[EP:03] Synara (Valdricht POV | Night I | Bound Mode)

Our third alternate POV scene takes place shortly after the second. Valdricht and Serax have stopped for the night to set up the tent and prepare to retire with the MC. Our MC is Guinevere, graciously offered up by Lummex! Sadly, she will still be asleep in this scene, but she will be the object of Valdricht's obsession which I hope will be enjoyable. Since it's easy to miss in the story, nyrvehn is the Wyransith word for Shadewalker. Valdricht will use it a lot in this passage.

synara (n.)
In nyrvehn lore, a fabled mate bond; an intense, instinctual connection between two souls, marked by a profound, often possessive pull, believed to transcend reason or choice.

Excerpt:

Valdricht’s awareness prickles as he sets the soft tinder in place. Not pausing to analyze the sudden discomfort, he drops the pile of split wood onto the floor and rises.

Nearby, Serax is unfurling rugs onto the floor. “What’s the matter?”

Valdricht pays him no heed as he draws the flap back and exits the tent.

Kerach stands at the side of the drivagn. Untethered, he should be off on his evening roam, but instead he’s leaning over the woman, one tusk just shy of grazing her face.

'No.'

Valdricht fires the command with enough strength to send Kerach stumbling back. The tanulf snarls, but falls silent the instant Valdricht bares his own teeth. In a petty act of defiance, Kerach kicks snow at the drivagn. A small clump lands on the woman’s face.

Valdricht wants to kill him.

It’s that desire, so abrupt and so powerful, that makes him hesitate.

He turns the feeling over in his head, bewildered by its primal ferocity. He runs his hand through his hair and exhales. Some of the tension leaves him. Not nearly enough. Just enough to refrain from executing the beast regarding him with perverse curiosity.

Kerach lifts a paw.

Valdricht follows it.

Kerach extends it toward the drivagn.

This time, Valdricht isn’t angry. He locks eyes with Kerach, the two of them studying each other. With effort, Valdricht projects calm, but there's no hiding the acceleration of his pulse or the sweat beginning to bead on his forehead.

As the tanulf’s claws near the woman, Valdricht reaches his limit.

“Enough,” he says.

Kerach’s mental voice is unrefined, each word passing from his mind to Valdricht’s with effort. 'Burn it. Witch. Cursed. Burn. Cook. Eat. Food. Eat? Dinner?'

With a sigh, Valdricht closes the connection. As he trudges to the drivagn, he says, “Eat her, and it will be your final meal.”

Kerach appears to weigh his choices, then with a snort he saunters off.

Valdricht considers returning to finish the fire, but it’s no use. He walks to the drivagn and stands much as Kerach had, leaning over the woman.

He reaches down to brush the snow from her cheek. She’s not as pale as when he found her hours earlier. She drank deeply from him, and evidence lingers in her flushed cheeks, accentuated by the coppery tresses framing her face.

He traces the elegant arc of her jawline, his thumb stalling just beneath her lush, rosy lips. His own lips part, his tongue flicking across the backs of his teeth as he imagines her taste.

Valdricht draws away at the sound of movement. His hands lace behind his back as Serax emerges from the tent.

“I started the fire. Are you going to bring her in?”

He makes a show of deliberation, as if it only now occurred to him to pull her into his arms and carry her into his tent, into his bed. Even wrapped in layers of bulky furs, she feels insubstantial as he lifts her, as if she might sink into the furs and vanish with the same abruptness with which she appeared.

Serax steps back, giving Valdricht space to enter. As soon as he’s inside the tent, he wants Serax gone. Not merely out, but gone. It’s the same swift, intense impulse he felt with Kerach, though this one isn’t as easy to dismiss.

While Serax tethers the door shut, Valdricht stands in the center of the tent, head bowed to keep from hitting the roof, staring down at her.

Where did you come from?

He’s reminded of Nefuri. She looks nothing like her. Nefuri was a true nyrvehn, a shadewalker only a few generations removed from her royal bloodline. It had always amused him to think of Nefuri, descendant of kings and gods, scrubbing the floors of a human prince.

