Dane sat back, looking stunned. He looked at his own hands, clenching and unclenching them as if testing the reality of his own skin.
“That’s why the loyalty binds feel so strong,” Dane murmured, half to himself. “Why losing a partner feels like dying.”
“Because you were designed to be bonded,” Goran said. “It is not a flaw in your psychology. It is the architecture of your soul.”
The hush that followed was crushing. We were all just debris, I realised. Fragments of a magic that didn’t belong in this world, washing up on this shore, trying to pretend we were people.
“Well,” I said, breaking the silence before it could crush us. I picked up my spoon again. “That explains why you listen to me.”
Dane let out a short, rough snort of laughter. The tension snapped.
“Don’t push your luck, Rowan,” he muttered, though he looked at Goran with a hard-won respect. “I ignore at least forty percent of what you say.”
“Fifty,” I corrected.
“Sixty on weekends.”
Goran didn’t smile, but the lines around his eyes seemed to deepen, just a little. He picked up a mug of water.
“Eat,” the ancient soldier commanded. “We will need our strength for what is to come.”
The breakfast dishes were gone,but the revelation about the Vor-Kahn still lingered. We relocated to the far end of the atrium, stepping into Aelira’s workspace—a small library enclosed by rune-etched glass, sealing in the smell of ink and dormant centuries.
Aelira stood by a high shelf, her fingers trailing over the spines of books that looked older than the city above us.
I sat at the heavy wooden table. My hands were wrapped around the battered copy ofThe Little Sun and the Little Moon, my eyes fixed on its exposed binding.
Movement at the edge of the room caught my eye.
Riven stepped out of the shadows. He had showered and changed, trading his ruined suit for simple, dark tactical gear that the Keepers must have kept in their stores. He looked sharper, colder. The raw, bleeding vulnerability of the tunnel was gone, sealed away behind a mask of professional detachment.
He moved silently to the edge of the table, leaning against the wall, putting himself in the conversation but keeping his distance.
“You have questions,” Aelira said, looking between us.
“We have Highspire breathing down our necks,” Riven said, his voice rough. “Korenth has locked down the district because we embarrassed him. We broke into his tower, we stole his secrets, and we left his elite guards bleeding on the floor of my home. We’re targets because we provoked him.”
Aelira turned slowly. Her eyes held a weight that made Riven’s tactical assessment feel small.
“Do you truly believe that?” she asked softly. “Do you believe he is hunting you simply because you are a loose end?”
“Maybe we are not only that,” I said, my voice low.
Riven looked at me, frowning.
I pulled Liora’s green leather journal from my bag and flipped straight to the page.
“My mother wrote about me,” I said. “She wrote about me like I was an event.”
I looked up at Aelira.
“She wrote:‘We have awakened her. Gods help us, we have woken the sun.’”
I closed the book gently.
“What does that mean, Aelira? Eamon was terrified of what would happen if I was ever discovered. He loved me, but he kept the truth locked away to protect me. He never told me what I was.”
“He wanted you to be safe,” Aelira said.
