The ache started as soon as she left him.It always did when the distance wasn’t chosen by both of them—subtle at first, like a stretched thread humming under the skin, then sharper, settling low in her chest.The bond pulled, unhappily.She rubbed the heel of her hand over her sternum and told herself to breathe.
She wore one of Trik’s shirts, soft, and it smelled like him—forest and wind and something wild that called to her.She slipped her fingers through the hem, letting the familiar fabric anchor her, because she was tired of pretending the small comforts didn’t matter.
She sat on the edge of the mattress and closed her eyes.Tell him,a voice whispered—the same one that had been pushing her for three days.Go back and tell him now.
She’d tried.The memory rose clean and bright.
Two nights ago, she’d crossed the corridor to his study with her heart in her hands.The wordpregnantwas still new in her mind, fragile and astonishing.She hadn’t needed a test.Cassie had simply known.The same way she could feel Trik’s magic brush against hers, she could feel the new life within her, quiet but vibrant, like a single note added to a familiar song.It was wondrous, impossible, and terrifying.
She’d rehearsed what she would say a dozen times:Trik, I need to tell you something.Trik, we’re—She hadn’t decided if she would sayweorI; the first felt hopeful, the second honest.
Voices spilled through the open door.Tamsin’s low and measured.Trik’s clipped, a blade trying very hard not to cut.
“...maybe darkness,” Tamsin was saying.“But it also could just be something foreign that we’re mistaking for darkness.The book is drawing, and what it takes has to come from somewhere.”
“It will not touch her,” Trik said, and the steel in his voice rooted Cassie where she stood.“I won’t even touch her if that’s what it comes to.Not Cassie.Not anyone.But, especially not Cassie.Whatever shadow is laced through its power, it won’t reach her.”
“You can’t command balance,” Tamsin murmured.“There’s a give and take that makes it possible.”
Silence, then the scuff of Trik pacing—she knew that sound too well.It meant his jaw was tight, his eyes dark, his thoughts a storm.
Cassie’s hand went to her stomach without permission.Nothing showed.Nothing would for a while.But her body knew.Her magic knew.She’d felt it the moment that second heartbeat, light, tentative, brushed against hers.She’d expected him to sense it too, to know.But Trik had been so consumed by the book’s imbalance, by the faint, wrong rhythm of its power, that he barely slept at all, much less beside her.
She stepped closer to the doorway and stopped when Trik’s voice came again, low and raw.“I’ve given enough to this realm.I will not give her even if I have to lock her away from myself and this damn book.”
The words were a promise and a wall.Cassie swallowed the confession and backed away on silent feet, the we and the I folding up inside her like paper.
Now,sitting in their quiet room, she pressed her palm to her belly.“I was coming to tell you,” she whispered, to no one, to him.“I was.”
The bond tugged again—a gentle hum that pressed at the edge of her mind.She could feel him, faintly.The frustration, the exhaustion, the relentless need to control what couldn’t be contained.Once, she would have reached for him through that thread of thought, the way she had in the beginning when every word between them had felt electric and new.
She remembered the first time he’d touched her mind.His voice had filled her head, smooth and teasing, the memory echoing like it had been yesterday:“You are mine, Cassandra.Not because I demand it, but because the Creator made it so.”And her own shy, trembling response:“Then you’re mine, too.”He’d laughed then, low and wicked, that sound that had melted her resistance and remade her world.“I was yours the moment you defied me.”
Her throat tightened at the memory.Back then, their bond had been effortless—fire and breath and laughter.Now, when she brushed against his thoughts, all she felt was tension.It made the ache sharper, the separation worse.So she’d stopped trying.Stopped opening that door only to find the weight of his worry bleeding through it.
She turned toward the window, watching the forest sway beneath the moonlight.“What happened to us?”she murmured.“When did we stop being the easy part?”
A draft lifted the curtain; moonlight washed over the floor in a pale square.The bond pulsed again, gentle but unanswered.She didn’t want to be away from him—not for an hour, not for a night.That was their gift and their curse—togetherness had remade her, and separation, when it wasn’t chosen, unmade her in small, mean ways.
She leaned her head against the cool window frame and let herself ache—for her parents, suddenly and fiercely; for the uncomplicated comfort of a kitchen light left on; for a mother’s hug; for a father’s terrible jokes.The wanting passed through her and left her quieter.
Across the room, on the low table, sat the carved wooden box she’d kept since the day she moved here, human things tucked away like talismans.A photograph.A letter.A small silver cross on a threadbare chain.She went to it now and lifted the lid.Her fingers found the cross and closed around it.
“God, give me sense,” she said under her breath.She’d never been one to pray and perhaps she should give it a try more often.At the moment it felt better than doing nothing.“And patience.And maybe a little help not strangling my mate.”
The prayer steadied her enough to breathe without hitching.She slid the chain over her head and let the cross rest warm against her skin.
The bond tugged once more.Not painful, just insistent, like a hand at the small of her back urging her to turn around, go back, try again.She wanted to.Every part of her wanted to.But the memory of his voice—I will not touch her—held her in place.He hadn’t meant it in the way it sounded, not exactly.He’d meant it as protection, as a vow.But, still it landed wrong when her news needed welcome, not walls.
She moved back to the bed and sat, drawing her knees up, the hem of his shirt brushing her thighs.Her palm returned to her stomach before she could stop it.“Hey, little one,” she murmured.“Your dad is ...a lot.He loves hard.It’s messy and fierce and sometimes he misses what’s right in front of him.But I’ve no doubt he will love you with the same ferociousness that he loves me.We’ll tell him.I’ll tell him.When he can hear me.”
Cassie wished she could say that she suddenly felt peace after working through her thoughts and feelings.She wanted to be able to breathe without the ache in her chest from the hole that was left where Trik should be.But that wasn’t how pain and sorrow worked.They didn’t just magically disappear because they weren’t welcome.She sighed as she tried to allow herself to be in the moment instead of fighting against it.
Duty knocked next, the unromantic kind.She had a meeting in the morning with the healers about supply routes, and another with the envoys who still flinched at standing in the same hall as dark elves.The realm needed a queen who could speak gently and stand up straight at the same time.
“I can do both,” she said to the room.“I can miss him and still lead.I can want and still wait.”
Her phone, sleek, stubbornly human, sat on the nightstand, a little defiance she refused to give up.She picked it up, thumb hovering over Trik’s name.She typed, deleted, typed again.
