“Wait—” I start, but Selen is already moving, faster than seems possible.
She dips her fingers into the liquid and before either of us can react, presses them to our foreheads, one hand on Zeriel, one on me.
The effect is immediate and overwhelming.
Heat blooms where her fingers touch, spreading outward like wildfire through my veins. I gasp, staggering backward as the sensation races through me. It isn’t exactly pain, but a pressure so intense it feels like my skin might split from it.
Then Zeriel’s presence washes over me like a breaking tide.
Not just the awareness of him standing across the room, buthim: a surge of foreign emotions pouring into me with such vividclarity it knocks the breath from my lungs. His shock collides with mine. I feel the flash of anger at Selen’s intrusion, the desperate grasp for control even as it slides through his grip.
Beneath that surface turmoil, deeper currents run: grief for the morning’s dead, determination tempered in years of survival, and something darker still—a wound left to fester, raw and aching at his core.
My knees hit the floor, the weight of our merged awareness buckling me. Two selves—his and mine—separate, yet suddenly tangled so tightly I struggle to find where one ends and the other begins.
“What have you done?” Zeriel bites out.
Selen steps back, wiping her fingers clean. “Enhanced what was already there,” she says simply. “The preliminary bond I created between you was a seed. This allows it to bloom. And, it gives you a handy way to communicate with each other.”
I stare up at Zeriel. His deep brown eyes are already locked on mine, a flicker of alarm breaking through.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Try it,” Selen replies. “Try talking to each other without opening your mouths.”
I hesitate, still staring at him, hardly believing what Selen claims has happened. Then, hesitantly, I focus, trying to push a thought across the space between us, the way I would to a dragon. Something simple.Zeriel?
The response isn’t a thought. It isn't a feeling. It’s his voice, low and rough, speaking directly inside my skull.
Leave my head,he snaps.
The words are a physical shock, so clear and resonant it’s as if his throat is vibrating in my own chest. It’s an impossible intimacy, like stumbling into the most private room of his soul. I feel the anger in the words, yes, but also the rigid wall of control he’s throwing up against the intrusion, the sheer, visceral alarm of being so suddenly exposed.
Wow. Charming,I send back, cautiously testing the link.
Not charming. Obnoxious. I hear plenty of your voice already.His response is immediate.
Obnoxiously effective,I counter, and I can’t help but smirk slightly. To think my voice can ring inside his head any time now? That’s an opportunity.
His scowl deepens.Stop talking.
You first.
“You see?” Selen’s voice cuts through the charged quiet between us, a hint of amusement in her tone. “Pure communication. No risk of being overheard. No signals. In the games, you can move as one.”
Move as one.The thought lodges deep, both terrifying and… something else. To have him this close, to feel the raw weight of his grief and the burn of his vengeance brushing over my own thoughts—it’s like leaning too far over a drop. A tremor of instinct says to pull back, to throw up walls.
Don’t.His voice is there suddenly, strong enough to halt the retreat before it starts. The word hums through the link, steadying and unyielding.
I push against the link—my reflex to rebel against what he wants, to find my own space—but his mental presence holds firm, not crushing, but like a hand on a shuttered window, keeping it open. My heart hammers against my ribs as I realize I'm anchored to him—in a way that feels more intimate than a touch, more permanent than a scar.
She’s right. This can help us.His voice comes again.
I look up at him, and the intensity in his eyes slams into me. The forest’s light snags on the flecks in his irises, and for a breath, it feels like I’m falling into something bottomless. The link between us flares—and I’m hit with a surge that isn’t thought but instinct, raw and consuming, directed at me with a force that almost scorches. Too sharp to be comfort, too wild to be named. Then it’s gone, shuttered behind his walls. But the echo lingers, burning against my skin, leaving me unsure whether it was warning, possession… or something worse.
“Any new information on the first round?” he asks Selen, his voice rough. The words sound level, but through the link his question is a blade—sharp, precise, aimed.
“It won’t be in the arena,” Selen replies, her eyes flicking between us as if she can sense the charge I still feel. “You’ll be in wild forest territory.” Ice knots in my gut. “That’s all I know. You’ll be briefed further when you arrive.”
