LOGINI woke at three in the morning with a sound coming out of my throat that I did not recognise as my own voice.It took me several seconds to understand what was happening, that I was awake and in my room in Nightfall and not back in the ceremonial circle, because the rejection bond had been so vivid in the dream that the boundary between sleeping and waking had dissolved completely. I was sitting upright in the bed with both hands pressed against my chest and my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my fingertips, and the bond was tearing through me in waves the way it had on the night of the ceremony, hot and vicious and completely indifferent to the fact that I was supposed to be healing.I pressed the heels of my hands against my sternum and breathed slowly and deliberately, counting each breath the way Sena had taught us in early morning training when she wanted us to bring our heart rates down after a hard set. In for four counts. Hold for four. Out for four. I did it over an
I had been in Nightfall for five days when Zane came to find me with the kind of expression that told me whatever he was about to say was going to change something.It was late afternoon and I had just come back from training, my muscles aching in the specific satisfying way they did after a session where I had actually pushed past my own limits instead of just maintaining them. I was sitting on the edge of my bed pulling off my boots when I heard the knock at my door, two short deliberate knocks that I was beginning to recognise as specifically his, and I told him to come in without thinking about it.He walked in and stood near the door with his arms folded across his chest and looked at me for a moment without speaking, which was not unusual for him, but something about the quality of his silence this time felt different. It felt like he was deciding how to begin rather than simply being unhurried, and that distinction made me set my boot down and give him my full attention."I nee
I told Zane my decision the next morning, finding him in the courtyard just after sunrise where he was standing at the edge of the training ground with a cup of something hot in his hand, watching his warriors run through their morning drills in the pale early light. He did not look surprised when I walked up beside him, which I was beginning to understand was simply his default state. I was not sure anything could genuinely surprise this man."I am staying," I said, looking out at the training ground rather than at him.He took a slow sip from his cup before answering. "I know," he said, with the same unhurried calm he brought to every single thing he said. I turned to look at him and he was still watching the drills, his expression giving away nothing as usual."You knew before I told you?" I asked."You made your decision last night," he said simply. "I heard you pacing in your room until almost two in the morning, and then you stopped. That was when I knew." I opened my mouth to
Mira left without being asked. She simply closed the old leather book, set it back on its shelf with quiet practiced hands, and walked out of the herb room without a word, pulling the door almost shut behind her. I did not look away from Zane when she left, and he did not look away from me, and the room settled into a silence that was somehow both uncomfortable and completely natural at the same time.He straightened from the doorframe and walked into the room, moving the way he did everything, unhurried and deliberate, like he had already decided exactly how much space he intended to take up and was simply occupying it. He stopped at the opposite end of the worktable and looked at me across the length of it, and I sat on my stool and looked back at him and waited for him to say whatever he had come in here to say."How much did you hear?" I asked, when the silence had stretched long enough."Enough," he said, without any particular expression on his face. I waited for him to elaborat
Mira did not answer my question right away. She moved to the shelf on the far wall and lifted down a worn leather book that looked old enough to have its own history, setting it on the worktable between us and opening it to somewhere near the middle. She turned it to face me and I looked down at a page covered in small careful handwriting, with diagrams in the margins and words written in a language I did not recognise at all.She pulled the stool from under the table and sat down across from me, folding her hands on the surface in the way people do when they are about to say something that requires steadiness to deliver. I stayed standing because sitting felt too settled for whatever this conversation was about to be."Your mother did not tell you because she was protecting you," Mira said, holding my gaze across the table. "She failed." The two sentences landed simply and directly without any softening around them, and I stood there absorbing them without saying anything, my hands p
I woke the next morning to the sound of whispering in the hallway outside my room.I could not make out the exact words but I could hear the tone, that low urgent kind of talking that people do when they find something surprising and are not sure yet what to make of it. I lay still for a moment and listened, and then I heard my own name spoken quietly by a voice I did not recognise.I sat up slowly and looked at my arms.The cuts from the Darkwood were almost completely gone. I had noticed them closing faster than normal the day before but I had told myself I was imagining it, that exhaustion was making me see things that were not there. Looking at them now in the pale morning light coming through the window, I could not tell myself that anymore. The skin was smooth and pink and clean, like wounds that were a week old rather than two days.I pressed two fingers against the place where the deepest cut had been and felt nothing at all. No tenderness, no soreness, nothing. I sat there st







