My water magic meets it instinctively, a cool rush that wraps her, grounding the surge so it does not burn. The bond carries her pleasure into me so hard my knees nearly give.
I groan, biting down on her shoulder to keep from shouting, and my own release follows a heartbeat later, hot and sudden against the confines of my trousers.
It is humiliating and perfect and entirely too much.
Zara sags back against me, panting, trembling in aftershocks. For a few seconds, neither of us moves. The cave is filled with our breathing and the soft hiss of mist as water cools lingering sparks.
The partial-shift releases without her seeming to decide it—feathers rippling back into skin, the wing-joint settling into its human configuration. Her body choosing rest over form.
Then she swallows hard. “That... was not part of the treatment.”
“No,” I admit, voice rough. “It was not.”
She turns her head, just enough for her lips to brush my jaw. Not quite a kiss. A choice made anyway.
“Thank you,” she whispers, the words more intimate than anything we just did.
My chest tightens.
I finish smoothing the last of the oil along her damaged feathers, hands steadier now that the bond is quieter, sated. The pain in her shoulder has receded to a manageable throb.
When I am done, I ease back and retie the loosened cuff—gently, giving her time to object.
She offers her wrist. “Tie it back.”
I set the remaining herbs aside, pour her the river-willow tea, and hold it to her lips until she drinks. Her eyes flutter, exhaustion finally winning now that she is not fighting agony with sheer will.
I retreat to my side of the hummock, leaving space between us that does nothing to quiet the ache in my chest.
“Tell me about her.”
The words come later, after we’ve eaten, after the ghost-flower has done its work and the sharp edges of her pain have dulled to something bearable. We’re sitting on opposite sides of a small fire—real fire, a risk I’m taking because she was shivering and the bond wouldn’t let me ignore it—and her eyes reflect the flames as she watches me.
“Tell you about who?”
“Your sister. Mira.” She says the name carefully, like she knows it costs me something to hear it. “You mentioned her before. When we were talking about isolation.” She pauses. “You don’t have to. I just... I want to understand.”
I should refuse. Should change the subject, deflect, maintain the walls I’ve built between myself and everyone who isn’t already inside. Mira is the door I keep locked. The wound I don’t let anyone see.
But Zara is already inside somehow. The bond let her in, or I let her in, and now refusing to answer feels like slamming a door in my own face.
“She was curious.” The words come slowly, dragged up from somewhere deep. “Curious about everything. The surface, the sky, the world beyond our waters. She used to make me tell herstories about the sun—what did it feel like on your skin? Was it really as bright as the elders said?”
The memory surfaces unbidden: Mira at seven, tugging on my hand, demanding to know why the fish always swam toward the light. Mira at ten, collecting surface debris that washed into our waterways—leaves and feathers and once, memorably, a child’s doll that she kept for years. Mira at fourteen, climbing to the highest point of the Sunken Citadel to catch a glimpse of the sky through the water above.
“She wasn’t satisfied with just stories,” I continue. “She wanted to see for herself. So she started sneaking to the surface. Swimming up to the boundary waters, breaking through to the air above. At first just for a few seconds. Then longer. Then...”
I stop. The fire crackles. Somewhere in the marsh, a night-bird calls.
“She got sick,” Zara says softly. Not a question.
“She got sick.” The words feel like glass in my throat. “The healers called it surface sickness. Contamination from the world above—their air, their water, something in the environment that our bodies couldn’t process. She wasted away over six months. Her scales lost their color. Her gills struggled to function. At the end, she couldn’t even swim anymore. Just lay there in the healing pools, dreaming about the sky she’d never see again.”
The bond carries my grief to Zara like water carries sediment. I feel her receive it—not pulling back, not offering empty comfort, just... holding it. Holding space for something I’ve never let anyone else see.
“I held her hand at the end.” My voice cracks on the words. “She looked at me and said,‘I just wanted to see, Torin. I just wanted to know.’And then she was gone.”
Silence stretches between us. The fire pops and hisses. I expect Zara to offer condolences—the standard phrases, themeaningless words that people say when they don’t know what else to say.
