He crouches in the doorway and knocks on the frame with two knuckles.
“You alright, cub?” he says.
She doesn’t answer. Just shrugs.
“Y’know,” he begins, settling on the floor like he’s telling a campfire story, “when I was little—way littler than you—I used to throw chairs across the courtyard. Real ones. Heavy steel legs. Made my instructors furious.”
Nessa peeks at him through the fringe of her curls.
“They said I had too much fire. Too much strength. Said I’d never learn control. Know what my mother did?”
Nessa shakes her head.
“She taught me to breathe. Not the silly kind. Vakutan breath. Want to try?”
Another shrug. But it’s not a no.
Vael inhales slow and deep, holds it. “We breathe in through our nose. Like this—smell the heat in the air. Hold it till your belly tightens. Then push it out slow. Like steam escaping.”
Nessa copies him. Not perfect. But close.
Again.
Again.
Her shoulders loosen. Her fists unclench.
By the fifth breath, she’s no longer vibrating like a struck wire.
And for the first time in two hours, I breathe too.
Later that night, I stand in the hallway, staring into the half-dark of her room.
She’s asleep. Curled against Vael’s chest like she was made to fit there.
His eyes meet mine over her head.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t have to.
Because in that moment, I know something I never let myself admit.
She needs him.
Not just as a shield.
But as a compass.
CHAPTER 20
RYNN
The room is quiet.
Not the forced kind, like the sterile medcenter halls. This quiet is warm. Breathing. Like the hush of a heartbeat shared between two ribs.
The lights are dimmed to a low amber glow, casting Vael’s skin in a burnished bronze. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, back to me, bare from the waist up. The scars across his spine look like constellations — stories I’ve never been brave enough to trace with my fingers.