Though she bears no resemblance to Nefuri, his mind clings to the connection. It’s in the way he feels holding her in his arms. The way he felt when he first laid eyes on her.

He’d been far too young for Nefuri.

After killing his sire, lust had ruled him—lust for power, glory, and prestige. He had a harem of the most beautiful women from every corner of Elovyr, and he loathed them all. Each night he poured his seed into them, only to wake hollow, haunted by the knowledge he’d never have a true heir.

By the time he met Nefuri, he’d conquered two continents in as many centuries and was never more embittered. He was being hosted by the Baniralti prince Jaerix III—or so he let them believe, laughing and dancing the night away as the prince and his men drank themselves into a stupor while Valdricht’s coven assassinated the city watch, clearing the way for his army to march unopposed into the city.

He’d gotten the signal an hour before sunrise. With a single whispered song, the great hall erupted into chaos. Guards turned swords against masters, fathers against sons, wives against husbands. Valdricht had walked out to find his men already sweeping the castle of stray nobles.

It was in Jaerix’s bedchamber, behind the balcony curtains, that he found Nefuri. He knew what she was by her scent, so he sat on the edge of the bed and waited, listening to her panicked breathing and watching the velvet fabric quiver with her trembling.

He kicked his boots off as the sun began to rise, tossing them toward her.

“Are you intending to take your chances with the sun? You do know that only men can be persuaded to mercy,” he’d informed the twitching curtain.

“Are you a man?” Her voice had stirred parts of him he hadn’t known existed. “They say you are Death incarnate.”

“If I were Death, I’d be content to let you remain where you are.”

His logic didn’t sway her, but the first rays of sunlight did. Life had not been kind to Nefuri—it had given her many sorrows but never taught her pain. She’d run sobbing from behind the curtains and straight into his arms, all over a minor burn that would heal within days.

When she’d been behind the curtains, Valdricht had sensed something about her. Something that captivated him, held him in place like one of his father’s songs. Once she was in his arms, his fate was sealed.

There was nothing remarkable about her on the surface. She had just enough divine ancestry to soften the sharp edges of her angular nyrvehn face, though she bore the stain of their purple skin and overly wide eyes.

Though he’d considered his mother a beauty beyond compare, Valdricht had never been drawn to nyrvehn women. By the time of his birth, many nyrvehn houses were enslaved, and he associated their features—features he mercifully hadn’t inherited—with something wholly unappealing. The few times he’d lain with one, their grunts and growls made him feel like he was mounting a beast.

Even now, he can’t say what it was about Nefuri that compelled him. At first, he’d wondered if she were a sorceress. By the time her burn had healed, she’d ensnared him so completely that he didn’t know where she began and he ended.

He’d contemplated killing her to break her spell. Instead, he settled for frightening her, forcing her to walk the razor’s edge of his volatile moods to see if she’d drop her charade.

The scent of her fear was like acid, and he could only needle her for so long. More than that, he craved her—desired her more than anything in ages. In their second week, he turned gentle, bringing her up from the servants’ quarters and gifting her the bedchamber of the former princess.

His men whispered that he’d gone mad. He lost interest in the planned advance and in managing his sprawling kingdom. Above all, he lost interest in his harem, his desire fixed solely on a mousey nyrvehn who was more at ease washing dishes than feasting.

It was Allusilas, a younger member of his coven, who first took Valdricht aside and suggested he might be experiencing the synara—the fabled nyrvehn mate bond. Fabled, because to Valdricht, it was a fiction, a convenient excuse for a woman straying from her marital bed or a god-king justifying a slave bride.

In all the centuries since Nefuri’s death, Valdricht has wondered how much of what he felt was real and how much was a lie he told himself. Just when life had lost its flavor, he’d found the woman whose soul sang to his.

Now, he knows.

He cannot say if everything the nyrvehn believe about the synara is true. No children came from their union, a fact he held over her like a blade, though by then he well-knew the fault was not hers. He was capable of harming Nefuri, and his soul did not leave his body when the light faded from her eyes.

But he lost something.

An internal rhythm.

The pull to his push.

The answer to his call.

Now, for the second time in his life, he feels it.

