[Underground Stronghold]

  Alden opened his eyes as consciousness surged back.

  Grey.

  The ceiling was familiar, a sb of unpolished stone. His body felt heavy, throbbing dully along the length of his right forearm. His senses were still dull. He inwardly checked his essence reserve once more. Full. Perfect. The best it had been since his return.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, courting the dark again. An involuntary sigh escaped his lips.

  Gone. Of course she was gone.

  He y still, waiting for the room to settle back into its usual, miserable geometry. Covering his eyes, he pondered today's task. He had to leave in a few hours. It was still dark outside. There was no sound of another person's heartbeat. 'Of course there isn't.' He smirked. 'But why is her smell still here?'

  He waited for the cold reality of the stronghold to scrub away the madness, as it always did.

  But the air refused to clear.

  It wasn't the stench of damp stone or the acrid bite of tallow that filled his lungs. It was nectar—rich, cloying, and violent.

  Alden frowned into the pillow. The scent was stubborn today. His mind, frayed by the wine and the solitude, was clinging to the phantoms with pathetic desperation. At least that's what he preferred to believe.

  He just needed more sleep.

  He needed to bury his head until the hallucinations rotted away.

  Almost back under.

  His eyes snapped open. "No. This isn't it," he murmured and forced his head to turn toward the corner.

  His hand, halfway to pulling the quilt over his head, dropped dead to the mattress.

  She was still there.

  She was huddled against the far wall, knees drawn tight to her chest in a protective knot. Her dress was a spill of living light, casting long, impossible shadows against the rough-hewn stone. Her wings, shimmering with a soft bioluminescence in the pre-dawn gloom, were folded tight like a shield.

  And her eyes were wide open. Wet. Terrifyingly lucid. Like a deer watching the hunter's bow.

  Alden didn't breathe. The air caught in his throat, a jagged obstruction.

  No.

  It wasn't a question of how. A hallucination this vivid was a cruelty he hadn't prepared for. It was a direct blow to the chest.

  He scrambled up in a frantic, clumsy movement — the kind his body had long since forgotten how to make.

  From the corner where she'd pressed herself, she flinched. It was a subtle motion. But Alden's eyes didn't miss it.

  He froze. His heart hammered against his ribs like a battering ram against a fortress gate. He looked down at himself—stark naked, although the quilt covered his bottom—but before her the shame was distant, irrelevant to him. No, this wasn't it.

  He exhaled a curse and dragged the heavy fur quilt to his chest. His hands were shaking. He only now noticed.

  Setting his feet on the stone floor, he stumbled toward her. Towards the woman pressing herself backward, trying to melt into the shadows.

  After taking a few steps, Alden stopped when he reached a foot away. The image of her once again burned in his mind. The shaking golden shes, the fmelike pupils, the body shivering despite the fming leaf covering her frame. She was glowing in his small, dark room like a firefly, with wings of fire.

  Alden dropped to his knees until his eyes were level with hers.

  The stone bit into his skin, grounding him, but his eyes were locked on her. He couldn't speak. His throat was a ruin.

  He reached out a hand, fingers trembling violently, hovering in the empty air between them.

  "Aurenya?"

  The name tore out of him. A rough, broken sound.

  She raised her shes and met his eyes fully, her expression wide open and frightened, before she nodded and abruptly pointed at his right arm.

  Alden looked down at his arm and finally understood why she was acting this way.

  An angry red welt ran the length of his right forearm—likely the Sun Stone's parting kiss from the night before. Or...

  He raised his head and looked at her face. The guilt on it told him everything.

  He chuckled.

  Had she been watching it the entire time, terrified that she was the cause of it?

  Alden didn’t fixate on the burn; instead, he stared at her. It had been so long since he had st seen her. His heart was beating so loudly, showing no signs of slowing down. And he didn't even try this time.

  Dreams didn't fear. Ghosts didn't flinch.

  He drew on his essence from his heart—moving it through his arm and recreating a raw, new skin wrapping the burnt one. He felt the skin tighten, then smooth. He watched none of it.

