it was nothing of the sort. It was a way to weed out the drunk and the problematic, shoving them away to fight a war in hopes they’d bite it and save the Royals an unflattering headline in the news.

“You volunteered,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I sure as shit didn’t. I couldn’t even fathom what had made her choose this path when she could have lived a life of comfort.

Bellamy nodded after a moment. “I did.”

And her father let her. “Why?” I had many more burning questions to ask, starting with what she knew about my own enlistment, but I just needed to know about her.

The Bond was a selfish asshole.

Bellamy breathed out, her long lashes fluttering prettily. She was hesitating. “Bell,” I said in warning. “Honesty.”

I was pretty sure I’d be able to tell if she was lying, anyway.

Bellamy blew a breath out through her mouth in one slow stream. She did that quite often. It was a move to steady herself.

More information! Keep going! The Bond shouted into my head. Yeah, we agreed on that one.

“They were going to marry me off,” she finally said, her voice cracking through the silence like a gun shot.

She really should have warned me. Well, the Bond really. Because she’d just told me that there was a solid chance that she would have been married to someone else in a loveless, permanent political arrangement without ever finding out about me.

And the Bond hated that.

It freaked out in my head, thrashing against the confines of my mind, screaming at me to take Bellamy and hide her away so that no one could take her from me.

“ Who ?” I growled out, my voice not sounding entirely human.

Bellamy blinked in surprise, whether at my tone or the look on my face. “It’s—uh,” she swallowed thickly, then restarted. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I … uh,” Bellamy’s words cut off her in her throat, her eyes blinking in confusion. When she spoke next, her voice was much quieter, more hesitant. “The Bond is making me say that I’m … yours.” Her cheeks flushed, then she said quickly, “That I’m not getting married to anyone, that it would be—I’m not getting married.”

Damn right , the Bond in my head snapped, its anger dropping enough that I felt it slump against the back of my mind in relief.

Bellamy wouldn’t look me in the eye. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Bond had been yelling at her with even more fury than it was at me, scolding her for even entertaining the idea of marrying someone else.

“Thank you,” I said, the words sounding foreign on my tongue. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said that. I forced a grin. “Makes me not want to kill somebody as much.”

There was no use lying about the effects of the Bond. Better to talk about it instead of trying to press it down and end up making us do something stupid.

Bellamy nodded, her eyes drifting up to meet mine under lowered lashes. I stayed silent, waiting for her to speak. We both knew I was waiting for her to elaborate. After a moment, she spoke, “I’d always known that I would be married off. My father was obsessed with staying in power.”

I couldn’t help my snort. That was the exact reason I’d gotten forced into this shit storm. My family was beloved—it was just a fact. I posed a threat to him, the young prince who might just be able to convince people to keep the role of Emperor in one family.

Bellamy smiled despite herself. “I would serve him better marrying into another Royal family. That way he could hold to tradition and pass off his title, but still influence the new Emperor. His son-in-law.”

The passage of power was set in stone. Edelstennes always came after Rystroms. House Greene would be next. The eldest Greene son was my age and about as worthy as a bag of rocks. If Bellamy, in all her bright, warm glory, was forced to marry that asshole, I would probably burn down the Florus Castle.

“Crafty,” I bit out, lest I use much stronger words for her father.

“Endlessly so,” Bellamy agreed. Her hands curled more firmly around her coffee mug, and I restrained the urge to hold them.

Just one, the Bond begged.

No, I snapped back.

ONE , it yelled.

I wrapped one of my hands around hers. The Bond quieted immediately, the grumpy asshole.

“I thought I had more time,” Bellamy said next. Her hand was warm against mine, if not actively pressing into it. “But I—it would have happened within the year.” She laughed then, a self-deprecating little chuckle. “He told me over breakfast like it was no different than commenting on the weather. Oh, and by the way, Bellamy, you will be getting married soon. ”

I could hear her father’s voice clearly as she spoke, in all its perfectly sterile, regal glory. “What did you say to him?”

Bellamy’s smile fell an inch. “I just nodded. I expected myself to have a lot more fight. I don’t know why I just sat there, but I did.”

I shook my head before she was even finished speaking, neither me nor the Bond able to entertain a negative word about her, even from herself. “When did you decide to enlist?”

Bellamy’s grin turned back up. Thank God. “About ten minutes later.”

“What made you?” I prodded, unable to stop asking even if I wasn’t supposed to care. I should be glad her family was getting the same treatment as mine had. Revenge and all that.

