I met him in the Pit for the third session. The air was frigid, but I was burning with nervous energy. Lorcan was already at the wall, his posture rigid.
"Today, we double the demand," Lorcan announced, not turning around. "One hundred and twenty seconds. Two full minutes of maximal transfer. We must reach a point of complete equilibrium, Seraphina. If your power can hold the flow for two minutes, it will hold for the bond."
My breath hitched. Two minutes felt like an eternity when every second was a piercing, intimate intrusion.
"If I lose control at that duration, we risk total magical collapse," I pointed out, walking slowly toward him.
"The risk is noted," he clipped out. "But the risk of delaying the ritual is now greater. You destroyed the failsafe. Now, you must become it. Do not hesitate."
I walked up behind him. His body was tense, radiating the concentrated cold that was now my bizarre source of focus. I rested my bare palms against the scorched leather of his back, finding the exact indentations left from the previous sessions.
The transfer began immediately. I slammed the Sun-Fire out of my core, aiming for maximum output. The fire screamed into the Shadow Conduit, and Lorcan's body immediately convulsed with the pain of the intrusion.
The pressure mounted instantly. The first minute was pure, focused agony. The heat rushing from me, the consuming cold of the Shadow-Curse rushing in, the raw emotional weight of his unending duty crashing over me. I held the line, using the memory of Isolde's neutralised poison as proof that I could manage threats.
But as we passed the ninety-second mark, the sheer duration was too much. The magnetic pull of his curse became frantic, starving for the light. My fire pushed back, overloaded and desperate to escape the containment.
A violent pulse of unstable Solar energy, a surge far more potent than yesterday, slammed into Lorcan's defenses.
Lorcan cried out. It was a strangled sound of profound loss.
The protective membrane of his shadow shattered. I didn't just feel his raw emotion; I was pulled into a memory.
The world dissolved into a devastating white light, followed by suffocating darkness. I wasn't Seraphina; I was Lorcan, young, powerful, and utterly terrified.
I stood in a crumbling, forgotten garden, rain falling heavily onto black, dying roses. He was kneeling, his princely robes soaked, clutching the fragile, still body of a young Fae woman with eyes the color of sunlight. She was barely breathing and her pure, golden Solar Fire was a flickering, exhausted ember.
"It wasn't enough, Lorcan," she whispered, her voice weak. "The Shadow is too deep. The Prophecy demanded the bond, but it consumed my life force. The cure… it only accelerates the consumption."
Young Lorcan let out a sound of true, desperate sorrow that tore through the iron control he now wielded. He pressed his un-cursed hand to her chest, desperately trying to give her his own life, but the Shadow-Curse, already a nascent force in the land, rejected his pure strength.
The Sun-Fae woman died in his arms, and at that exact moment, the raw, unprocessed Shadow-Curse that had been dormant in the Nightshade Kingdom slammed into him, recognizing the moment of ultimate despair as its perfect host.
I felt the horrific, permanent anchor drop into his core. The freezing, crushing burden of eternal responsibility, endless cold, and the knowledge that love and sacrifice were the direct paths to death. The Shadow-Curse was fueled by the loss of the light it sought to heal.
The vision dissolved.
I gasped, stumbling backward and collapsing onto the cold marble. I was shaking, tears of profound, shared grief streaming down my face. I wasn't crying for me; I was crying for the beautiful, doomed Queen, and for the young man who had been instantly turned into a cold, ruthless King by her sacrifice.
Lorcan was still bracing the wall, his hands now trembling violently. He slowly turned, his eyes wide and dark, utterly stripped of his composure. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving under the charred leather.
He had felt the memory breach. He knew I had seen the catastrophic failure that defined his entire existence.
"You saw it," he choked out, his voice barely a rasp. He didn't sound angry; he sounded raw, exposed, and instantly lethal.
"She died trying to save you," I whispered, wiping the tears away. "The bond was meant to heal, but it drained her."
"The bond drains the Solar Fae if the Shadow is not stabilized," Lorcan corrected, regaining his iron composure with a terrifying effort. He took a predatory step toward me. "Her failure taught me the price of weakness. It taught me that trust is fatal."
He knelt down, his amber eyes burning into mine. The distance between us was gone.
"You saw the truth of the curse, Seraphina," he grated out, his breath cold against my skin. "The curse is fueled by loss. And I will not allow you to be lost."
He reached out and gently, oh so gently, brushed the tears from my cheek with the back of his thumb. His touch was cold, but the vulnerability in his face was searing.
"If you ever, ever breach the containment again, I will lock you away and force the bond in your sleep," he threatened, the words low and shaking with emotion. "I cannot risk your life becoming fuel for this curse. Do you understand? I need you alive, whole, and contained. I cannot bear another loss."
It wasn't a threat of malice; it was a desperate, panicked warning borne of centuries of grief. He was terrified that his curse would kill me too.
He stood up abruptly, regaining his distance and his command. The mask slammed back into place, colder and harder than before.
"The session is over. Vesper will escort you," he commanded, his voice now a flat instrument of authority. He didn't look back. "Do not speak of what you saw. Ever."
I watched him leave, stunned. I no longer hated the King; I hated the curse that had made him this way.