She reached for the Gift, and it reached back.
The air around her hands shimmered. For a heartbeat, nothing changed. Then the shimmer grew, a luminous ripple that gathered in her palms and leapt forward, coalescing around her like a second skin. The effect was silent, but visually spectacular—a field of light that trembled, then snapped into a perfect, translucent shield.
The shield glowed with a strange, opalescent sheen, colors shifting as the sun broke through the fog. The pattern of Alina’shands was magnified in it—every line, every tremor, mapped in living color and projected onto the space before her.
She stared, awestruck, at the thing she had made.
Tamsin was silent for a long time. Then, in a voice that might have been pride, or relief, or perhaps even envy, she said: “Look at you,” and slowly shook her head.
Alina flexed her fingers. The shield bent, then held. It pulsed with her heartbeat, as if alive.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Tamsin answered, her eyes very wide and very dark. “A barrier. No one in the Caves has managed that in years. Not even Kael.”
Alina felt a surge of warmth, reveling in it for a second before it shattered, replaced with aching terror. The shield flickered, then popped, dissolving into a thousand pinpricks of light that rained down around her. She gasped, staggered, and nearly fell, but Tamsin caught her by the arm.
“Easy,” said Tamsin, voice now the gentlest it had been all morning. “It’s a drain, at first. Your body will learn to pace itself.”
Alina nodded, too breathless for words. She pressed a palm to her chest, feeling the echo of power running through her veins.
The world looked different now: sharper, clearer, more detailed. The trees seemed to lean in, the moss to vibrate with hidden meaning. Even the air tasted different—electric, sweet, alive.
Tamsin stepped back, giving Alina the space to recover. “You’ll do well,” she said, then added, with a hint of her old severity: “If you don’t burn out first.”
Alina laughed, a raw, choked-off sound. She bent to pick up the amulet from where it had fallen. For a second, she consideredputting it back on, unused to missing the weight and safety of it, but instead she closed her fist around it and stood straighter.
“I won’t burn out,” she said.
Tamsin’s mouth turned up, just barely. “We’ll see.”
The mist had burned off over the course of their training. The first true sunlight of the day poured into the clearing, melting the frost, lighting every blade of grass, every bead of water, every new possibility.
Alina let the light wash over her, that tentative hope from yesterday raising its head again.
The shield was gone, but its afterimage still burned behind Alina’s eyes—stripes and whorls of impossible color, imprinted on the world like a memory refusing to fade. She blinked, once, twice, and saw only blinding white. When her vision came back, the forest seemed thinner, the sunlight too sharp, the whole world tilting gently under her boots.
Then her knees simply…stopped.
There was no warning, no dignified slow sink; just a traitorous jellifying, and the sensation of her body falling away from itself. For a wild, helpless heartbeat, she was sure she’d crash face-first into the moss, mud, and disappointment.
Instead, she collided with something much warmer.
Kael caught her, arms folding around her waist and shoulders with timing so perfect it felt like choreography. His grip was neither desperate nor casual but a lifeline, as absolute and necessary as the breath in her lungs. One of his hands splayed across her back,the other curled under her arm, he drew her in with a strength that was careful, measured, and completely unyielding. Where had he come from? She hadn't noticed him approaching.
The proximity was electrifying. She felt the heat of his body before she registered the sound of his breath, steady and close against her ear. His skin smelled like leather and pine, with an undertow of sweat and something metallic—blood, maybe, or the aftermath of old magic. Alina’s pulse stuttered and then took off, a racing mess, her cheeks burning with embarrassment and something else.
For a moment, neither moved. The clearing vanished, the sun, the fog, even Tamsin. It was only the two of them, the space between their faces reduced to nothing, the air charged with a thousand unsaid things.
Kael’s eyes, when she managed to meet them, were molten—dark and gold, like a promise and a dare. His voice was a rough whisper. “You pushed too hard.”
She tried to laugh it off, but her breath hitched. “What else is new?”
He smiled—not a full smile, not from him, but the ghost of it at the corner of his mouth. His grip loosened just enough for her to find her own balance, though he did not let go.
“You should rest,” he said. His voice had none of the mocking edge he sometimes wielded; it was uncommonly gentle. Her heart, the traitor, made a happy little jump.
Their faces were so close that a strand of her hair had stuck to his jaw. She reached to brush it away, and his hand found hers, steadying it. His skin was rough, callused, but his touch was unexpectedly careful, as if afraid she might break. She realized she was holding his gaze, and that she didn’t want to look away.
