I want to reply — to say something measured, calm, logical. Something correct. But the word I want to speak isn’t correct. It isn’t simple or safe. It isn’t calm or logical.
Jalshagar.
A bond forged in heat before death. A tether between souls that should never have touched.
I want to speak it.
But my throat fails me.
I can only watch as her breathing settles again, as though she’s pulled back into sleep without ever waking, and the air shifts — warmer — as though her presence tucks itself around me like a living thing.
I shouldn’t want this.
A voice inside me, older than memory, screams the admonition. A warrior’s instinct, forged in battles long since faded to scars.
“Distance. Always distance.”
But something in the moment refuses to obey that law.
Not when she ishere,quiet and vulnerable under the thermal wrap.
Not when her hair, the color of warm dusk, curls against the coarse fabric.
Not when her breath, soft and even, thrums against the back of my hand.
Not when her pulse —her pulse— echoes in the space between us like a drumbeat in empty halls.
I’m not supposed to bethis close.
But I am.
And worse: I don’t want to be anywhere else.
The word Jalshagar creeps again into my mind — unbidden, stubborn, elemental. I remember the old teachings. The songs. The rites whispered in basements long buried by time.
Jalshagar does not bind weak hearts.
Jalshagar does not flourish in safety.
Jalshagar rises in storms, in conflict, in the white heat of life and death and choice.
And this —whatever this is between us— feels like heat.
Like fire.
Like destiny.
I wait — still, quiet, anchored by a sense of aching anticipation I cannot explain — until the warmth of the dome eases into dusk and shadows bleed into the corners of rock.
She shifts again in her sleep, and I catch her name once more — whispered, half-formed, softer than a sigh.
“Maug…”
Not a prayer. Not a plea.
Just aname.
Simple, ordinary, holy in its mundanity.
