A braided rope of light seemed to lead from her chest to Damon's, her aura's gold and the peacock-blue-and-black of Damon's aura twisted together.
"Now you are connected," Mylea said matter-of-factly. "If Damon kills, Elena will die. If Damon feeds on a human without their knowing, aware permission - no use of Power or illusion, but true agreement - Elena will suffer. In the event that Elena dies, the bond - the curse - will pass to a member of her family. If the bond is somehow broken, Damon will return to our attention and be eliminated immediately."
Damon's eyes widened. Through the bond between them, Elena felt a throb of dismay. "I'll starve," he said.
Mylea smiled. "You won't starve," she said. "Perhaps your brother will teach you his more humane methods of feeding. Or perhaps you will find willing humans, if you can honestly gain their trust."
The bond was vibrating now with a curious mixture of disgust and relief, but Damon's face was as closed off as Elena had ever seen it. She rubbed reflexively at her chest, pushing the intense emotions away.
"The bond will lose some of its intensity over time," Mylea said, almost sympathetically. "You feel each other's emotions strongly because it is so new." She looked between them. "It will connect you forever, and it may be deadly to one or both of you in the end."
"I understand," Elena told her and then, ignoring Mylea, she turned to Damon. "I trust you," she told him. "You'll do whatever you have to do to save me. As I've done for you."
Damon stared at her for a long moment, his dark eyes unfathomable, and Elena felt the connection between them flood with a sorrowful affection. "I will, princess," he promised.
His lips curved into a smile Elena had never seen on Damon's face before: neither his quick bitter smirk nor his brief and brilliant smile, but something warmer and gentler. And then the connection between them filled with love.
Chapter 42
Meredith ran across campus, her feet pounding in a steady rhythm, her breath coming in harsh, painful gasps. Her legs were aching. She'd been running for a long time, looping across the campus paths again and again. Stinging sweat trickled into her eyes, making them blink and water.
The harder she ran, the longer she could keep herself from thinking about anything except the slap of her running shoes against the ground or the sound of her own breath.
The day was starting to edge into evening as she took the curve past the history building again and started up the hill toward the dining hall. When she crested the hill, Alaric was waiting at the top.
"Hi," Meredith said, coming to a stop as she drew even with him. "Are you waiting for me?" She pulled up one foot to stretch out her quadriceps; she didn't want to cramp up.
"I wanted to make sure that you were okay," Alaric said.
"I'm fine," Meredith said dully. She let her foot drop and instead laced her hands behind her and folded forward, so that her head was almost touching her knees. She could feel her spine lengthening, and she had also begun to feel the ache from running for so long.
"Meredith?" Alaric knelt down beside her so that he could look up into her face. Meredith concentrated on the golden freckles scattered across his nose and the tops of his cheekbones, because she didn't want to meet his worried brown eyes. Their color was like honey against his tanned skin.
"Meredith?" Alaric said again. "Could you unpretzel yourself and talk to me for a minute? Please?"
Meredith unfolded, but didn't meet Alaric's eyes. Instead, she twisted from side to side, pulling her shoulders forward in turn. "I have to stretch or my muscles will get sore," she muttered.
Alaric stood and watched her, waiting calmly.
After a while, Meredith began to feel childish for not meeting Alaric's gaze, and she straightened and looked him squarely in the eye. He was still just standing there patiently, his face soft with sympathy.
"I know," she said. "I know everything you're going to say."
"Do you?" Alaric asked. He reached out and tucked back a long piece of hair that had come out of her ponytail, his hand lingering against her cheek. "Because I don't have the faintest idea what to say. I can't imagine what it must feel like to meet your brother for the first time and then have to kill him."
"Yeah," Meredith sighed, and wiped the sweat off her face. "I don't know what to feel, either. It's almost like Cristian was never real to me. He was just a story, something the Guardians could change in an instant."
She drew a line with the toe of her sneaker in the dust at the side of the path. "Ultimately," she said, "I never knew him at all. He talked about . . . oh, going to the beach and stuff, and the way our dad is. I could imagine that world, the world where we were a team." She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. "But everything was a lie, for him and for me."
Alaric wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled Meredith closer to him. "It's not fair," he said seriously. "Klaus destroyed a lot of people's lives. In the end, you were a big part of bringing him down and stopping that destruction, and you should be proud of that. And that other life, the one where he grew up happy, with a sister, it wasn't a lie. There was a world where Cristian loved you, and you loved him. That's still true. You and your friends made that happen."
Burying her face against Alaric's neck, Meredith said in a muffled voice, "My parents will never get over this, losing him again."
"Maybe it's better that they knew Cristian for this long, that they got to see him grow up instead of losing him when he was three, the way things were in the world you remember," Alaric suggested gently.