  Aurenya stopped pressing against the stone. The tension drained from her wings. She exhaled—a long, shuddering, soundless breath. Her eyes found his again, and a tentative smile touched the corners of her mouth, as if she were relieved that he wasn’t hurt anymore.

  The tight knot of her knees loosened. Her weight shifted—barely, but toward him.

  Alden broke. He lunged forward, reaching out, his terror spiking that his hands would pass through smoke. But he didn't stop himself this time.

  His hands found her arms — then her shoulders — gripping hard enough to feel bone.

  Warm.

  Solid.

  Her.

  A choked sound escaped him. But he didn't pull back. He couldn't. His fingers dug into the fabric of her dress, desperate to anchor her, to anchor himself.

  She didn't vanish. She was warm, and solid, and she smelled of the nectar that had haunted his study a lifetime ago.

  "It's real," he whispered, the words trembling. "You're here."

  He pulled her into him, burying his face in the crook of her neck, filling his lungs with her scent until he was dizzy with it. It wasn't gentle, but the desperate embrace of a man catching someone falling off a cliff.

  She was here.

  The question of how—the door, the oracles, the prophecies, the shadow guards who might have seen her light outside—surfaced for half a second and dissolved. He couldn't hold it. Not yet.

  His hands tightened without permission. His jaw ached with the effort of not pulling harder, not pressing her against him until she couldn't slip through—not through a door, not through the night, not through the gaps between his ribs.

  He felt her exhale against his temple—the small, unhurried motion of her turning her cheek to rest against his hair.

  She didn't flinch this time. Instead she leaned into his desperate grip—slightly, naturally, as if there had never been anywhere else for her to be.

  Finally, after her body seemed to be shaking again, he raised his head and pulled back just enough to look at her face. His hands cupped her jaw, thumbs tracing her cheekbones, checking the reality of her skin.

  "Can you hear me?" he asked, his voice shaking.

  She fixed her gaze on his face and nodded quickly.

  Alden lowered his forehead to rest against hers, closing his eyes tightly as he collected himself. Or tried to.

  Aurenya pointed at his chest this time. He looked down. The quilt — still pressed against the hem of her dress during the embrace, apparently — had caught. A thin curl of smoke rose from the wool. She gnced at him, then at her dress. Tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to fall at any moment.

  Alden smirked, unwilling to let her gaze wander. "What? Scared?" he asked teasingly.

  The girl shook her head, then nodded, then shook again, prompting another chuckle from him.

  Her gaze kept returning to the hem of her dress as she pushed him away. He moved back without any resistance.

  She then looked up at him, then down at the burning quilt, then at the pce on his arm where the burns had been. A small crease had formed between her brows.

  Alden swallowed hard before he rasped, “It’s not you. It’s because of what you’re wearing.”

  Her eyes widened in understanding. Before Alden could stop her, she was already moving.

  She stood up. And stripped.

  The dress of living fme pooled at her feet.

  Alden's heart stopped, his eyes widened as much as they could. Every muscle in him locked.

  He forced his head to turn and made his way toward the wardrobe. Grabbing a heavy cloak from the shelf above, he turned back and held it out to her. “Cover yourself,” he strained, his voice thick with urgency. “Wrap it around your body. Now.”

  A shaky hand reached out and took it.

  A rustling echoed too loudly in his ears.

  He sighed inwardly. It had been so long since his patience had been tested like this.

  Instead of standing and listening to the sound, and letting his mind wander to pces, he knelt by the discarded dress—it was still pulsing with heat.

  He grabbed the sealing box from where it y on the floor and shoved the fming leaf-cloth inside. The click of the lock was too loud against the rustling.

  He stood up and looked at her.

  She was covered. The heavy wool swallowed her frame — except for the wings, still trembling against her back, folding and unfolding like they didn't know what to do with themselves. He had been staring at her for ten minutes and only now registered them. That told him something about the state he was in.

  No... the wings. Her back was likely still bare. He swallowed, and shook his head. It wasn't time for that. He touched his chest and felt the pulsing Ichor sending warmth outward. He uncsped the ptinum chain without a second's dey and then stepped closer. He reached around her neck and fastened it, ignoring the sensation of his fingers brushing her skin.

  His own eyes were bare now, not reflecting any light.

