She set the tray down, nodded to Zephyron, and left without a word. Professional. Efficient. Unafraid.
Zephyron opened a bottle, pouring surgical alcohol onto clean cloth. The smell was sharp and chemical. "This will sting."
He wiped the back of my neck with careful strokes. The alcohol burned where it touched broken skin from my three-day run. I bit down on a whimper.
"Breathe," he murmured. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. Like you're meditating."
I followed his instruction. The cult had trained breath control into muscle memory. In for four counts, hold for four, out for eight. The pattern steadied me.
His fingers probed the base of my skull, finding the embedded shards through touch and probably through whatever electrical sense let him feel nervous systems. "Three shards. Triangulated positioning. Clever but predictable. This will hurt."
He picked up the tool. The crystalline tip hummed, vibrating at a frequency I could feel in my teeth.
The first touch sent lightning through my spine. Not painful exactly—strange, like he'd said. My nervous system lit up with sensation that my brain couldn't categorize. Numbness spread from the point of contact, deadening the area around the first shard.
I felt him work. I experienced his focus—absolute, unwavering, precise. His hands didn't shake. His breathing stayed steady. He approached this like surgery. Like the mechanical work I'd seen scattered across his desk. Problem to solve, steps to execute, outcome to achieve.
The first shard came out with a wet grinding sound that made my stomach clench. He dropped it into a metal bowl. Moved immediately to the second.
The numbness helped but couldn't eliminate the sensation completely. I felt pressure. Felt something wrong being pulledfrom where it had fused with bone. Felt my body protest the violation even as my conscious mind knew this was necessary.
"Halfway," Zephyron said quietly. "You're doing well."
Through the bond, I felt his approval. His recognition of my controlled breathing, my stillness despite the pain. He knew what it cost me to hold still. Knew and appreciated the effort.
The second shard ground free. More pressure. More wrongness.
Two down. One left.
He positioned the tool for the final extraction. This one was deeper than the others—I could tell by how long the numbness took to spread. By the way his fingers probed more carefully.
"This one's fused more thoroughly," he said. "Solmar wanted to make sure you couldn't remove it yourself. It's going to hurt worse coming out."
"Do it."
He did.
The pain cut through the numbness like a knife. White-hot agony that made my vision go dark at the edges. I heard myself make a sound—not quite a scream, more of a choked-off whimper that came from somewhere deep in my chest.
Through the bond, I felt his steady hands. His absolute control. His fierce protectiveness trying to shield me from pain he couldn't prevent.
The shard came free.
He dropped all three into the metal bowl. Held his hand over them. Lightning arced from his fingers, contained and controlled, incinerating the obsidian into ash and smoke.
"There." He pressed clean cloth to the back of my neck, applying pressure to the extraction sites. "You're safe now. They can't track you anymore."
Safe. The word sounded foreign. Like something from a language I'd never learned to speak.
I touched the back of my neck with shaking fingers. Felt the places where the shards had been. The cult had called them a blessing. A way to always feel the Unnamed's presence.
They'd been a leash.
"Thank you," I whispered.
I felt his response. Not words. Just warm certainty wrapped around me like armor. Like shelter.
Something I'd never known I could have until this moment.
