Kion’s POV

  Room 203, Binding Post Inn, Brandholt City

  The moment the bathroom door clicked shut, it began.

  Pain. Lots of it.

  So, so, so painful.

  Not his body, hers.

  It tore through the tether. Sharp, electric, merciless.

  Her self-loathing hit him in waves that stole his breath. Each time she mentally flinched, he felt bones vibrate.

  Her shame tangled with his own anger. Rage at his uselessness, at her refusal to let him intervene.

  She was unraveling.

  And he could do nothing.

  Of all nights, why this one?

  He had stopped celebrating years ago.

  He hadn’t planned to celebrate. Not really.

  He’d only remembered the date because Glitterstorm had shoved a ridiculous cake into his arms this afternoon. Tall, bright, covered in edible sparkles and unearned cheerfulness.

  Stupid. Sweet. Impossible to forget.

  The thought had lingered longer than it should. Long enough for him to imagine something small.

  Maybe a quiet dinner, maybe a shared candle to mark the day, maybe a few hours that belonged to neither duty nor pain.

  Maybe a moment that belonged to them.

  She wasn’t on task. She wasn’t bracing for survival, for once.

  For a heartbeat, he let himself hope.

  But after this?

  The date would never belong to joy.

  He’d remember it like this. The night she locked herself away to scrub his failure out of her skin.

  The water kept splashing.

  Frantic at first. Scrape, gasp, rinse.

  Then slower. Breath dragged through teeth.

  Then frantic again. Too clean a sound for what it meant.

  Every splash struck his ribs.

  Every rinse was another pulse of guilt that wasn’t aimed at him but still found its mark.

  He closed his eyes and pressed his head to the wood.

  Fingers laced tight. Useless.

  The date dissolved into the steam.

  Nothing left of what it could have been.

  He knew, knew, why he couldn’t act when Caedern came.

  Not here. Not now.

  Every shard of reason whispered the same warning. Interfere, and she would pay tenfold.

  But his heart refused to listen.

  He counted every one of her breaths through the tether.

  His magic coiled tight, ready to strike if that count ever faltered.

  The same silent prayer trapped in his throat.

  Let me be in time. Let me not fail her.

  Not again.

  The fear dug deeper than the tether. It touched the scar memory that never faded, the day he returned to the grove that had banished him.

  The air had smelled of sap and ash. And scattered across the moss were wings. Dozens of them, delicate membranes torn free by wind.

  Some tangled in roots, some caught in bark, some faintly glimmering as if light still clung to what was gone.

  No bodies. Just silence and color.

  Fairy wings always detached upon death, but the rest should’ve remained.

  Seeing only the remnants had broken something in him. That silence had taught him what too-late meant.

  He hadn’t yelled loud enough before then. Hadn’t insisted enough.

  He’d let others decide when it was too dangerous, too uncertain, too late. And everything had slipped from his grasp before he even realized what was being taken.

  Never again.

  Not this time.

  Not his tethered.

  He pressed the heel of his palm to his sternum, where the pain pulsed hardest.

  Her fear came next. Muffled but sharp, threading through the tether like glass dust.

  The scene still flared when he closed his eyes. Caedern’s flat expression, the smirk that followed, satisfaction unfurling as if cruelty were a fine wine.

  And the name he’d almost mentioned. The one she couldn’t bear to hear.

  His breath trembled.

  He forced another in.

  Then another.

  She’s the one hurt. Not him.

  She needed calm, not another storm.

  He repeated it until the words began to stick. He reminded himself that if he bled his own anger into his gesture, she’d only drown deeper in it.

  She needed grounding. He needed to be that ground.

  His fingers unclenched, slow. He let his shoulders settle, counted the seconds between each inhale.

  The pain in the tether dulled. Not gone, but bearable. Manageable.

  A long minute passed before the water stopped.

  A quiet breath followed. Not steady yet, but there. Real.

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  He felt pressure building in his throat, the tether mirroring her. The same constriction that had locked her voice days ago beneath the stars.

  He willed himself to climb out from it.

  A child's squeal in joy could be heard from the window. High, unburdened, full of life untouched by the room. Normal sounds. Ordinary.

  It felt like ghosts brushing against the silence, reminders that somewhere, life continued without fracture.

  He exhaled shakily, closing his eyes for a moment.

  She was trying to recover. So he had to, too.

  For her.

  For himself.

  For every oath he’d carved into his own heart on that day in the grove, standing amid the field of scattered wings.

  The Silent Writ's POV

  Room 203, Binding Post Inn, Brandholt City

  The mirror was clear when she left the bathroom. Droplets clung to the short strands at her nape, slipping down to darken her collar. Cool air met her skin as she stepped back into the room.

  Kion sat by the window, the chair from the desk pulled close beside him. The lamplight drew a soft edge across his shoulder, catching faint on the curve of his jaw. When he looked up, the smile that met her wasn’t bright. It was gentle, worn at the corners, like something he’d practiced until it no longer hurt to hold.

  He stood, taking a few slow steps toward her, then stopped just short, “welcome back.”

  The steadiness of his voice startled her more than any gentleness could have. No pity, no panic, only calm. As if he’d anchored himself there, waiting for her to find the ground again.

