“I can’t feel anything.”
The words came soft, slurred.
Jassyn glanced toward Lykor’s face, resting against the moss. “That’s the idea,” he murmured. “But if you do, you need to tell me.”
“You said the venom wouldn’t addle my mind.”
“I never said that,” Jassyn said, refocusing on the shadows and mending light coiling around his hands. “Fenn said the effects could go either way.”
Lykor huffed. “Feels like anything could flap off my tongue right now.”
The corner of Jassyn’s mouth nearly lifted. “Then I’ll assume it’s just the venom talking.”
Lykor snorted. “And if it’s not?”
Startled by the near laugh, Jassyn looked back at him, pulse quickening at the sound.
“Speaking of Fenn,” Lykor mumbled. “What do you think of him?” The words spilled free, as though they’d been waiting behind his teeth.
“I…like him,” Jassyn ventured, unsure where the question led. He bent his attention back beneath his palms, fingers steadying the healing weave.
“He smiles too much,” Lykor muttered instead of answering. “Makes me want to knock it off his face.”
Even though Lykor couldn’t see it, Jassyn bit back a smile of his own. “That’s part of his charm. He’s carefree enough to mean it.” And maybe that was why Fenn’s ease needled Lykor, because he carried none of their scars.
Jassyn pressed on, sealing bone, stitching muscle, coaxing nerves back into line. His breath grew ragged with effort, shadows quivering faintly with the strain. Blessedly, when he released Vesryn’s rending, the prince didn’t barrel into his thoughts or barge his way back into the tree. The worst of the healing was nearly over, hanging just beyond his grasp.
Lykor had gone quiet, the venom haze no longer spilling words but thickening in the silence between them. When he finally spoke, his voice rasped against it.
“And are you…” He began, then cleared his throat. “I mean, is someone like Fenn…”
The question drifted unfinished. Jassyn stilled, wishing he could see Lykor’s whole face—whether his expression came cloaked in caution, cracked by nerves, or already steeped in regret.
“If that’s the venom talking…” Jassyn said softly, offering him a way out.
“Would you choose someone like Fenn?” Lykor pressed instead, voice dipping lower.
Jassyn blinked, the words brushing against something long buried, memories he hadn’t unearthed in decades.
Lykor’s next words tumbled out in a slurred rush. “I know you didn’t get the choice before. But…I mean—was there ever someone you wanted? You don’t have to answer. I just…wondered.”
Jassyn drew in a slow breath, stabilizing the net of mending. And himself.
“There was someone I wanted,” he said at last. It was the first time he’d said it aloud, and the admission scraped in his throat. “Before the contracts. Before I understood what I was to the realm.” Crimson light curled as he reknitted muscle over Lykor’s spine. “She was the daughter of a councilwoman—one of the last pure-bloods born.”
Jassyn worked deliberately, keeping every motion precise as he stitched together the severed tendons.
“She didn’t look at me like the other elves. To her, I wasn’t just a half-breed curiosity.” He paused, voice thinning. “Or so I thought.”
Lykor didn’t speak, but Jassyn felt the weight of his silence, the stillness of him listening.
“She made me believe that I was wanted,” Jassyn said softly. “That even if I wasn’t a pure-blood, I might still have a place in their world.”
His magic wavered, a thread looping the same ligament twice before he realized he’d been tracing memory instead of bone. Lykor twitched beneath his palms, and Jassyn gritted his teeth, forcing the lattice steady again.
“But one day her family left the capital without warning. Returned to their estates. I waited. Told myself stories. Any excuse for the absence.”
Hands beginning to tremble, Jassyn curled them into fists as if pressure alone might choke off the ache clawing up his throat.
