"Besides," I add softly, resting my chin atop her head, "you won't be alone in Absentia. Whatever's waiting there, we face it together."
"As a team," Torric agrees, his eyes meeting mine over her head. I see my own promise reflected there. We've trained for impossible odds. This one just matters more.
The healing pool's magic swirls around us, its violet glow intensifying where it meets Kaia's shadows. They seem to drink in the restorative energy, their movements becoming more fluid, more alive. Patricia has even started taking notes again, though her shadowy scribbles look more like comfort food recipes than her usual tactical observations.
"I don't deserve this," Kaia whispers, but her fingers curl tighter into my shirt. "Any of it. You both have already risked so much—"
The words hit like something sharp lodged behind my ribs. How can she not see what she means to us?
"Stop," I cut her off gently. "That's exhaustion talking. You're not just our leader or our friend, Kaia. You're family." The word settles between us, more true than I realized until I said it. "And family means no one fights alone."
Torric's hand squeezes her shoulder. "What he said. Though with less sappy phrasing."
That draws a watery laugh from her, and I feel some of the tension drain from her body. Her shadows settle into more natural patterns, though they stay close, as if reluctant to break this moment of connection.
"The salts," I remind her, reaching for the forgotten vial. "Let's get you properly healed. Then we can talk strategy, or not talk at all. Whatever you need."
She lets me add the healing salts to the water, their crystalline shimmer creating patterns that her shadows chase like fascinated kittens. Even Bob forgets his dignity, darting afterthe sparkling trails with childlike enthusiasm that makes my heart swell.
"Thank you," Kaia says after a while, her voice steadier. "For everything. For being here. For understanding."
"Always," Torric and I say together, and I feel her smile against my chest.
The healing room falls quiet except for the gentle lapping of the enchanted water. Outside these walls, destiny and danger wait. But here, in this moment, we're just three people holding each other up.
And sometimes, I think, the strongest magic is simply refusing to let someone fall alone.
Chapter 7
Darian
Darian
I’ve forgotten the color of her eyes.
The thought echoes through my cell in the academy’s dungeons, bouncing off ancient stone walls that pulse with containment wards. They were violet—or were they? The memory shifts and blurs like the shadows that dance at the edges of my vision, taunting me with what I’m trying to forget.
Some nights I wake gasping, her name on my lips, the exact shade burning in my mind with perfect clarity. But by morning it fades, leaving only the ache of something precious lost. Like trying to hold water in cupped hands, watching it slip away no matter how tightly I clutch.
Light magic crackles beneath my skin, fighting against the corruption that seeps through my veins like oil through water.The torches outside my cell flare brighter in response, their flames reaching toward me like desperate fingers. Ever since her transformation, since those damned wings burst into existence, I can feel the Heart of Eternity’s pull. Feel her.
The bond pulses, this new, maddening connection sending waves of her essence through me—warm and vital and absolutely destroying everything I thought I knew about power and control. I slam my fist into the wall, welcoming the sharp pain that blooms across my knuckles. Anything to distract from her presence suddenly threaded through my blood, my bones, my very soul.
“Get out,” I snarl at the empty cell, but I’m not sure if I’m talking to her or the growing warmth in my chest that feels suspiciously like longing. Like destiny finally catching up to all of us. “Get out get out get out.”
But she won’t. She’s there when I close my eyes, laughing in the library as she masters a new spell, eyes sparkling with triumph. She’s there in my dreams, reaching for me with shadows that feel like silk against my skin, wanting to share rather than consume. She’s there in every beat of my treacherous heart, making me question everything I thought I knew about power and corruption and the lines between light and dark.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I whisper to the darkness that won’t answer. The bond surges again, and this time I catch fragments of her emotions—determination, fear, a fierce protectiveness that makes my chest ache with something I refuse to name. “You weren’t supposed to matter.”
Footsteps echo down the corridor, lighter than the guards’, precise and purposeful. I don’t bother looking up when Alenya appears outside my cell, her white uniform practically glowing in the dim light. But part of me, the part that still remembers the exact shade of violet in Kaia’s eyes, wants to scream at her to leave before she offers what I know I’ll be too weak to refuse.
“Poor fallen star,” she says, her voice dripping false sympathy. “How the mighty Light Faction has dimmed.”
I laugh, the sound harsh even to my own ears. “Come to gloat, Alenya? Or does your mother need another report on the academy’s greatest failure?”
“I come with knowledge.” She steps closer to the bars, and I catch a whiff of something ancient and wrong beneath her perfect light magic, something that makes the corruption inside me stir hungrily. “About why the corruption burns differently now. Why you can feel her.”
The bond pulses at her words, and for a moment I’m drowning in Kaia’s essence, her strength, her compassion, her absolute conviction that magic isn’t about control but connection. The force of it nearly brings me to my knees.
