Ever since the attack in the plaza, Val-Theris had been…different.
He sought her out more often, though he rarely said why. Sometimes he’d ask her to walk the quarter with him, sometimes to sit with him in the small private library above the grand halls. Today, though, she’d chosen to avoid him, needing space to gather her thoughts before stepping into another room where his gaze would find her and undo her without meaning to.
But when she turned the corner into the high atrium, he was already there.
Val-Theris stood by the tall arched windows, the late sun setting behind him, throwing pale gold across the edges of his wings and the marble floor beneath his boots. He wasn’t armored, wasn’t draped in ceremony—only a simple crimson tunic, loose at the throat, and his hair unbound, falling across his brow in soft waves.
He looked like something mortal and infinite all at once.
“Val-Theris,” Jesenia said softly, startled, stopping halfway across the room.
He turned his head slightly, his gaze finding hers with the quiet inevitability of a tide drawn to shore. “Once more, you weren’t at the session today,” he said, his voice calm but carrying something softer beneath the surface.
“I…” She hesitated, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders. His eyes caught on the wrapping around her hand. “I thought it better to let things settle first.”
“You thought it better to stay away from me,” Val-Theris said.
Jesenia stilled. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The silence stretched, taut and unyielding, filling the wide atrium like a storm. She wanted to speak, to tell him the distance was for his sake, for her people’s safety, for her own sanity—but the words wouldn’t form beneath the weight of his gaze, caught in the dry cowardice of her feelings.
He took a step closer, and then another, until the warm glow of sunset caught in his shimmering feathers.
Val-Theris spoke softly, his voice low and roughened at the edges, “I haven’t stopped thinking about how close I came to losing you.”
Jesenia tried to steady herself beneath the gravity of his words, but the space between them had grown too narrow, her pulse too loud beneath her ribs. “Val-Theris, it was hardly a close call. I think you are letting this get to you.” She paused for a moment, and then looked up at him with an ache in her chest. “You should let me go,” she said softly, almost pleading. “You should let me fade back into the shadows. It’s safer there.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet, but there was steel in it, something unmovable, absolute.
He stopped close enough now that she could feel the faint heat radiating from him, close enough that the soft arch of his wing brushed against her shawl as though drawn in by her elegant gravity.
“I’ve been fighting this,” Val-Theris said, the confession breaking from him in a voice quieter than breath. “Every day. Every time you look at me. Every time I hear your name on someone else’s tongue.”
Her hands trembled faintly where they clutched the folds of fabric draped across her shoulders, her heart stuttering against her ribs. She breathed his name, unsure and aching.
His hand rose slowly, hesitating just before it reached her face, his fingertips hovering like a promise he’d sworn to himself never to make.
“I can’t fight it anymore,” he whispered.
Jesenia’s breath caught, the air between them collapsing into something smaller, denser, electric.
And then his hand touched her cheek.
It was soft, the barest graze of fingertips along her skin, but it sent her pulse surging, the world narrowing until there was nothing left but the sound of his breath and the weight of his gaze. Then Val-Theris lowered his forehead until it brushed hers, his thumb stroking faintly along her jaw, the heat of him grounding her while something in his chest trembled.
“Jesenia,” he said softly, her name breaking against his lips like prayer.
She answered without words, her hand rising to his wrist, her fingertips pressing lightly against his pulse where it thundered beneath her skin.
The kiss…simply happened. The tension broke, and everything that had been building, pulling them together, finally collided.
His lips brushed hers, soft and unsteady, almost as though he feared the world might shatter if he pressed harder.
It was quiet and fragile. And in that fragile infinity, Val-Theris saw it all fall apart.