  "Keep it on. All the time. Understood?" he asked, his voice rougher, more than he was willing to dispy. She nodded, smiling brightly as she looked over her shoulder and watched in wonder as her fme-wings gradually faded from view, becoming translucent before disappearing entirely.

  The glow that had always emanated from her skin dimmed to something more subtle, more human. Even her hair seemed to settle, the living fmes becoming merely the suggestion of firelight caught in golden strands.

  He pulled on a dark travelling cloak. He regretted it instantly. Not princely clothes.

  Turning towards her, his mouth moved. "How..." he choked out, squeezing her hand tight enough to turn his knuckles white. "How did you come here? Do you remember?"

  She tilted her head for a few moments, then nodded. Then she pointed at him, then back at her, then at her ears and lips.

  Alden exhaled softly, watching her frantic expnation that made no sense to him without shame — he was watching the vivid red of her lips, not trying to understand. It wasn't any nguage he could parse by lip reading. After all, her speech wasn't really a speech, it was the fundamental comprehension of all tongues. So if her voice wasn't reaching him, he wouldn't understand or remember even if he could hear her clearly.

  Her speech was impaired during the transportation. He didn't know how she managed to arrive, but it wasn't a complete descent — rather, a partial one. It meant she could be pulled back anytime.

  His chest tightened. But he kept his expression calm, pondering. 'Why does she seem to know me, yet also doesn’t?'

  No answer came to his mind. The glint in her eyes — that particur way she tilted her head — was the same as it had always been. When there was trust. Like before. Before she knew to hate. Before she knew to curse. Not as she had looked at him at the end.

  She stepped closer, her shoulder pressing against his chest. He didn't resist.

  Her golden eyes gazed up at him, and before he could say anything, she melted into his arms. Alden returned her hug without a moment's dey, savoring the intoxicating scent of her.

  Her warmth sat against him like something he hadn't known he was still cold without.

  Alden stared at the heavy stone door. His strongest hideout. Beyond the stronghold y the Emperor, his half-siblings, consorts, and thousands of conspiracies hatched by enemy nations. The oracle's hunting dogs must have already been spread across the world.

  'She must not stay,' Alden realized with painful crity. 'She must be returned to her sealed realm as soon as possible.'

  He opened his mouth. The command was simple. 'Return.' But the word hit the back of his teeth and died, never leaving his lips.

  He looked down at her. She was wrapped in his cloak, her bare feet tucked under the hem, hiding in his embrace as if she belonged nowhere else.

  A cold gravity took hold in his chest — not guilt, not grief. An unspoken need. If she couldn’t recall anything, if there was no lingering bitterness from the past, couldn’t they start anew? Freshly. She didn’t need to know. All she had to do was be his.

  This time, he wouldn’t repeat his foolish mistake. He wouldn’t again be the great person for the Empire and abandon her to those he once trusted. His heart pounded heavily in his chest, and his hand tightened around her waist. More rational thoughts began to surface.

  If he sent her back, would the door ever open again? What if she got trapped in the dimensional barrier, lost and wandering? Worse, what if she ended up in the Abyss?

  He didn't even know how to send her back.

  'Could he not be a bit more greedy?'

  'I don’t know how,' he thought to himself. It was the truth, yet also a lie. A btant, pathetic lie. But he repeated it until the edges blurred, until it felt like an absolute truth.

  He exhaled, releasing the tension from his shoulders as he succumbed to his own selfishness. He lifted her chin. At least he could give her that — the illusion of a choice.

  "Aurenya," he said, his voice rough, trying to hide his pounding heart by making excuses. "Would you like to… go back?"

  He held his breath, bracing himself for the impact that could shatter his heart once more.

  She looked up, her gaze tinged with guilt. Slowly, she shook her head, biting her lower lip, and deepened her embrace.

  Alden closed his eyes in relief, waiting for the guilt to strike him down. It didn't. All he felt was the warm, solid weight of her back in his arms.

  "Right. You're safe here," he whispered, lowering himself and pulling her closer until her lips rested against his own. "With me."

  'Just a bit more,' he promised the void. 'I will send her back ter. Just let me have this.'