The pencil has broken clean in half, sharp between my fingers.
One half still clenched in my fist. The other on the floor.
I didn’t even realise I was squeezing that hard.
Bending down, I pick it up, but when I look back up, everything inside me falters. My breath stumbles, the rhythm behind my chest halts, leaving me frozen—locked still.
Talen.
He’s on the mat, half-turned, his front still to Lucien, but his head’s angledup, toward the stands.
And he’s staring.
Directly at me.
Chest heaving, sweat sliding in slow curves down his torso, but the look in his eyes?—
It’sraw.
His lips part slightly, flushed and stunned, as his eyes catch mine, like he’s the one that snapped. Likehe felt it. The pressure. The ache. Like every want crawling through my blood justhithim like a wave.
My chest rises hard, so does his, as the air between us goes taut—charged and heavy, like the static before a storm.
He shouldn’t know.
He can’t know.
But that look, god that look on his face, like he just lived through my fantasy in real time?—
What the fuck?
How could he?—
Crack.
Lucien’s fist slams into the side of Talen’s jaw in a brutal right hook. Talen stumbles sideways, knocked hard, like he forgot where he was.
He blinks once, shakes it off, already bracing for the next blow.
But before he turns back, his gaze drags up to me one last time.
As it’s so fucking clear, whatever just happened, he felt it too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Ijolt upright, sweat slick down my spine, breath catching like I’ve just sprinted across half the Air Realm.
It takes a second to remember where I am—stone walls, stale air, the thin scratch of wool against my skin. Not Ashvale. Not the square. Not the scent of smoke curling through shattered market stalls.
Just a dream,I tell myself.It was just a dream.
It never comes in full images, just flashes. Movement in the dark. Dark green scales, flexing through the smoke, plates tight as armour, the edges burning metallic. Alive. Breathing. And then those eyes—glowing, rimmed in violet—lock on to me through the haze like they’ve seen me before. Like they never stopped watching.
It’s always the same. Vivid, vicious.
At first, I thought it was just trauma. A slow-burn punishment for everything I left behind. The ones I never got to save. But lately it’s not fear that lingers when I wake. It’s...comfort. Quiet and unnerving. Like whatever’s out there sees me. And it’s waiting.
Across from me, Ezzy’s still out cold, one arm flung over her head, snoring like she hasn’t got a care in the world. I think about waking her, asking what she thinks it means—but then I’d have to admit I’ve been thinking about it at all, and it’s just a dream.
