She looked at me with something soft and fierce and a little broken. Selene didn’t just fail—she had forged us into something more substantial… stronger than before.
Reverie didn’t get the mark back by luck.
She took it—wetook it… together.
Something ancient woke up inside her—and it called my shield home. The crimson glow softened into her skin, pulsing once, twice, like a heartbeat syncing with mine.
I moved before I could think—hand covering the mark, thumb brushing the edges of it. It was warm. Alive. Part of her again.
“Selene could try to remove it a thousand times,” my voice was rough. “But it will always find its way back to you.”
Reverie swallowed, eyes shining in the lowlight. “It never really left.”
I tilted my head in question.
“When the skin healed, I saw my Nexus mark sink into my skin, as if it was being protected until the right time to reveal itself again.”
I leaned down, my forehead touching hers. “I think I know why it never left.”
“Why?” She touched her lips softly to mine.
“Becauseyouare the bond. The mark is always there, whether we can see it or not.”
And for the first time since we’d arrived in Aurathia, I didn’t feel fear.
I felt certainty.
She wasn’t breakable.
She was becoming unstoppable.
And my shield wasn’t just a mark anymore—it was a promise the universe itself had decided to honor, whether Selene liked it or not.
Reverie’s fingertips touched the crimson mark like she was afraid it might disappear if she blinked too hard. I should’ve been focused on her—on the flicker of awe in her eyes, the heat still drying on her skin, the bond that pulsed between us like a living heartbeat.
But something scraped against stone behind us.
A shift of weight.
The feeling of being watched.
I tilted my head just a little—enough to see without appearing like I was looking.
There he was.
Torren.
Half-shadowed against the cave wall, arms crossed loosely, expression unreadable. Assessing. Like the return of my markwasn’t unexpected—but rather confirmation of something he’d already suspected.
A part of me wanted to lunge at him—demand what he knew, why he was watching her like she belonged to him. But Reverie leaned closer, brushing her lips along my jaw, soft as a sigh, and I swallowed the instinct to bare my teeth. He better be glad I’d draped her in my shirt earlier, or I would’ve had to kill the fucker.
She didn’t see him.
And that was the only reason I didn’t move and confront the suspicious bastard.
Torren’s eyes flicked to the crimson shield on her skin. There was something in his stare that felt like calculation… and a hint of fear.
Not ofme.