  She crossed the distance and folded into his arms before the silence could press harder. His warmth filled the space where her thoughts had been unraveling. The sound of his heartbeat steadied her own. His palm moved along her hair. Light, slow, deliberate. As though touching something fragile but familiar.

  Her throat tried to shape words, but only a breath came out, small and useless.

  She nodded instead, her chin brushing against his chest.

  “It’s alright,” Kion murmured, tracing small circles between her shoulder blades, “you don’t have to talk. Just being here, safe. That’s enough right now.”

  Something in her chest trembled at that, a tightness loosening by a fraction. The ache didn’t vanish, but it shifted, made space for the quiet.

  So she held him tighter.

  Time blurred. The clock’s ticking drifted somewhere far away, muffled by the hush they built between them. The window hummed faintly with city noise, but none of it touched them.

  For a while, there was only this. Two breaths syncing, two steady pulses, the fragile stillness of being here and nowhere else.

  They both sat on the floor. Kion’s chest warm against her back, the cold of the floor seeping through the thin weave of her clothes. She leaned into him, fitting easily within the circle of his arms. His chest rose and fell against her shoulder blades. Steady, patient. The rhythm she couldn’t find in herself. Their legs tangled without thought, a quiet knot of warmth in the half-lit room.

  The nausea had long burned its way out, leaving her hollow. Emptied. But the bed still loomed there, a silent shape in the corner. Too clean, too white, too near the memory.

  Every time her gaze brushed it, something in her recoiled. Her feet stopped when she tried to move closer. Her body refused, each step pulled back by a wordless recoil that her mind couldn’t reason through. It wasn’t just a bed. It was the place she’d learned not to trust the ground beneath her.

  So they stayed on the floor instead, under the window, where the air felt less confined. The night outside hummed with faint, familiar noise. Street vendors packing up, shutters closing, someone laughing too far away to sound real. The world kept moving, and that movement held her steady. A reminder that the walls didn’t close on her this time.

  Kion hadn’t said much. Only a few murmured words when her throat failed her again, “easy,” and “don’t force it.” His voice had been low enough that she almost missed it, but the weight behind it grounded her more than any comfort could.

  She wasn’t locked behind the glass wall anymore, but the muscles in her neck still clenched, her breath snagged each time she tried to shape a sound. Her voice was there somewhere, she could feel it, but it refused to come.

  The quiet pressed too tight around her. Her skin remembered the shape of fear, the ghost of fingers that weren’t there. The phantom touch had a way of coming back when she stopped moving, lingering like smoke that wouldn’t leave the air.

  Before she could think, she reached for him.

  Her hands trembled when she found his wrists, cold from the thin draft slipping through the windowframe. She guided them up, slow and deliberate, until his palms settled against her throat. Above the collar, where her skin still ached. Both of his hands, broad and steady, overlapping like armor. She pressed them there, until the warmth seeped through, spreading beneath her jaw, over the place where Caedern’s grip had burned.

  Her breath came fast, shallow. She shook her head, not like that, not squeezing, and adjusted his fingers until they lay flat, protective instead of restraining. She guided one hand higher, over her mouth, and pressed her cheek and lips into his palm until the world narrowed to the weight and the warmth of it.

  Her eyes fluttered shut.

  Not invasion. Not humiliation. Protection. Containment.

  The words steadied her from the inside out. She leaned into the touch as if it could seal the edges of her. Hold her together where she’d come apart. Her trembling eased by degrees, the air slowly returning to her lungs in quiet, unsteady draws.

  Kion didn’t pull away. He didn’t ask, didn’t shift, didn’t try to fix it. His presence was all weight and steadiness. Letting her decide how much space she needed to reclaim.

  The silence stretched. Not empty, but anchored, a fragile truce between breath and memory. Outside, the street sounds thinned until even the wind sounded careful, as if the whole world understood the need to stay quiet.

  When at last she loosened her grip, he didn’t move until she did. Until her hands slipped down first, letting his fall back to his lap. The warmth faded slow, but it didn’t vanish. She kept her head against his shoulder a moment longer, her voice breaking through the numbness in a cracked whisper.

  “Thank you.”

  His answer came soft, almost a sigh against her hair, “you’re always welcome.”

  He drew her closer then, careful, as if she were something fragile but not broken. His arm slid around her middle, solid and sure, anchoring her back to him. She let herself lean into that weight. The steady warmth of his chest at her back, his breath tracing her crown. Wordless reassurance.

  Every bit of warmth he gave, she absorbed. It soaked through the grime in her mind, washing away the curses she’d thrown at herself. The mud of shame peeled off inch by inch, not gone, but loosened enough to breathe again.

  No words passed between them. The closeness was enough.

  At one point, Kion murmured that she should rest. She shook her head. She didn’t want to.

  The thought of morning, of the summons, of Caedern’s face, of the Accord, waited just beyond the quiet. The dark felt safer. She wished the night could stay folded around them forever, weightless and still.

  She bent her knee, drew it under his arm, and wrapped her arms around it, curling small against him. His hand came to rest lightly on her forearm. No pressure, just a reminder that he was there, that she wasn’t alone.

  Maybe if she stayed small enough, time would forget she existed.

  Maybe the morning wouldn’t find her at all.