Chapter 10 : THE BOND STRAINS
Izzy's blade came at my throat like a silver whisper.
I blocked on instinct that wasn't entirely mine anymore. The steel sang where our weapons met, and her eyes widened at the speed of my response.
"Again," I said.
We'd been sparring for forty minutes. The training room floor was slick with sweat, and my arms burned with the good kind of exhaustion that came from pushing limits. Izzy matched me strike for strike, her whip coiled at her hip while she worked through blade forms.
She attacked. Feint high, strike low. I read it before she committed — something in her shoulder telegraph, something in the bond that shouldn't exist between siblings.
My blade caught hers at the hip. She twisted away, came back with a spinning kick that I ducked under.
"You're faster," she said between breaths. "Since when are you faster than me?"
"Been training."
"In your sleep?"
Another exchange. Our blades locked, faces inches apart. Sweat rolled down her temple. A cut on my forearm dripped red onto the mat — one of hers, earned three exchanges ago.
"You're different," she said quietly. Not accusation. Observation. "You've been different since that day with Jace. When the bond went weird."
I pushed her back, created distance. "Izzy—"
"Don't." She reset her stance. "Don't tell me you're fine. Don't tell me it's stress. I know my brother."
You knew your brother, the guilty voice whispered. The one I replaced.
She came at me again. Faster this time, desperation mixing with training. I matched her, exceeded her, reading her movements before she made them with a clarity that felt like cheating.
Our blades locked again.
And something clicked.
It was like the parabatai bond with Jace — that golden thread of connection that let me feel his emotions, sense his location, know when he was in danger. But weaker. Thinner. A resonance rather than a full connection.
Through it, I knew Izzy was about to feint left.
I blocked left before she moved.
She froze. The blade in her hand trembled.
"How did you—" Her voice cracked. "Alec, how did you know?"
I had no answer. The resonance pulsed between us, alien and wrong and unmistakably real. She was feeling it too — I could see it in the way her free hand drifted toward her ribs, touching a spot where a parabatai rune would go if she had one.
"I don't..." The words stuck in my throat. "This isn't supposed to be possible."
"What isn't?" Her voice had gone high. Scared. "What did you do?"
The training room doors slammed open.
Jace stood in the entrance, one hand pressed to his parabatai rune, his face carved from granite.
"What," he said, each word precise and cold, "did you do to us?"
Through the primary bond, I felt his confusion. His fear. And something else — betrayal, sharp and dark, aimed directly at me.
He'd felt the secondary connection form. Of course he had. The parabatai bond made us part of each other. Any change to it, any disturbance, resonated through the link.
"Jace—"
"Don't." He stepped forward, boots loud against the training mat. "I've been trying to tell myself it's nothing. The static in the bond since the sparring accident. The way you've been acting. I told myself my brother was just stressed." His hand dropped from his rune. "But this? This is something else."
Izzy looked between us, her blade lowering. "Someone explain what's happening."
"He formed a bond with you." Jace's voice was flat. Dead. "I felt it. Like our bond, but... smaller. Wrong."
"That's impossible. The parabatai ritual requires—"
"I know what it requires." Jace closed the distance between us until we stood face to face. Through the bond, his emotions hammered against mine — anger and hurt and something that might have been fear. "I know what it should be. What we have is sacred, Alec. Blessed by angels. One soul in two bodies."
"I didn't mean—"
"Then explain." His jaw tightened. "Explain how you're forming connections that shouldn't exist. Explain why the bond feels different since that day in training. Explain why my parabatai suddenly feels like a stranger wearing my brother's face."
The accusation landed like a physical blow.
Because he was right. I wasn't his brother. I was wearing Alec's face, living Alec's life, stealing relationships that had never belonged to me.
"I can't," I said. "Not here. Not like this."
"Then where? When?" Jace grabbed my arm, grip bruising. "We were supposed to face everything together. That's what parabatai means. But you've been keeping secrets, doing things I don't understand, and now—" His voice cracked. Just slightly. Just enough. "Now the bond is changing and I don't know what you are anymore."
Izzy stepped between us. Her hand found Jace's wrist, gentle but firm.
"My room," she said. "Both of you. Now."
She led us through corridors that seemed longer than usual, past other Shadowhunters who glanced at our procession with curiosity. I felt Jace's emotions roiling through the primary bond, felt Izzy's confusion through the new secondary connection, and wondered how long I could keep the truth buried.
The answer, I suspected, was not much longer.
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