Something shifts in the bond—a click, a lock turning. The sensation floods through me like freezing water, dousing the heat with something worse.
The phantom taste of her vanishes from my mouth.
I’m alone in my skin again.
And somehow, that’s so much worse.
Kieran’s fingers dig into the wood of the table, leaving actual indentations.
Oh.
I feel it then—the bond between Kaia and Aspen, cementing into place. Stronger than before. Different than before.
And ithurts. Not jealousy exactly. Something more… displaced.
Like a house I helped build… and then someone else got handed the keys.
Like when my sister moved out and took her half of our shared record collection.
Except this isn’t records. This is my—
Not mine. Never was. Never will be.
“Right then,” I mutter, the joke dying in my throat. “I’ll just—”
I don’t finish the sentence. Don’t need to. No one’s listening anyway.
I sigh dramatically, adjusting my pants before muttering, “Gonna need a cold bath after that one.”
Kieran’s head snaps up, those predator eyes locking on me. Something cold and dark flickers across his face, and for a brief, bizarre moment, Iwant him to say something. Anything. To acknowledge that whatever just happened in the bond affected us both.
Instead, he just looks through me like I’m already gone.
Fine.Fine.
I stroll out of the war room, whistling a tune that sounds hollow even to my own ears.
The hallway isn’t much better. The stone walls feel too close, the air too thick with magic that isn’t mine. I’m fine. Totally fine. It’s not like I wasn’t expecting this. It’s not like I thought—
A shadow detaches from the wall, following me. Patricia, with her little shadowy notebook and too-observant eyes.
She floats alongside me, furiously scribbling notes, tilting her formless head as she studies me like I’m some fascinating specimen. She holds up her notebook, tapping insistently at a graph that seems to be tracking my emotional state.
I blink at her. “What?”
She points at me, then at her notebook again, gesturing emphatically at what looks like a statistical analysis of… my emotional state? Great. Even Kaia’s shadows are psychoanalyzing me now.
“Nope,” I say, popping the ‘p’ with extra emphasis. “No data. No statistics. No… whatever this is. I’m good.”
Patricia tilts her head, clearly unconvinced. She scribbles something else, then holds it up—a rudimentary drawing of a face that looks suspiciously like mine, with arrows pointing to the eyes and chest with little notations.
“Bye, Patricia!” I wave, walking faster.
She hovers for a moment longer, then melts back into the shadows with what feels like disapproving energy trailing behind her.
I round the corner, making sure I’m alone before I let my shoulders slump.
Then straighten them immediately. Because I’m fine.
