I didn’t have one.
I’d spent the past days trying to remember anything and everything I could about Severin Thane and the Void Order. About my younger years, so full of gaps and fragmented memories that refused to coalesce into anything clear or useful.
Nova continued to watch me with careful, assessing eyes.
“He seemed…familiar,” I admitted. “Though I don’t know why.”
She nodded as though she’d expected this answer, hugging her arms around herself, brow wrinkling in thought.
She was quiet for several minutes, and I found myself staring at her again, memorizing the way the waning daylight caught in her hair, turning the strands almost copper where the sun touched them.
“Our magic was balanced before,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “Now it isn’t.”
The words hung in the air, taunting us. Daring us to try and make sense of them.
I didn’t want to keep secrets from her. I never did. I’d spent most of my life keeping things locked inside. Emotions. Doubts. Pain. Whatever I had to suppress so I could survive. But she had always had a way of pulling all of my buried things—even the frightening things—back into the light.
So I tried to explain the shift in my magic. Its sudden wrongness, and the way it felt like it was lying in wait for hers, oddly eager to devour any shadow she manifested.
After I’d finished, she didn’t reply right away. The silence stretched between us, heavy with unspoken implications. Whenshe finally spoke, her voice was small, almost fragile. Not like her at all.
“And when you’re near me?” she asked. “Does it get worse?”
I hesitated, but there was no point in lying. “Yes.”
She closed her eyes against the words. A shudder went through her—another tremor of fear, barely suppressed. The sight of it cut deeper than any blade could have, and the words that followed were even worse: “Do you want me to leave?”
I exhaled slowly, shaking my head. “I never want you to leave.”
She stepped closer, close enough that I could see the exhaustion etched into the fine lines around her eyes, the grief still lingering from all she’d lost over the past days.
“How can I help you?” she asked, softly.
The question caught me off-guard.
All the other things she was trying to endure…how could she possibly have any strength left to worry about helpingme?
A surge of confusing emotions overcame me. Awe. Love. Guilt. But above all, I felt worthless, like I didn’t deserve her concern—given the way my magic had tried to hurt hers, the doubt I’d been feeling since we returned, and the seeds of distrust I’d been letting take root between us.
“You’re already helping, just by being here,” I told her.
She studied me for a moment. Then her lips quirked in a tired smile. “Well, that’s easy enough.”
I took her hand, pulling her even closer. “Just stay with me for a little while, then.” I stroked her hair, my fingers coming to rest on her jaw, tilting her face up to mine. “Ignore the politics. The magic. The Order—all of it.”
She curled more tightly against my chest. “Tempting.”
“Yes,” I murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “You are.”
She let out a noise somewhere between a soft laugh and a sigh. Her hands slid up my chest, fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt. That touch, and the way she looked up at me through her lashes…
Temptingwasn’t a strong enough word for what she was, honestly.
There were plenty of places we needed to be besides here, but neither of us felt like leaving, suddenly. There were several smaller rooms around the perimeter of the armory, war rooms and meeting spaces with varying levels of furnishings and comforts. One had an inviting fireplace at its center, though the hearth was cold and dark.
We shut ourselves in this room and went to work building up a fire.
As she knelt beside me, feeding kindling into the growing flames, she asked, “How long until my advisors and such notice I’m missing, I wonder?”
