"Do it again," he rasps.
He stalks toward me, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He stops three paces away, raking a hand through his hair.
"Do what?" I ask, my voice trembling.What is going on? Did something happen?
"The silence!" he shouts, the sound cracking in the room. "Bring it back. Make it... absolute."
He paces away, toward the window, then spins back. He is manic.
"The noise is gone," he mutters, speaking more to himself than to me. "But the connection... the thread... it's still there. Dangling. Empty. It's worse than the screaming. It's a phantom limb itch I can't scratch." He grips the back of a chair, his knuckles turning white. "I feel Him, Leora. I feel The Serpent waiting in the dark, watching me starve. But I can't hear Him. I can't feel the power."
He looks at his hands, turning them over as if they belong to a stranger.
"I am hollow," he whispers. "I am nothing."
"You are not nothing," I say, stepping away from the hearth. "You are just... quiet."
"Quiet is death!" He lunges, crossing the distance between us in a blink. He grabs my shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh. His skin is freezing, burning with that unnatural cold.
"Teach me," he demands, shaking me slightly. "Show me how you do it. Show me how you consume the Chaos."
"I don't know how," I cry, wincing as his grip tightens. "It just happens. It's not a spell. It's... it's just me."
"Liar!" He leans down, his face inches from mine. I can smell the stale wine on his breath. "You are Purna. You are a witch. You rewrite reality with a thought. Teach me the mechanism. If I can learn it... if I can replicate it... I can control it. I can filter the noise without losing the power. I can have both."
He is desperate. He seems… terrified. He is a man who has built his entire identity on being a vessel for a god, and now that the vessel is sealed, he is crumbling.
"I can't teach you empathy," I say, my voice remaining steady despite the fear hammering in my chest. "I can't teach you how to feel."
"I feel too much!" he roars. "I feel everything! I feel your fear. I feel your pity. I feel the rotting wood of this house and the damp in the stone and the ambition of every traitor in this city pressing against my skull!"
He releases my shoulders only to cup my face, his hands hard and desperate. He forces my head up, staring into my eyes.
"Look at me," he commands. "Do it. Push it into me. Fill the void."
I try to pull away, but he holds me fast. I look into his eyes, and the connection snaps into place with the violence of a thunderclap.
The feedback loop is instantaneous.
I feel his terror, sharp and metallic. I feel his confusion, a swirling gray fog. But beneath it all, buried under centuries of ice and cruelty, I feel a hunger.
It isn't a hunger for magic. It isn't a hunger for pain.
It is a hunger forconnection.
He is lonely. He is so profoundly, agonizingly lonely that it makes my chest ache. He has lived his life in a crowded room of screaming voices, never once hearing his own name spoken with kindness.
And now, he sees me. He sees the only living thing that has ever touched his mind without trying to break it.
The realization hits him at the same moment it hits me.
His expression changes. The panic bleeds out, replaced by a sudden, intense focus. His gaze drops down to my mouth.
"You," he breathes.
The air turns heavy, charged with static. My pupils dilate, the Purna blackness swallowing the blue as my magic rises to meet his need. But this time, I don't push calm. I pushheat. I push the sudden, shocking realization that I am not just a tool to him.
I am the only thing that is real.