Bellamy paused to take a slow sip of coffee. I certainly didn’t take note of how her throat bobbed with the move. Nor did I slide my gaze down to her exposed collarbones peeking out from under her tank. “I spent the next ten minutes in utter denial. I don’t really know how to describe it well, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of marrying someone. I sat there running through every alternative in my head. The only one that seemed to make any sense was to enlist. Hope I got a good Match that my father couldn’t fight.”

I felt no small swell of satisfaction at that statement. She did the right thing. She came to me. “A Soul Match was exactly what you were looking for, then?”

“The hardest to argue with.” I couldn’t tell by her expression if her father had. Her mask was on again, her emotions carefully sheltered.

“How did you sneak away to the priestesses?” There was a temple that housed the Goddess’s priestesses attached to the Florus Castle. Every single Saturday during my childhood, I was dragged down to that temple in our best clothing and forced to sit through hours of ceremony that celebrated the unity between our planet and Muli . Those ceremonies always ended with a thinly veiled attack at Muli’s selfishness for starting this war, disrespecting the God and Goddess that had given us life.

The priestesses were the ones with the power to pull out your Mark. It was torture, plain and simple. I woke up in a cold sweat every day for a year remembering how it felt to be ripped apart from the inside out. Not even Crossing was that painful.

They did it to Bellamy, too. She had to suffer , the Bond decided to point out, intruding into my thoughts. It was almost like it wanted me to get mad, to lose control.

My hands tightened around the coffee mug, though there was a brief moment where I envisioned it was the neck of the priestess that had caused Bellamy pain.

“In the middle of the night,” Bellamy answered, pulling me from my thoughts. “I snuck down around four and waited until they began their morning rituals. I lied and said I’d had a vision from the Goddess so they’d test me without my father’s permission.”

I snorted, knowing that the priestesses probably jumped at the fact to latch onto a story that furthered the Goddess’s mission on Vir. “It hurt?” I asked, knowing how it had felt when they’d done the very same to me, even through the numbness of realizing what my life looked like from now on.

Bellamy scoffed, her head tipping slightly to the side. “Oh, yes.”

I was torn between hating that she experienced pain at all and happy that she’d done it. That she’d come to me.

Underneath all that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t being completely honest with me. Sure, I didn’t know what her tells were, or how good of a liar she was, but I had a gut feeling. “There’s more to that story,” I said, testing the waters.

Bellamy’s eyes shot up to mine, going slightly wide.

Got her. The fact that she was evading me, even when we promised honesty was grating. Sure, I wasn’t necessarily entitled to anything.

It sure felt like I was. It felt like I was bound to her stronger than a hundred-year-old oak tree rooted in the soil.

“Are you going to tell me?” I asked, seeing if she would. We’d shared a type of honesty that was shocking, admitting to the Bond at all was far more intimate than a few petty secrets.

Bellamy blinked rapidly, carefully thinking of her response. Though it grated that she was pulling that move on me, I had to be at least glad that she was thinking it through, maybe enough to decide to give in. “Not right now. Maybe not ever.”

“Not a fan of that,” I said, my voice thin. It felt physically painful to consider a world where she kept things from me. Not that I expected minute by minute monitoring, but this was too far.

This spoke to her motivations, to her as a whole.

Bellamy’s eyebrows pulled back in a brief moment of anguish. Then she gave me a sliver of truth. “It has to do with my father.”

I groaned, needing to confirm something that I’d thought of briefly, but didn’t want to entertain. “Please don’t tell me you’re a spy for him.”

Bellamy laughed. “No, not a spy.”

That statement was true. I needed more evidence to prove it, but it seemed like she blinked twice, quickly, before telling the truth. That was her tell. “Then what?”

Bellamy considered her responses again, taking a full three breaths to answer. It simply gave me more time to stare at her. I couldn’t be angry about that. “I’m figuring out how much of a liar he is. If he isn’t, maybe I’ll share some information back with him. For the Empire’s sake. Not his.”

Fair plan. Though the Emperor had near absolute power, there were still a group of advisors that surrounded them with a lot of sway. Half of which was wielded through the spreading of information to the other families, all of whom could overthrow the Emperor at the drop of a hat with their combined armies. “And if he is?”

Bellamy shrugged so casually, you’d think she was choosing between two desserts. “Then I don’t.”

“Some would consider that treason.”

There was that shrug again, the lift and drop of her beautiful shoulder. “They can take my head if it means this war ends.”

I had to actively repress how much that thought terrified me. I couldn’t even get far enough towards visualizing it without my hand trying to bend the metal of the bench I was sitting on. I forced myself towards humor. “You have a lot of faith in yourself, princess.”

