SPELLBOUND

"What?!" Evie exclaimed, immediately moving away from Gav to face the dark fae. "Light faes… where are they right now? Are they still quite far from the city?" She did not waste any time in questioning the dark fae that had brought the message.

"Reporting to Your Highness, I believe that they would be reaching the gates in a few minutes. His Majesty the king and Her Majesty are already waiting to welcome them by the gates." The messenger reported, still bowing his head as he spoke.

Evie then looked at Gav again. "I have to go out and meet them as well," she told him and Gavrael only nodded his assent. He also guessed that his parents would have thought the same, that was why they had sent this messenger over to report on this matter to them both.

"Have the vampires go along with you to welcome them, Evie. I'll be staying back because I need to head back into the library to cast the spell." He explained.

Her eyes observed him, looking obviously conflicted as to whether she should stop him and ask him to wait for her before casting the spell or to just nod and let him go ahead and have it settled on his own. While Evie was still showing a complicated gaze, Gavrael smiled slightly as he stepped closer to her.

"It's alright," he stretched out his hand and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers gently. "I'll deal with this as quickly as I can and come join you. So go on ahead, Evie. I know you're itching to go." His voice was low and rumbled comfortingly that it eased the indecisiveness that Evie was feeling. She looked up at him with grateful eyes.

And without further waiting for Evie's verbal response, Gavrael took her hand in his and they both disappeared from the hall. As soon as they materialized outside the palace where the vampires were already gathered, Gavrael spoke to the men and gave them his orders.

"Escort your queen to the gates." He commanded in a serious tone and the men quickly nodded. No one said a thing the moment they saw the intense colour of his eyes.

"Gav…" Evie was still a little hesitant to let go of him now that he was about to head off and leave without her. She had a tremble in her heart and suddenly thought that maybe she should not let him carry out the spell all on his own. After all, this matter involved the both of them. He was doing this all for her sake and her insecurities on their mating bond. "How about…" she trailed off when Gavrael suddenly flashed her a smile. It seemed that he knew what she was thinking just by looking at her face.

This Gav smiling softly was just so rare that Evie could not help but pause from whatever she had wanted to say. Though the smile was quick to fade, Evie could see that he seemed to be in a better mood right now.

"We have already talked about this and decided to go for it as soon as I took over, remember? He told me that we needed to do it immediately and I agreed with his ideas too. So," he held her shoulders and squeezed it lightly before turning her away to face the rest of the men, "so go on, I will be right there the moment I'm done. I promise!"

The last two words were still ringing softly in her ears as she quickly turned around to get a last glimpse of him. However, he was already gone and had left Evie no choice but to sigh and nod at her men.

…

Gavrael then materialized back inside the forbidden library. But instead of casting the spell as he had promised Evie, what he did was to stretch out his arms and his dark magic suddenly swirled around him, thick and copious. He murmured some words under his breath and the dark smoke moved on their own almost as though they were black snakes that were crawling through the shelves, opening a few books as Gavrael had his eyes closed, absorbing the information written in them. All of this was happening very suddenly and at a rapid pace.

When he had spoken with Gavriel earlier about the prevention spell, Gavriel had refused to go along with it. He had insisted that the spell might cause even more problems. He also had said that spell was the same as forcing the bond to trigger, only that the way it worked was from the opposite end of things. And Gavriel did not want that. He told him that he had full trust in their mating bond triggering at the right time and he had no plans to either force it to happen earlier nor to hinder it for whatever amount of time.

Gavriel was also beyond confident that the mating bond will be triggered sooner rather than later. And he too, honestly believed that with all his heart, and that was why he was not very happy about the things he had found out as well. However, they needed to do something at least for now to help put Evie's mind to be at ease.

And aside from that, he had also unintentionally found out a horrific information about Evie's pregnancy while looking for information on the other matter. It has been said that in one of the books that anyone who had died once before were not supposed to ever get pregnant anymore. And the fearful thing was that it did not matter if the person was brought back to life through time reversal or not.

This news had shocked the both of them to the core. And thus, Gavriel had worked out this plan. They were going to lie to Evie and inform her that they would be carrying out that prevention spell.

It was not an easy decision to make. They both hated the idea that they needed to lie to her at all. But they both knew that there was no choice when dealing with the matter of her pregnancy and their unborn child. They needed to do something to keep her at ease. That way, they would be able to focus on this much more pressing issue they needed to solve as soon as possible.

They must find out more… no, find out everything they could about this now, right this instant! They need to find an answer on how to prevent this disaster from happening!