Chapter 5 Fated Mate

A girl stood just inside the door, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with dark curly hair and the kind of nervous energy that came from being somewhere you didn't quite belong. She was holding a tray laden with covered dishes, and when she saw Thessaly, she dropped into an awkward curtsy that nearly upended the whole thing.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, I should have—Princess, I mean. Your Highness? I don't actually know the proper—"

"Thess is fine." The title felt wrong here, in this place, with this girl who looked as uncomfortable as Thessaly felt. "And you are?"

"Ondine. I'm a healer's apprentice, but they needed someone to bring your dinner, and I volunteered because—" She stopped, bit her lip. "I'm talking too much. Sorry. I do that when I'm nervous."

Despite everything, Thessaly almost smiled. "It's okay. I'm nervous too."

Ondine set the tray on a small table by the windows and started uncovering dishes. Roasted meat. Fresh bread. Some kind of vegetable Thessaly didn't recognize. Fruit that actually looked ripe instead of half-rotted. Her stomach growled loudly enough that Ondine definitely heard it.

"When's the last time you ate?" the girl asked.

Thessaly tried to remember. "Yesterday morning, I think? They gave us rations on the road, but I wasn't very hungry."

"Terror will do that." Ondine gestured at the chair. "Sit. Eat. You look like you're about to pass out, and I really don't want to have to explain to the king that I let his..." She trailed off, eyes going wide.

"His what?"

"Nothing. I wasn't supposed to—I should go." Ondine headed for the door like the room was on fire.

"Wait." Thessaly stood, and something in her voice made the girl freeze. "Please. I need... can you just tell me what's happening? Nobody's explained anything, and I don't understand why I'm here or what the king wants or—"

She stopped because she was dangerously close to crying, and she'd be damned if she broke down in front of a stranger in enemy territory.

Ondine looked torn. Her hand was on the door handle, but she wasn't leaving. Finally, she sighed and turned back around.

"I can't tell you much. The king hasn't made an official announcement, and it's not my place to spread rumors." She worried at her bottom lip. "But... the whole palace is talking about it. About you. About what happened in the war room."

"What are they saying?"

"That you survived the king's touch." Ondine's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "That hasn't happened since... well. Ever. Not in the ten years since the curse took hold."

Curse. That word again. Thessaly sat down heavily in the chair, her legs suddenly unable to hold her weight. "He called it a death touch."

"Because that's what it is.

The king can't touch living things without killing them. Plants wither. Animals die. People..." Ondine wrapped her arms around herself. "There was a child once, right after it happened. Ran up to hug him before anyone could stop her. She was dead before she hit the ground."

The room tilted sideways. Thessaly gripped the edge of the table, fighting down nausea. "But I didn't die."

"No. You didn't. And according to the prophecy, there's only one reason that would be possible." Ondine met her eyes, and there was something like pity in her expression. "You're Sun-Bonded to him. His fated mate. The other half of his soul, or however the ancient texts phrase it. The one person in all the realms who can survive his touch."

Fated mate.

The words bounced around in Thessaly's skull, refusing to make sense. She'd heard stories about bonded pairs—rare magical connections between two people that supposedly transcended choice or logic. But those were just stories. Romantic nonsense that bards sang about to make lovesick nobles swoon.

Except apparently they were real, and she was somehow tied to the man who'd destroyed her kingdom.

"That's not possible," Thessaly heard herself say. "I don't have magic. I can't be anyone's bonded anything because I'm broken, I've always been broken—"

"The bond doesn't care if you have magic or not." Ondine moved closer, her healer's instincts probably screaming at her to do something about the girl who was clearly spiraling. "It just... is. Like having brown eyes or being tall. You don't choose it."

"So what, I'm just supposed to accept that I'm magically tied to a man I've never met? The man who killed my father?" Thessaly's voice was rising, but she couldn't stop it. "The man who turned my home into ruins and made my family into beggars? I'm supposed to be okay with that?"

"I don't think anyone expects you to be okay with it." Ondine's voice was gentle. "But the king needs answers as badly as you do. Maybe more. He's been cursed for a decade, completely isolated because he can't risk touching anyone. And then you show up and survive, and suddenly there's hope that maybe—"

"That maybe what? He can be fixed?" Thessaly laughed, and it came out sharp and broken. "I'm not a solution to anyone's problems. I couldn't even save my own kingdom."

Ondine was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, carefully, "The king didn't destroy Lumenvale."

"I was there. I saw the armies, saw the shadow magic, saw—"

"You saw the king's body being puppeted by something else." Ondine's eyes were serious. "The Void possessed him during that attack. He was screaming inside his own mind the whole time, trying to stop his hands from doing what they were doing. The curse—the death touch—that came after, when the entity finally released him. Like a parting gift."