The roar subsided, leaving a silence more profound than any that had come before. Kaelen stood in the center of the throne room, his body trembling, his breath coming in ragged, gasping heaves. The beast receded, not vanishing, but settling back into the depths of his soul, sated and watchful. He was raw, exposed, every nerve ending alight with the aftershock of his psychic explosion. He had poured everything he was into the void, and he had nothing left.Then, he felt it.It was not a response. It was not a message. It was a single, tear-shaped drop of pure, unadulterated grace in the vast, empty desert of his soul. It was a flicker of recognition, a whisper of his own name on the wind, a single, fragile thread of connection that was no longer being pulled away, but was being held.It was her.She had felt him. She had heard him. She had not turned away.A sound escaped him, a broken, ragged thing that was half-sob, half-laugh. He sank to his knees, the cold, unforgiving marble a wel
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