He glanced at her reflection in the window, copper hair still damp, the braid already coming loose in places.
It made no sense.
Ashterion raked a hand through his hair, jaw clenched tight enough to ache. He was losing his mind. That was the only explanation. Centuries of Xyliria’s games had finally cracked an essential part of him, and now he was… what? Playing nursemaid to a broken female?
He turned away from his desk, unable to focus on the papers before him, and found Isara watching him. Her eyes tracking his movements with a wariness that hadn’t been there earlier.
Because before, she hadn’t been there at all.
“You should finish eating,” he said, his voice deliberately cool. Back to normal. Back to what it should be.
Isara lowered her spoon, her gaze never leaving his.
Ashterion held still beneath it, willing himself not to react to that all-too-familiar look he’d grown used to over the years. Suspicion. Mistrust. A glint of defiance. It was safer when she hated him. Easier. The moment it shifted into anything else, it became dangerous for both of them.
“You should finish eating,” he repeated, quieter this time. More command than suggestion.
Isara didn’t move.
He breathed through his nose and turned back toward the desk, gripping the edge of it as though it might tether him to reality.
What the fuck was he doing?
He had calculated the trajectory of his own death. Had listened to his shadows sing lullabies in the dark like something in him already knew the end was near. And despite all of it, all he could seem to focus on was her.
On whether she was warm.
Whether she was fed.
Whether she’d scream again, broken and guttural and carving into him, making even his shadows recoil.
He looked over his shoulder again. Isara had returned to her food, her spoon slow as it dipped into the stew, but her eyes flicked up toward him cautiously.
Of course she was wary. She should be.
He had helped shatter her bones.
And now…
Now she sat wrapped in his tunic, in a room heavy with his scent, wearing a braid he’d tied with his own hands.
He looked away.
Fuck.
His shadows stirred at the corners of the room, restless. Unsettled. Like they, too, didn’t know what this was becoming.
This wasn’t part of the plan. Not the one he had made for his death. Not the one Xyliria expected. Not the one that would keep everyone—Isara included—alive long enough to see Merrick ascend and end the war.
And yet, despite every carefully drawn line, every reason he’d carved into stone to justify his end?—
All Ashterion could think, as she quietly finished her stew behind him, was how much he didn’t want her to be anywhere near the path he’d chosen to walk alone.
Ashterion turned, leaning back against the desk with the sort of detachment he’d perfected over the centuries. His arms crossed over his chest, his expression once again carved from stone.
“You should rest.”
Isara stared at him, the faintest crease forming between her brows, her body angled defensively even beneath the warmth of the meal and the softness of the clothes.
