Chapter 7: His Name In Her Mouth

Three days after Caden left, I said Kael's name differently.

I didn't intend to. It happened in the middle of training — eastern ward line, a complex exercise, distinguishing between different frequency categories while maintaining my own output — and I'd been pushing into the ward structure for forty minutes and the power was running hot and the seal on my shoulder blade was doing its cracking thing and I lost the thread of the exercise and reached for the anchor point automatically.

The anchor point was him.

"Kael," I said, and it came out different — lower, and reaching, the specific sound of someone grabbing for the nearest solid thing when the ground shifts.

He was beside me before the word finished.

His hand on my shoulder — firm, warm, grounding — and his frequency moving through the ward line toward mine, steadying it, the two of them running alongside each other the way they'd been running alongside each other since the first morning, and everything settled.

I became aware of his hand.

I became aware that I'd said his name differently and he'd heard it and he was very close and his hand was still on my shoulder and neither of us was moving.

"What happened," he said. His voice was very even.

"Lost the thread," I said. "The seal shifted and I—"

"Reached for the ward line," he said.

"Reached for you," I said. Before I'd decided to.

The hand on my shoulder didn't move.

"Yes," he said. Very quietly.

I turned to look at him. He was close enough that turning meant we were face to face with significantly less space than was strictly safe for my ability to form coherent thoughts, and his eyes were doing all the things and his hand was warm through the fabric of my shirt and my wolf had entirely abandoned the pretense of equanimity.

"That's going to keep happening," I said. "The reaching. As the seal breaks."

"I know," he said.

"Is that—" I stopped. Started again. "Does that—"

"Aria." His voice had something in it. Something that was usually further back than this. "Ask the question."

"Does it bother you," I said. "That I reach for you. That you're the thing I— that when the power surges I automatically—"

"No," he said. The word had no ambiguity in it. None. Just the specific flat certainty of a door that had opened and was not going to close. "It does not bother me."

I held his gaze.

His hand was still on my shoulder.

"Okay," I said.

He held my gaze for another second. Two. The silver eyes doing everything all at once and making no attempt to hide it.

Then he stepped back. Created the distance. Put the training back in the space between us.

"Again," he said. "From the beginning. Don't reach for me — reach for the ward line anchor points. You need to be able to find them without—"

"Without you," I said.

"Without needing me as a shortcut," he said carefully.

I looked at him. "There's a difference?"

He looked back at me and something moved through his expression that was going to be very difficult to forget.

"Yes," he said. "There is."

I turned back to the ward line and raised my hand and pushed — clean, focused, the way he'd taught me — and felt the ward structure respond and felt his frequency alongside mine inside it and decided not to examine the difference he was describing too closely because I was fairly certain examining it would make the training impossible.

We worked for another two hours.

Every time the power surged and I felt the automatic reach toward him, I redirected it to the ward line anchor points. And every time I did, I felt him notice — felt the shift in his frequency, something that was approval and something else simultaneously, something warmer than approval, something that he was also not examining too closely.

We were, I thought, both being very disciplined about not examining things.

It was, I also thought, not going to last much longer.

On the walk back he said: "You said my name differently. Earlier."

"I know."

"I want to note that I noticed."

"I know," I said.

"I'm noting it for the record."

"Kael."

"Yes."

"The record is noted." I looked at him sideways. "Don't push it."

The almost-smile. The internal version. Closer to the surface than it had ever been.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said.