“Maybe,” Bellamy said, her eyes lighting with a smile. The fact I could make her do that was insane. “What about you? Should I be aware of any sneaking around you’ll be doing?”

I snorted a laugh, pausing to take a sip of my coffee. “In all my copious free time, I’d like to figure out what happened with Carson.”

Bellamy’s eyebrows pinched together ever so slightly. Everyone else’s condolences had felt grating, if not blatantly annoying. Her small show of empathy made my shoulders relax. “They won’t tell you anything?”

I laughed incredulously. “Oh, I am under express orders not to do anything about that. I believe they threatened jail time and a possible execution.”

Bellamy frowned then, her breathing quickening. I was not going to be the one to tell her she looked rather cute. Especially not when my imprisonment and death were the source of her ire.

I liked that.

“And you think you’ll be able to find answers once we Cross?” she asked after a small, resetting shake of her head.

I nodded. There were plenty of places and people I could vet to see where he’d gone.

Bellamy brightened with an idea. “We have to let each other do what we need to. The only way we can do that is if we…” She trailed off, changing course. I wanted to know what she was going to say. “Well, if we can even let each other out of sight.”

If we give into the Bond . I’d bet half my yearly salary that was what she was going to say. I wished she had. It would be fun to entertain the idea.

“You want to resist it,” I said, not even attempting to stop my frown. I didn’t care how good of a suggestion it was.

“It’s worked before,” Bellamy returned, clearly referencing Esme and Ford. I could see why she thought that resisting was what they were doing, absent the real story.

“I agree.” I didn’t, but I also didn’t think there was a way to satisfy the Bond and my goals. At least for now. I needed to be able to sneak off in the middle of the night if I had to. I imagined she had to do the same. If the Bond started growling like a guard dog, that wouldn’t work. “We just have to get used to it.”

No way that’s happening, buddy , the Bond lobbed into my head, before curling back into a comfortable position in my mind. I knew it wouldn’t let me get a moment’s rest, but I mentally flipped it off anyway.

Bellamy nodded, clearly encouraged by my agreement. Well, hell, she could get whatever she wanted from me if it meant she’d dip her chin like that, looking at me under lowered lashes while her mouth curved into a grin. “It’ll get tired and calm down.”

I wasn’t sure I believed that either. We had to try, though.

I was stubborn to my core, needing to see something with my own eyes to truly believe it. I needed to hear what happened from Carson himself, and that would take some maneuvering to achieve.

Anger rose again at the memory of how I discovered what he’d done.

And then the Bond decided it was appropriate to shove that very memory at me, but this time with Bellamy at the helm.

Panic clawed at my throat, instinct raging in my core to fold my body around Bellamy’s so she couldn’t leave me.

“My only request,” I managed to say through a hoarse throat. “Tell me when you’re leaving. I’ll let you go, but don’t just up and leave.” Even as I said it, I didn’t believe I could.

Bellamy’s eyes flashed with sadness again. “Is that what he did?”

I nodded, looking down at the milky coffee in my cup. “Woke up one morning to Peter shaking me awake. Carson had broken into the Bridge and Crossed overnight.”

Bellamy sucked in a gasp, even though I was sure she’d already heard what happened. “Wouldn’t that…”

I laughed low under my breath. “Make him sick? Strand me on this side until I was Matched again?”

Bellamy nodded slowly, her hand twitching on the table. I paused while I looked at the gentle curve of her fingers. After another sizable twitch, she sighed and placed her hand in mine.

I spoke, if not to resist the urge to jump over the table. “If he only did it once, he might be lucky and avoid side effects. As for me … knowing him, he probably thought he was doing me a favor.”

Part of why I wanted to shake him and ask him why he’d been so fucking stupid. He should have known better than to think I was a one and done Match, that they’d send me back to my family and my Royal duties.

In the years I’d been here, I’d unfortunately become a priceless weapon in their arsenal. There was no getting out.

And now that I had a Soul Mate, I sure as shit wasn’t getting out any time soon, if at all.

Bellamy laughed under her breath as if she’d read my mind. “If they don’t keep us here, they’ll pull us back and turn us into a spectacle.”

“Let’s hope the war ends before they can get that far.” That was the goal, wasn’t it? That Muli would stop trying or we’d show them that they couldn’t without certain death?

Bellamy smiled, lifting her coffee cup in a cheers. The last time we’d done this, it had been on my eighteenth birthday. I assumed it was her first glass of champagne.

I couldn’t remember how many it had been for me.

Two weeks later I’d been drafted.

Six years later she came back to me.

“To endings,” Bellamy said, gifting me with a rare smile.

“Not for us,” I said, the words sounding like a vow.