21. The Blow Beneath Doctrine #3
He’d cornered Draevan Sol—Master of Strategic Mana Flow—days ago to demand he share all information he had on the Shield Conduits and their relation to the Resh’Agar and the Sokar. The look in the man’s green eyes had been sharp. Suspicious. But he couldn’t refuse the mandate, so he complied.
Conduit managrams had been delivered that same evening, along with scrolls, tomes, and data collections pooled over centuries.
Of course, Draevan hadn’t made a single report readable.
Kailorien rubbed at his eyes, exhausted from combing through pointless and long-winded passages to find any information that could be of actual use.
And still—still—he had no answers.
I know what I must do, but it’s too great of a risk. If I bring her to the Shield Conduit and test her affinity for the Runesgram, it would reveal whether she is bound to it.
If Auryn was any other woman, he would have done so without a second thought.
But she was different. Her magic was different.
If the Runesgram reacted in violence to her raw power—the one they called Weaving—he risked hurting her.
Or worse, draining her. The thought sent flashes of memory through his mind.
The black veins.
The frozen skin.
The way he sat in that bathtub with her in the Moores, not knowing if she would take another breath.
No.
Going to the Conduit Lock was his last resort. Surely one of these Voids-damned reports could give him an inkling as to whether a body could be tied to the Runesgram without sigils and rituals.
He looked up when he heard near silent footsteps at the archway to the bathing chamber. Auryn’s Attendant—Lu’ma—limped up to the desk, bowing low and looking at the floor as she signed, 'The bath has been prepared.'
He nodded.
She hesitated. 'Your Quintessence, the light is brighter in the next room. The desk, larger.'
His eyes snapped to Auryn sleeping on the bed. She’d been tossing and turning for over an hour now.
“I want to be close,” he admitted, his voice low. “If she needs me.”
The Attendant’s eyes didn’t rise. Her head bowed, hands moving with quiet understanding, 'In the past, this Nameless has seen it. The heat is worse after dark.'
He gave a single nod. There was nothing else to say.
Setting down his stylus, he walked to the bed.
The fluxhearth flickered in the corner, painting shadows across the carved walls.
Auryn shifted beneath the covers, her brow furrowed, breath uneven.
Rasping. A few times, she groaned and shifted.
Yet despite her discomfort, she didn’t wake.
Kailorien lingered at her side for a moment longer, then turned away.
The bathing chamber was dim, warmed with scented steam and well-tended Lustral runes.
He noted the skill with which Auryn’s Attendant had handled preparations.
Skill well beyond typical Attendant knowledge and expertise.
Once again, he couldn’t shake the thought that Lu’ma was more than what she seemed, but he was too tired to pursue that trail tonight.
Especially in light of all the care she showed both of them.
Lu’ma had set out a small vial of balm and a folded towel.
It smelled of juniper and crushed frostbloom, another scent Auryn favored.
She must have told Lu’ma, or perhaps Lu’ma had simply guessed.
The thought made the chronic tightness in his chest loosen enough to take a breath.
At least someone was tending to her comforts while he lost himself in calculations and conjecture.
He stripped and stepped into the water. It was hot, blessedly so. His hands moved automatically over skin and sinew, removing only the grit of duty, not the weight of it. He washed quickly, avoiding his reflection in the mirrored panel by the towel stand.
His mind remained in the other room. Whatever bound them didn’t spare him from her suffering. Her heavy breath reached him from the next room. Not as a rhythm, but as a struggle. Strained. Ragged. A pattern of anguish he could not ignore.
She hadn’t been the same since the Estar. Nor had he. The light had left her eyes when she reached for her favorite books and journals. And he—he hadn’t wanted any spare time to think of anything aside from duty.
Something had shifted, and no diagrams or Council decrees could offer clarity on what that change meant.
The silence between them stretched too wide.
He thought of her hands, trembling as she fastened her shawl.
Her voice, wavering on words like shadow and power.
Her tears, silent and fierce. The pain—the defiance—in her eyes.
As he donned a silken robe and loose pants, he lingered in the feel of her labored breathing.
As though that anguish was a key turning in a lock, a door opened wide within his mind. A memory returned. Unexpected. Sharp.
Stonewake.
More than half a century ago.
The day of her vision. The day she’d used something so forbidden of her power that he’d been certain she would break. She’d been beneath him—bare, breathless, half-touched by delirium. And yet, she hadn’t broken, then. Thanks to that Voice inside of her, begging him, asking him—
Breathe into me, Silari.
He had. Without knowing why. Without knowing how.
He’d breathed into her—not just air, but something deeper. His essence, his mana, his will. And she had calmed. Matched him. They had pulsed in time for more than a day as she recovered, and the black veins had never touched her skin.
Could he accomplish that again?
When he returned to the chamber, Lu’ma sat near the fluxhearth, watching Auryn with the stillness of a shrine statue. She didn’t look up, but her posture shifted as he approached. She’d been listening, too.
“She grows hotter,” he murmured.
Lu’ma nodded once, slow and somber. Her hands wrung together; her lips pursed. She jumped to her feet, signing, 'This Nameless will bring tinctures for Her Radiance. They help. Sometimes.'
Kailorien sat beside Auryn on the edge of the bed as Lu’ma retreated. Her face was flushed, her mouth parted in a shallow gasp. The glow from the fluxhearth cast lines of red and black against her temple, and her silver lashes trembled as if she were caught in a dream too heavy to wake from.
“Sweetfire,” he whispered.
He bent close, pressing their foreheads together.
“I’m here.”
No response. Only raspy, pained breathing.
His hand cupped her cheek.
“Please…let me share my strength with you,” he whispered, echoing her words from that night. Not a command. A plea.
He drew a breath—deep, steady—and lowered his mouth to hers.
Not a kiss. An offering. His lips parted, and he exhaled—not air, but intention.
Kailorien focused on the thread of himself that had always known how to find her—the quiet tether, the Bond that had rekindled the night he returned from his most recent Campaign.
Light misted between their skin.
Faint blue. Raw. Hot.
It ghosted between them, settling into her like long-awaited rain into soil wrought with thirst.
For a moment…nothing.
And then—
She inhaled—greedy, desperate—waiting for the gift only he could give.
Her first full breath in hours.
He tried once more, but the light did not come again. The fever didn’t vanish, but her brow smoothed. Her fingers brushed against his wrist. Not quite conscious. But reaching.
He stared past the flickering fluxhearth, trying to leash the rage coiling in his chest—the rage at all the ways she’d been humiliated, diminished, made to suffer right under his gaze.
And still, after all these years, the words that echoed were Zarrek’s.
You can’t cage her, Resh. She’s too wild.
Wild, even now. After the solitude. The silence. The sight of Vargrún.
His little star was still undaunted. Still untamed.
In the hush of her truth, Kailorien found himself asking, 'How do you protect something you love…without breaking its wings to do so?'
His hand cupped her cheek as she settled into sleep, her breath syncing to his own.
And in that silence, he made a vow.
If the Council would not grant her power, he would become it.
Not her cage.
Her shield.
Her storm.
Her voice, until she could wield her own again.