Atlas
Sleep had never come easily. Not for me.
Most nights end like this one, awake before dawn, standing over a table scattered with maps and half-finished reports while the storm claws at the windows. I told myself it was duty that kept me awake. That I needed the silence before sunrise to think, to measure the cost of what I’d done. But even as I traced the edges of the other Court’s borders on the map before me, I knew better.
It wasn’t duty.
It was her.
Ever since she arrived, the air felt clearer, like the storm finally exhaled after holding its breath for years. But beneath that calm, everything inside me trembles toward her. The Court hums with it, the sky listens for it, and I—gods help me—am no better. She feels like absolution wrapped in disaster, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to protect her from it or hand myself over to it.
I’d been half listening to Joren’s report, something about Dawnbreak’s scouts spotted near the border when the air shifted.
A tremor passed through the room, small, sharp, gone before I could name it. Every candle fluttered in the same direction, the flames bending toward me.
I froze.
Joren didn’t notice at first. He kept talking, tracing the map with one finger.
“…scouts near the Verdant crossing, probably fishing for a reaction?—”
The mark beneath my skin pulsed once, hot and low.
For half a heartbeat the world narrowed to that single point of heat beneath my ribs, the same pull I had felt the night she arrived, sharp and unmistakable.
Her.
Joren’s voice cut through the hum, one brow arched as his gaze flicked from me to the candles still leaning in my direction.
“You planning to set the whole room on fire, or is this some new form of meditation?”
I straightened, forcing my hands to unclench. The air still vibrated, the taste of lightning sharp at the back of my throat.
He smirked. “Right. Not a breathing exercise, then.”
I forced a breath out slowly, willing the pull to stop. It didn’t. The echo faded just long enough for me to think I had imagined it, then settled under my skin like a warning.
“Are you even listening?” Joren asked.
Then a shudder ran through me, subtle at first, then sharp enough to steal my breath. Heat slammed through my chest, low and burning, the kind that leaves no room for thought.
It wasn’t mine.
It was hers.
I braced myself against the table as the pulse deepened. Every candle in the room bowed at once, their flames streaming toward me as the storm outside answered with a crack that shook the windows.
Joren stumbled back, eyes wide. “All right, that’s new.”
I was already moving.
I threw the doors wide. They hit the walls hard enough to shake dust from the stone, the sound echoing down the corridor. The pull in my chest sharpened, dragging me forward.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” Joren called from behind me.
“I don’t have to.”
He laughed, breathless. “She’d better be worth this.”
