Amelia standing in the grove again, but this time turning away from me deliberately. Amelia collapsing in that vision I witnessed. Amelia standing beside Vira while I am nowhere in sight.
The hallucinations begin subtly. A whisper of her voice. The brush of copper hair across my shoulder that is not there. The faint scent of wild cedar and crushed leaves. I open my eyes sharply. The chamber is empty and peaceful. My pulse is not.
Pain lances suddenly through the bond, sharp, disorienting. I brace my hands against the stone dais as nausea rolls through me. This is not emotional distress. This is physical. The bond is destabilizing. Because I am.
I force myself back into meditation posture, spine straight, hands resting on my knees. I lower my breathing deliberately. Inhale. Hold. Release.
Control is dominance. Control is survival. Except this time, control is isolation. The ache intensifies.
It is not simply that I miss her presence. It is that the bond now expects it. It was consummated. Fused. Aligned. What we built cannot be neatly compartmentalized without consequence.
By the second night, I am no longer sleeping.
When I do drift, I dream of her collapsing again, over and over, her body hitting stone while I stand immobile. The helplessness is worse than any wound I have taken.
On the third morning, I try to feed. The goblet remains untouched in my hand. The blood tastes like ash. I hurl it against the far wall. The sound echoes too loudly. For a moment, just a moment, I nearly tear the wards down.
I nearly go to her.
Instead, I reinforce them. That is when the pain spikes again, so violently my knees finally bend. I catch myself on the dais, breath coming sharp and uneven. This is what happens whenyou try to amputate something that has become vital. The bond pulses, wounded.
I hear the war horn outside. Velcryn warriors do not return quietly from war. Even when the battlefield is miles away.
I sense Ron before I see him.
The outer wards shift subtly at dusk, recognizing blood and rank. His power carries differently than mine, less restrained, more kinetic, like a drawn blade that prefers not to stay sheathed. By the time I hear his boots in the corridor, I already know he has ridden hard.
I remain seated on the meditation dais.
I do not call for him. The tower door opens without announcement.
Ron Valesh fills the threshold with the kind of presence that makes lesser men straighten instinctively. Sandy-brown hair tied back at the nape of his neck, amber eyes bright with battle-light not yet dimmed, shoulders broad beneath travel-worn leathers marked by recent combat. There is dust on his boots and dried blood at the seam of his bracer, someone else’s.
He takes in the room in one sweep. Then he looks at me.
“What,” he says slowly, “did you do?”
Not what happened. What did you do. I do not rise.
“You returned early, little brother.”
“I finished early,” he corrects. His gaze sharpens. “Answer the question.”
I hold his stare evenly. “I made a tactical adjustment while you were away.”
He exhales a disbelieving sound and steps fully into the chamber, shutting the door behind him with deliberate finality.
“The Matrons arrived in Nytheria. The sky-wards were visible from three provinces away,” he says. “The entire warrior guard is buzzing like you declared war. Then I hear you lockedyourself in a tower and haven’t left in two days. But the most interesting part…my older brother is mated to a Purna.”
His eyes flick over me again, assessing.
“You look like you haven’t fed,” he adds flatly.
“I have.”
“On what? Stubbornness?”
Despite everything, something dangerously close to a smirk pulls at my mouth. It fades quickly.