He feels her.

“Are you slipping again?”

Serax steps beside him, glancing at the woman with unmasked longing before turning to Valdricht.

“Merely lost in thought,” Valdricht says.

“Ah.” Serax crosses his arms. “I was thinking she smells like clove and that sage they use in rituals to invoke Nythara.”

“Hardly uncommon,” Valdricht replies, already several steps ahead but nontheless indulging Serax’s theories.

“There aren’t many darksingers who still follow her. That should help us narrow down who she belongs to. Or we could just bite her. When she’s better, of course.”

“Perhaps.”

“I was thinking, and I know this sounds odd, but hear me out. What if Branir made her? I mean, herbs aside, she smells strange, and Branir isn’t old, so it’s more plausible she could survive a descent with his blood. And though he hates Nythara, he believes in her. You have to believe in something to hate it, right?”

“Perhaps,” Valdricht says again. Before Serax grows impatient, he adds, “We could simply ask her who her maker is.”

Serax blinks. “Right. Fuck, I’m an idiot.”

“Only on occasion. In any case, she is not a mystery I intend to put much effort into solving.” Valdricht passes her to Serax unceremoniously. “If her maker doesn’t present himself, we’ll take her to Meyrrvik and let Oskari deal with her.”

Serax’s brows furrow. “But… why not keep her with us? Assuming she’s not too annoying. Aren’t we better equipped to deal with a fledgling than Oskari?”

Valdricht turns, speaking as he heads out of the tent. “I am far too old, and you are far too young. We are the worst fate that could befall her.”

Outside, he closes the flap, continuing to speak into Serax’s mind. 'I am going to Kalat to see if there is any sign of her maker. I would appreciate it if she were alive when I return. If she wakes, feed her, and do not grate her with your songs.'

'Are you taking Kerach?'

'Too slow.'

A hesitation. 'You’re going to jump?'

'Carefully.'

A longer pause. 'Are you sure that’s—'

'Are you questioning my judgment?'

Serax’s reply is a sigh across their mental channel. He says nothing further.

As Valdricht ascends the nearest snow dune, he feels the pull and becomes aware of his own inner discord.

And it’s… bearable.

She’s bearable.

Because this time, he is very old.

Old enough to resist the pull.

Old enough to put her needs before his selfish desires.

She sings a song written for him, and he will deafen his ears to it because he knows himself. Time has made him wiser, more temperate, but nothing draws out his worst instincts like a mate.

He stands at the crest of the dune and closes his eyes. Flecks of snow batter his face, pelted by a hissing gale. In the sanctum of his mind, he locates the pathway to her and seals it with a knot.

Emptiness, cold and familiar, blossoms within him. Opening his eyes, he fixes his focus on the farthest dune in sight, sets his intention, and jumps.

My thoughts:

This one was one of those rare scenes where I sat down and wrote it all in one sitting, like my fingers were possessed. Several readers already picked up on the "fated mates" trope from blog posts, so I figured I'd stop teasing that aspect of the story. Valdricht will explain it to the MC eventually.

Nefuri is such an interesting character and one we'll see more of in Valdricht's slips. Whenever readers say they want to protect the MC, I always think of poor Nefuri, who was basically the MC, but without the backing of a goddess or a player to help her navigate the minefield of Valdricht's affection.

Charting Valdricht's emotional journey over the first few nights is one of my favorite aspects of the story. Likewise, watching Serax grapple with the intensity of Valdricht's mate bond while simultaneously mistaking it for mere lust it is a really interesting dynamic, ripe for dark fantasy fuckery.

I hope by this point it's apparent why I was so hesitant to write a Serax MF route, and I think its viability is something we'll discuss again before the Week One update. There's no scenario in which it ends well for Valdricht and most of the paths, while full of drama and suspense, lead to a bittersweet conclusion. Your MC is Valdricht's mate. Serax is unwittingly drawing on that bond through his deep mental connection with Valdricht. And unlike Valdricht, Serax has never felt anything like the intensity of the mate bond. There will be more than enough drama to keep our dear MC busy while we wait for the god-baby.

-Mortish