“Is that the reason?” Her eyes are knowing. Uncomfortably perceptive. “Because you’re looking at her like losing this connection will shatter something fundamental. And maybe it will. But she’ll survive.”
“I do not doubt her strength,” I say. “I doubt my own.”
Lila’s expression shifts. Something like understanding. “Then that’s honest, at least.”
She follows Elena through the door. It closes with a soft click.
Leaving Mara and me alone.
The bond hums between us. Damaged. Incomplete. Like a bridge with half its supports removed, swaying but not yet collapsed.
I should leave. Give her space. Let her process without my presence complicating things.
Instead, I move to the chair near the window. Sit.
“I’d like to stay a moment.”
She nods. Pulls her knees to her chest. Wraps her arms around them. Looks young. Vulnerable.
“They were almost done,” she says quietly. “The healing. When you arrived. Another few minutes and the bond would have been gone completely.”
“I know.”
“Does it hurt?” She glances at me. “Feeling it break?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
I consider lying. Consider softening the truth.
Decide against it.
“Like someone is removing pieces of my chest with a dull blade.”
She flinches. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You have every right to want freedom from a bond you never chose.”
“That’s not—” She stops. Starts again. “It’s not about freedom from you, Kael. It’s about knowing if what I feel is real.”
My heart leaps for a second. I slow it down.
“And you can’t know that while the bond exists.”
“Can you?”
The question lands clean.
I lean back in the chair. Study the ceiling. The fluorescent lights that never quite feel like real illumination. “No. I cannot.”
“So, we’re both stuck in uncertainty.”
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow we’ll find out if we’ve been confusing survival for something else.”
“Yes.”
