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Daven clenched his fists and pulled cool air toward him on instinct, letting it move over Ryneth’s skin the way he’d learned could sometimes blunt the worst of the static between them. Proximity helped. Touch helped. Sometimes his power did too. None of it was exact yet.

He still didn’t know how far the bond reached, only that once one of them tipped too hard, the other felt it.

For a moment, he only looked at Norma. At the stillness of her body. At his uncle’s hand wrapped around hers like he could keep her here by force alone.

Then he drew a breath. “Old Helion, uncle. Do you still speak it?”

Milanov’s fingers stilled around Norma’s hand. “Why are you asking?”

“Nereth solan.”

Something shifted in the room the moment the words left his mouth.

Daven felt it first, a pressure moving through the room that stole half a breath from his lungs. Ryneth went still beside him.

The curtains stirred though the windows were sealed tight, and the glass of water on the bedside table trembled hard enough to rattle against the wood.

“What did you say?” Milanov was on his feet. “Where⁠—”

A sharp alarm cut through the room as the monitor beside the bed surged into a violent spike.

“Good Light,” Milanov breathed, already moving to her side. “Norma. My love. My heart.”

Norma’s body arched against the sheets, fingers clawing at the air while her lips moved around a sound that never came.

“What the hell is going on?”

Nurses rushed into the room, one of them stepping between the bed and the rest of them as the alarm kept shrilling through the air. “Please step back. We need space. We need to check her breathing.”

Daven caught Ryneth’s wrist before he could move closer. Something tight and electric pulled between them.

Another nurse fixed the mask over Norma’s face while a second checked the monitor, the numbers still climbing as Norma dropped hard back onto the mattress, her breaths turning fast and shallow.

Milanov looked up at Daven, his face gone tight with something close to fear. “What did you say?” he asked again.

“Nereth solan.”

Cold moved through Daven’s chest so fast it almost felt like shock. Whatever had followed Ryneth out of Düren was real. It had reached into this room, into his uncle’s wife, and for the first time since the ritual, what lived between them didn’t feel like hunger or possession. It felt like warning.

“Good Light. Norma? Love, can you hear me? Can you⁠—”

Norma’s body jerked once more before going still beneath the sheets.

“She can’t, Imperial,” the nurse said as the lines on the screen began to smooth. “I’m sorry. She needs to rest now.”

“How do you know that? Perhaps she can. Perhaps…” Milanov straightened, then turned his gaze to Ryneth. “Where did you get those words?”

“Do you know them?”

Milanov nodded slowly. “She used to say it all the time. It was how she lived. No one stands alone. Tell me where you saw it.”

“On the chip Mara gave me when I left Düren. She told me I could use it if I needed it, but when Concordant—” He cut himself off and looked at Norma. “It didn’t work. I thought I’d lost it, but then it showed up in Daven’s penthouse.”

“Go on.”

“I took it because I thought maybe it could help Tavi somehow.” He swallowed. “Anyway, there were words engraved in the chip. When I touched it, my static broke loose. I don’t know what happened after that.”

“Then you saw it on my painting,” Daven said, remembering the way Ryneth had gone still, eyes wide with panic.