POV: Aphrodite
Someone must stay behind.
I feel it through the fractured dormant bond before I understand what I'm feeling.
Alric's state through the bond has been running at the maximum sustained effort of holding the curse core's fracture point since the seals ignited, the bond carrying the specific quality of someone who is applying everything available to a single point and has been doing it for long enough that everything available is significantly less than it was at the start. The burning quality, the curse running its punishment mechanism at full force through every channel it has built into him over centuries.
And underneath the effort, running at a frequency that is separate from the effort and has been there since before the seals ignited, something that has the quality of completion.
Like someone who has known how the story ends and has been walking toward the ending with full knowledge of it.
I turn from the blood seal.
