“My mother was the one who told me.” An exhale rushed out of him as he shook his head. “That was the only time I’ve ever seen her proud. She said the councilwoman’s daughter had conceived. That I’d fulfilled mypurpose. And only then did I understand what I’d been to her. To everyone.”
Lykor’s breath grew shallow, as if anything louder might shatter what Jassyn had just laid bare.
“That was the only time I thought I’d chosen someone,” Jassyn said with a bitter laugh. “Turns out I never did. Everyone after that just stopped pretending to care first.”
With a tremor in his fingers, he reached outward, calling the blood back from where it hovered. The globes sank into torn vessels, coursing through sinew, stitching lifeforce along each thread. At last, he knotted the final weave of mending, sealing flesh and leaving behind the unbroken line of Lykor’s spine.
His gaze dropped to the unblemished skin, fingers drifting along the healed ridge of bone. Spine and shoulders realigned. Not even a scar remained to mark the previous wounds.
“I’m going to purge the venom now,” Jassyn murmured, bracing one hand against Lykor’s back and the other against the tangle of plants holding him, sinking into the earth’s pulse.
He hadn’t needed the earth to mend after all, but he’d kept the energy waiting—held as a reserve for what Essence couldn’ttouch. Now he opened himself to that thrum, letting the power flood him.
Green light bloomed from his fingertips as he reached deeper, drawing from the surrounding life. Leaves curled and moss blackened as the energy surged toward him in waves. The plants didn’t scream, but they shriveled as though their roots remembered suffering. Jassyn spun that stolen breath of life into Lykor’s veins, scouring away every trace of the venom.
When the glow finally dimmed from his hands, he withdrew. Lykor stirred, pushing himself up with a slow effort. His limbs trembled as he swung his legs over the edge of the platform, clutching the withered vines to steady himself.
“And now?” Lykor asked. “If you ever wanted to choose again…would it still be someone like her?”
Jassyn didn’t answer at once, his focus drawn to the blackened moss between his boots.
“I mean…” Lykor’s voice softened, cautious. “Would it be another female?”
“I don’t know,” Jassyn said as he settled to sit beside Lykor on the platform. For a heartbeat he nearly swallowed the truth, but then he admitted quietly, “Even before that…shape or gender never mattered to me.”
His gaze fell to a single vine that had survived between them. Curled at the edges, but alive. Jassyn reached for it gently, casting out the last sliver of green light gathered in his fingertips. Leaves unfurled along the stem, fragile but defiant, a small restoration of what he’d taken.
“But if I choose again…” His voice wavered. “It would be someone who seesme. Not my bloodline.”
He looked up, but Lykor was already turned away, his boot scraping at a root’s edge. Jassyn swallowed and let the silence rest for a moment before asking softly, “Do you want to shift into your wings?”
Lykor blinked, as though surfacing from some depth. Jassyn thought he still looked half-lost even as he rose and moved a few paces away. His eyes slipped shut, and Jassyn held his breath, idly tracing the stitched seam of a bracer.
Wings erupted from Lykor’s back in a sweeping arc. Joints locked true, membranes drew taut, every tendon flexing with strength. He turned, testing their span—folding closed, then flaring wide. At the tips, the talons clicked together, sharp as knives eager for use.
Lykor exhaled a ragged sigh, as if he’d been bracing for agony that never came. His brows slackened, the hard line between them breaking, though doubt still shadowed his eyes. Like the absence of pain might shatter if he trusted it too soon.
“I never thought I’d know what it feels like…” he murmured to himself, flexing a wing again, staring at the membrane, “to be without it.”
Jassyn’s chest cinched and he glanced away, unprepared for awe so unguarded. Cruel, that relief could ache deeper than suffering.
Dispelling his wings, Lykor returned to the platform, sitting back down beside Jassyn.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” he said, voice rough. His attention fell to the claw clenched in his lap. “But…might I ask for one more thing?”
Jassyn inclined his head, the heat from Lykor’s bare chest spilling across the space between them.
Hesitantly, Lykor lifted his fist. “Can you heal this too? Turn it back into…what it was before?”
Jassyn curled his hand over the claw, his fingers nearly lost against the strength of the limb. He traced the ridge of closed knuckles, coaxing them open without demand.
Lykor stiffened at once. Muscles locked, tendons tight beneath skin, a shiver rippling through his arm. He didn’t pullaway, but the strain of holding still coiled through him like a snare set to spring.
Jassyn kept his grip firm enough to hold, but gentle enough to promise he wouldn’t force. For a breathless moment they hung in the suspended pause.
Then, with a shuddered exhale, Lykor’s shoulders dropped. Resistance drained away and his fingers uncurled one by one, slow and reluctant, until his palm lay open in Jassyn’s.
He knew this wasn’t just a wraith’s limb to Lykor—it was memory carved into flesh. Jassyn’s throat tightened, the truth pressing hard against his ribs. He could knit bone, stitch muscle, even cleanse venom from blood. But no craft of Essence or earth could unmake what had already been forged—he couldn’t reshape the claw into the hand it once was.
