I’ve found a lost piece. This is one of them. But he doesn’t wish for me to know.
For a split second, confusion shimmered in his magefire gaze. Then gone. Suppressed. Traded for a mask and a smile.
“Well then,” he said, stepping closer, “Would you like to take a bath together?”
For a long breath, neither of them moved. Auryn kept her gaze steady. Empty. His grin faltered.
“You still have a proclivity for cooking yourself in hot water?” she asked.
Another test—a shield with her tiny, fragile hope hiding behind it.
Hefroze.
Hesitation. A quiet laugh escaped his throat—dry, disbelieving.
“You’restillcalling it that?” he grinned, voice a little rougher than before. “After all this time?”
Thank the Stars. He kept this one. The magic did not take it.
She blinked again. “It’s what you do. You heat water then steam in it. It smells like broth. That’s cooking.”
“You bathe, don’t you, little one?”
Her heart skipped.Little one. Another piece they’d been allowed to keep. She raised her chin. He wouldn’t have known that her room didn’t have a bath. That she had to sneak to the Servitor sometimes to take one.
“Not in boiling water.”
Kailorien’s face crumpled, a choked laugh escaping into the crook of his elbow as he turned away. His shoulders shook as he tried to maintain his dignity.
“I forgot,” he murmured. “You’re impossible.”
Auryn reached past him to set the trinket on the table beside her seat, speaking so softly she thought he might not hear. “And yet... you keep coming back.”
Kailorien cleared his throat and grabbed a nearby chair, sitting on it with his arms folded across his chest. “How could I not when you haunt my every waking thought? You’ve missed me too, haven’t you?”
He said it with mirth, but he could not hide the fear in it. The ache, the anguish at the thought that shehadn't missed him. That he was beyond forgiveness. Auryn’s lips thinned into a line. His fear mirrored hers. Because in this moment, she did not yet know what he had lost and what they’d been allowed to keep.
She stood, turned, and padded to him. With each motion of her bare feet, his eyes widened. He tensed like a man preparing to be struck.
When she was close enough, she lifted one of her legs and leaned on the part of the chair open between his thighs. Her fingers reached out, one hand settling on his armored shoulder for balance and the other caressing the dangling emerald teardrop at his ear.
“And if Ihavemissed you?” she asked, her voice edged with frustration. “What then, Kailorien? Would you stay longer this time before you run off to the Surface to find me another puzzle box?”
His hands came up, one hovering, the other resting on her hip. The flame within her belly roared, weakness snaking once again into her knees.
“Youknowwhy I left,” he said, and there was hope in his voice that sheunderstood.
“Vargrún,” she nodded. “And the rest?”
She stopped there. Wanted to ask a thousand questions, to demand an answer for why he never told her about the Rite of Scars. Of what he was giving for her. Forthem.
But, it wasn’t his fault. Not all of it. He was the Resh’Agar, carrying the entire city on his plated shoulders. Bound by Doctrine. Sworn to Estâr and his Companions. The Sight had warned her, and she’dchosenthis path.
:: You chose to become sovereign::
She exhaled. Blinked. Rubbed at her forehead. Her head was still pounding.
“I never meant to leave you with mere trinkets,” he murmured.
