His mind remained in the other room. Whatever bound them didn’t spare him from her suffering. Her heavy breath reached him from the next room. Not as a rhythm, but as a struggle. Strained. Ragged. A pattern of anguish he could not ignore.
She hadn’t been the same since the Estâr. Nor had he. The light had left her eyes when she reached for her favorite books and journals. And he—he hadn’t wanted any spare time to think of anything aside from duty.
Something had shifted, and no diagrams or Council decrees could offer clarity on what that change meant. The silence between them stretched too wide. He thought of her hands, trembling as she fastened her shawl. Her voice, wavering on words likeshadowandpower. Her tears, silent and fierce. The pain—the defiance—in her eyes.
As he donned a silken robe and loose pants, he lingered in the feel of her labored breathing.
As though that anguish was a key turning in a lock, a door opened wide within his mind. A memory returned. Unexpected. Sharp.
Stonewake.
More than half a century ago.
The day of her vision. The day she’d used something so forbidden of her power that he’d been certain she would break. She’d been beneath him—bare, breathless, half-touched by delirium. And yet, she hadn’t broken, then. Thanks to that Voice inside of her, begging him, asking him—
Breathe into me, Silari.
He had. Without knowing why. Without knowinghow.
He’d breathed into her—not just air, but something deeper. His essence, his mana, his will. And she had calmed. Matched him. They had pulsed in time for more than a day as she recovered, and the black veins had never touched her skin.
Could he accomplish that again?
When he returned to the chamber, Lu’ma sat near the fluxhearth, watching Auryn with the stillness of a shrine statue. She didn’t look up, but her posture shifted as he approached. She’d been listening, too.
“She grows hotter,” he murmured.
Lu’ma nodded once, slow and somber. Her hands wrung together; her lips pursed. She jumped to her feet, signing, 'This Nameless will bring tinctures for Her Radiance. They help. Sometimes.'
Kailorien sat beside Auryn on the edge of the bed as Lu’ma retreated. Her face was flushed, her mouth parted in a shallow gasp. The glow from the fluxhearth cast lines of red and black against her temple, and her silver lashes trembled as if she were caught in a dream too heavy to wake from.
“Sweetfire,” he whispered.
He bent close, pressing their foreheads together.
“I’m here.”
No response. Only raspy, pained breathing.
His hand cupped her cheek.
“Please…let me share my strength with you,” he whispered, echoing her words from that night. Not a command. A plea.
He drew a breath—deep, steady—and lowered his mouth to hers. Not a kiss. An offering. His lips parted, and he exhaled—not air, but intention. Kailorien focused on the thread of himself that had always known how to find her—the quiet tether, the Bond that had rekindled the night he returned from his most recent Campaign.
Light misted between their skin.
Faint blue. Raw. Hot.
It ghosted between them, settling into her like long-awaited rain into soil wrought with thirst.
For a moment…nothing.
And then—
She inhaled—greedy, desperate—waiting for the gift onlyhecould give.
Her first full breath in hours.
