He was back in the cold. The blinding white of a raw silver vein fracturing reality. The high, keening shriek of a dying Ley Line, the feeling of the world turning to ice and broken glass. The air choked with the oily, rancid stench of the void-beasts and the overwhelming copper tang of Dawn’s blood. A desperate, silent scream from his soul-bond as Dawn… vanished. Erased. Then the crushing weight, the wet, sickening snap of his own bone.
He blinked, his hand tightening on the back of a chair for support. He was back in the room. Every face was staring at him, waiting.
“That is not on the curriculum, Recruit,” Ky said, his voice so cold it could have frozen the dust motes in the air.
He let the words hang in the dead silence that followed. For a long, punishing moment, no one moved, no one breathed. He swept his gaze over the room one last time. Finn himself looked as if he’d been physically struck, his face pale and mortified, his earnest hero-worship curdling into horror. He had shrunk in his seat, as if wishing the stone floor would swallow him whole.
The other recruits stared, a mixture of raw fear and morbid curiosity on their faces. A few shot venomous glares at Finn for having stumbled onto the treacherous ground they all knew surrounded their instructor. Ky met their gazes and saw the calculation there. They navigated his moods like a crumbling mountain pass, knowing that one wrong step could bring the whole thing down on their heads. They didn’t know the specifics of the story, only that it was a ruin left by a past cataclysm, a place you did not go.
Ky turned his back on them then, the act an undisguised and final dismissal. “Class is over.”
The scraping of benches and the hurried footsteps that followed were not the usual end-of-class shuffle; it was a panicked retreat. He stood unmoving until the room was empty and the silence returned, heavier this time, haunted by the silence where Dawn’s voice used to be.
The lecture hall emptied, but the cold remained. Ky rubbed his leg, the ache a constant companion. He had an hour before his private session with Gessa. An hour to compose himself. An hour to pretend he wasn’t terrified of the power she wielded—or the woman she was becoming.
By the time he reached the North Range, the sun was high.
The air in the secluded valley was clean and warm, a welcome antidote to the ghosts of the lecture hall. Gessa stood twenty paces from him, her brow furrowed in concentration. Between them shimmered the entrance to a Ley tunnel. It wavered like a heat haze, the edges spitting silver sparks, vibrating with a low, intense hum. It wasn’t the smooth glass of a master’s portal; it was a rough-hewn tear, crackling with raw energy, but it held. It was hers.
He watched her, and for a moment, the instructor in him overshadowed the broken man. He could see her magic, not just its effect. Where other Wayfinders wove disciplined, almost mathematical threads of power, hers was a chaotic melody of pure emotion. It was raw, intuitive, a wild tapestry of feeling that he’d never encountered. It should have been uncontrollable, yet she was learning to harmonize with it, to guide its torrential force with a whisper of intent. The professional, academic part of his mind was fascinated. It was an unprecedented phenomenon.
His gaze lifted from the shimmering portal to her face. She was transformed. The haunted, hunted look that had been etched into her features when she arrived was gone, replaced by a fierce concentration and, beneath it, a glimmer of pure, unadulterated triumph. It was a joy so open and innocent it made his chest ache with a feeling he refused to name.
His eyes traced the line of her form, noting the changes the brutal training had wrought. The gaunt angles had softened into a lean strength. The recruit’s tunic, usually so adept at hiding any hint of femininity, couldn’t conceal the new, solid set of her shoulders or the subtle curve of her hip. His gaze snagged on the way the tunic pulled taut across her chest. She wasn’t a starving refugee anymore; she was a woman. It was a simple, undeniable fact of her returning health, and it sent a jolt of something primal and unwelcome through him.
The memory of his hands on those shoulders returned, vivid and clear. He could almost feel it now; the surprising heat of her, the remembered silkiness of her skin beneath the rough-spun fabric of her tunic.
The word beautiful rose in his mind, no longer a fleeting thought but a truth. And it terrified him.
He shoved it down, brutally. But his body, long dormant, refused to obey. Beneath his anger and denial, a different kind of heat began to uncurl low in his gut. It was a warmth so foreign he almost didn’t recognize it, a ghost of a feeling from a life and a body he no longer possessed.
She is a recruit,he told himself, the words a familiar, harsh litany against the unwelcome stirring.A problem that requires a solution.He hardened his heart, reinforcing the walls.She belongs to another man. A monster, but a man nonetheless. And you…the familiar self-loathing twisted in his gut,…you are a ghost with nothing to offer but scars and a broken soul.It was his responsibility to protect her, and the most dangerous thing he could protect her from was himself.
“Hold it,” he commanded, his voice harsher than he intended. “Feel the edges. Keep the tension even. Don’t let it fray.”
Ky sensed the vibration through the soles of his boots before he heard the sound—the rhythmic thud of hooves on turf. He didn’t turn, his gaze locked on the wavering silver edges of Gessa’s portal, but he knew who it was. The twin spiritual pressures of Sky and Cloud, Jaedon’s Mustangs, brushed against his senses.
Gessa didn’t notice. Her eyes were squeezed shut, sweat beading on her forehead as she fought to keep the tunnel stable.
She held it for another twenty seconds before her focus wavered and the portal dissolved into a harmless shower of silver sparks. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized shewas holding, her shoulders slumping slightly with fatigue. She looked at him, her face flushed, her eyes bright with a mixture of exhaustion and pride.
Ky met her triumphant gaze for only a second before his own expression hardened back into a mask of professional appraisal. He gave a single, curt nod.
“Your control is improving,” he stated, his tone clipped. “But your stamina is a liability. A thirty-second tunnel is useless if you’re a wreck at the end of it. We’re done for the day. Go.”
He watched Gessa for a reaction, for a flash of the defiance he sometimes saw, but her face remained a mask of weary respect. “Yes, sir,” she managed, giving a short, respectful nod.
“A harsh critique for a tunnel that stable, don’t you think?”
Gessa jumped, spinning around. Jaedon was leaning casually against the lone oak at the perimeter, his arms crossed, his two Mustang soul-beasts grazing nearby. He had clearly been watching for the last few minutes.
“Master Jaedon,” Gessa managed, straightening up and giving a short, respectful nod. She turned to gather her water skin and other belongings, wiping the sweat from her brow.
As she passed the spot where Jaedon stood, his Mustangs lifted their heads. Their eyes, a startling emerald green like their master’s, tracked Gessa as she passed. Ky saw her head dip slightly. Her lips quirked in a small, hesitant smile in Jaedon’s direction before she looked quickly away. It was a fleeting, barely-there gesture.
The sight sent a sudden, sour spike of irritation through Ky’s gut. It was an anger he couldn’t place and didn’t want to inspect. There was a flicker of something in that small smile; not just politeness, but a hint of the woman’s spirit beneath the recruit’s discipline. A spark of fire. And it reminded him of someone. It was a look he hadn’t seen in years, not since a lifetime ago, a dancer in Silverport with eyes like chips of flint and a spirit justas sharp. A woman who had been surrounded by dangers of her own making.
As if pulling the thought directly from Ky’s head, Jaedon’s expression shifted, his eyes taking on a distant, appreciative gleam. “You know,” he began slowly, “she reminds me of that dancer in Silverport.”
