Chapter 192: Partner
The walk back from the Beast Pens was a study in isolation.
My boots clicked on the polished marble floors of the Academy's main thoroughfare, and the students, who had just been released from the Spirit Sanctuary, parted around me like water flowing around a toxic stone. The news, it seemed, had already spread.
I was no longer just the "Commoner King." I was the "Cursed King," the "Void-Touched," the "Beast-Tamer."
In this world, spirit-bonding was a sign of a pure, refined soul. It was a partnership with nature. Forcibly taming a physical beast, a "monster," was seen as primitive, brutal, and a mark of a debased character. It was what desperate mercenaries or back-alley criminals did.
Lysandra's elegant, "absolute dominance" alibi had saved me from being branded a demon-worshiper, but in the eyes of the proud, magical elite, it had branded me as something almost worse: a brute.
"…heard his aura is so foul, no spirit would even come near him."
