The touch of her lips sent light flooding into his mind—but it wasn’t solace. Flashes of imagery struck sharp and brutal.
His own blood staining broken stone. Smoke rolling through Solmiris’s streets. Jesenia on her knees, her hands red where they clutched his feathers, her mouth shaping his name. A blade plunging deep beneath ribs, light scattering through his wings like glass shattering in sunlight.
And then there was silence. But it wasn’t the silence of death; not that cold certainty of the end. It was worse than that, but he could not put a name to the dreadful feeling—at least not yet.
He broke the kiss sharply, his breath ragged, his hand tightening faintly against her jaw before he forced himself to let go. He touched his face and felt the smear of blood from his nose paint his fingers.
Jesenia stepped back a half-pace, her brows furrowing and her voice uneven. When she saw the blood, she reached out for him again. “Val-Theris?”
His chest heaved once, twice, his wings trembling faintly behind him as though from strain, but when he looked at her again, his expression had softened into something unbearably tender.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though his voice carried the weight of too many meanings. “I just…couldn’t wait anymore.”
“You’re bleeding,” she said softly, brushing away the blood with her own fingers.
And though he didn’t say it, though she didn’t know it, the truth burned behind his ribs like fire. He wasn’t afraid of loving her anymore. He was afraid ofrunning out of time.
The world changedafter their kiss.
Not visibly. Not to anyone else. But Jesenia felt it in the spaces where silence hung heavier than before, where the air between her and Val-Theris seemed to hum with something alive.
He had not spoken of it. Neither had she. But he came to her more often now, seeking her presence without explanation, as though drawn by something he couldn’t name.
Three days had passed since the attempt in the plaza when he found her in the gardens just before dusk, perched on the low stone wall beside a bed of white blossoms. The wind tangled faint threads of her shawl as she glanced up, startled, when he stepped into view.
“Val-Theris,” Jesenia said softly, rising automatically, smoothing the folds of her skirts.
“You don’t have to stand,” he murmured, his voice quiet, the late light catching faint gold along the edges of his feathers. “Stay.”
She hesitated but sat again, her fingers brushing petals from her lap. “I thought you’d be with the council,” she said after a pause, keeping her gaze on the darkening sky.
“I was,” Val-Theris said simply. “I left.”
Her brows knit faintly as she looked up at him. “You left a council meeting?”
“I had no interest in listening to what they had to say.”
It was the truth. They had said her name too many times, and he grew tired of the bickering. Everything now was a race against time he wasn’t sure he had to spare, and those moments in the chamber seemed so insignificant now.
Jesenia glanced at him sharply, but his expression was unreadable. “You’ve…changed,” Jesenia whispered finally, hesitant but steady. “Since the attack.”
Since the kiss, she wanted to add, but didn’t have the strength to. His lips parted slightly, but he said nothing, his silence speaking louder than denial could.
“It feels like you’re trying to be…closer,” she said, her voice catching faintly on the word, “but somehow you only seem farther away.”
Val-Theris’s gaze softened then, his jaw shifting slightly as he lowered himself onto the stone wall beside her.
“I see things differently now. The time I have. The choices I make and the consequences that follow.”
Jesenia turned toward him slightly, her brows knitting faintly. “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Val-Theris whispered, his gaze fixed on the slow darkening horizon. “And you don’t have to. Just…stay.”
For a long moment, they sat in silence, and then Val-Theris reached out, slow and deliberate, letting his hand rest atop hers where it lay in the folds of her skirt. Jesenia stilled, her breath catching sharply at the warmth of his touch, her pulse tripping unevenly beneath her ribs.
“You’re holding something back,” she said finally, her voice low but steady, turning her hand slightly beneath his until their fingers touched along the edges.
“Yes,” he admitted softly. “But not this. I don’t want to hide this.”
