She took his hand.
She didn't know. Couldn't know. She saw a beautiful stranger in mourning clothes and her grief answered before her mind caught up. And he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to her knuckles and I felt something inside my chest tear open so wide I thought the shadows would pour out right there in the courtyard.
*Move. Run. Kill him. Rip his hand off her skin and break every finger and —*
I didn't move toward her. I moved toward Kaan.
He was already watching. I could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders, the way Nesilhan's hand pressed white-knuckled into his forearm. His eyes tracked Erlik. Calculating. Still.
I reached him in four strides. My voice came out low, barely controlled.
"He's touching her."
"I see." Kaan's jaw was clenched, but his tone was steady. Clinical. He'd been dealing with Erlik for a thousand years and it showed. "Don't run to her. Don't look at her the way you're looking at her right now."
"Kaan —"
"Listen to me." His hand closed around my arm — not comfort, command. "She is the Princess of Light. You are her Light Lord. That is all you are to her. That is all he sees. Do you understand? If you go over there with your shadows coiling and your eyes burning and rip her out of his hands like she belongs to you, he will know. And once he knows, nothing you or I do will be enough to protect her."
The words landed like a fist to the sternum. Because he was right. Every screaming instinct in my body was telling me to run, to throw myself between them, to put my mouth on her skin where his had been and burn his touch off her — and every single one of those instincts would hand her to him on a silver plate.
"Walk with me," Kaan said. "Slowly. Two brothers approaching the Princess to offer their respects. Nothing more."
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood and I let the pain anchor me and I walked beside my brother toward the woman I loved and the god who'd put his mouth on her hand.
Kaan reached them first. He bowed — formal, measured, the precise bow of one Shadow Lord acknowledging the heir of a dead god.
"Princess." His voice carried the weight of a thousand years of court diplomacy. "You should sit. The heat from the pyre is considerable."
Ada blinked. She was still dazed, her eyes red-rimmed, not quite processing the transition from one stranger to two. Erlik's hand was no longer on hers — he'd released it when we approached — but I could see the faint redness on her knuckles where his cold had bitten into her skin and I couldn't react. I could not react.
"Nesilhan will take you to the shade," Kaan continued, already guiding Ada's elbow toward where Nesilhan waited at the edge of the colonnade. "You've been standing too long."
Ada let herself be led. She glanced back at me once — a look that asked *are you coming?* — and I gave her a small nod that said *in a moment* and watched Nesilhan fold her arm through Ada's and steer her away.
She was safe. Away from him. Nesilhan would guard her with her life.
Which left me standing three feet from my father with blood in my mouth and every shadow in my body screaming.
Erlik watched Kaan's manoeuvre with faint amusement. His gaze slid from Ada's retreating form to Kaan, then to me, measuring, calculating. Trying to read what had just happened — whether we'd intervened out of duty or something deeper.
"My sons," he said. "Together. That's a rare sight."
"A rare occasion," Kaan replied, his tone giving away nothing. "A god has died."
"Indeed." Erlik's expression shifted to something that might have been genuine, if he were capable of genuine. "Gün Ata and I had our differences, but we were of the same order. His passing diminishes us all." He glanced back toward the pyre, then at me. "You look well, Hakan. Stronger than the last time I saw you. The darkness suits you."
I opened my mouth to respond — to tell him to leave, to threaten, to snarl — and I felt Kaan's presence beside me like a wall. Steady. Warning.
"Thank you for your condolences," I said. My voice came out even. I don't know how. "The Princess is overwhelmed. If you'll excuse us."
Something moved behind his face. Frustration. He'd come here for an answer and I hadn't given it to him. Kaan hadn't given it to him. Two sons, composed and formal, offering nothing he could use.
"Of course," he said. He inclined his head.
Then he was beside me. I didn't see him move — one moment he was three feet away, the next he was at my shoulder, his mouth close to my ear, his hand finding my shoulder in a grip that looked paternal and felt like iron.
Kaan tensed but didn't intervene. He couldn't — not without making the gesture look like more than it was, not without revealing that we thought there was something to fear from a father touching his son's shoulder at a funeral.
