27. Touched
Touched
Auryn stood outside the inner threshold of the Resh’Agar’s chamber, the oppressive weight of parchment, writs, and Council arguments clinging to her thoughts. Lu’ma stood beside her, pack full of old linens and a set of empty trays in her arms.
“Please rest tonight,” Auryn said, her voice touched with exhaustion. “This…what I am about to do…it’s better if no one witnesses it.”
Lu’ma hesitated. Just a moment. 'Your Radiance. This Nameless will be in the hall. Please take care. The Resh’Agar may be kind, but he is still the Arm of the Void.'
Then she bowed low, graceful and precise, and disappeared down the corridor.
Auryn inhaled deeply and shook her head to clear it.
Lustral mana and oils still lingered on her skin.
Kailorien had added Mireth runes to their bath tonight to bolster mana channels and aid in regeneration, though neither of them was sure it could help with the sort of exhaustion she experienced from Weaving.
It’s worth an attempt, at least. Now let us see how far I can Weave him tonight. I’ll start slowly. Gently. It wouldn’t do for me to exhaust myself and frighten him away.
She adjusted the silken nightshift clinging to her curves and stepped inside their private chamber, the fabric whispering against her legs as she moved.
Kailorien lay waiting on the bed, shirtless, loose linen pants clinging low to his hips.
His dark hair was unbound and spilled like ink across the black silk sheets, catching the golden light of the single hovering mana lamp.
He lay on his stomach, arms folded beneath his cheek, head turned toward her—his eyes closed.
The long muscles of his back were relaxed. Vulnerable. Beautiful.
Her breath caught.
He looked more human like this. Less Resh’Agar.
She let the shawl fall from her shoulders, slipping it onto the hook beside the bed. The air kissed her skin in its absence. Kailorien shifted, sensing her presence. His eyes opened, their glow absent.
“You’re quiet,” he murmured. “Planning something dangerous?”
“Always,” she answered, stepping toward the bed. “But not tonight… tonight, I just want to feel them and see how they respond.”
She climbed on the bed, straddling his thighs, her nightshift brushing across his bare skin. Her fingers hovered above the base of his spine, then spread with care across his lower back.
“Ready?” she asked.
He hummed. “Always.”
She smiled and closed her eyes.
Perthro. Eihwaz. Raidō.
One by one, she called them.
The runes responded like old friends, remembering the days in the Moores when she whispered to them at night.
They bloomed beneath her fingers, glowing with gentle blue-white light, warming the skin beneath her palms. Her magic Wove around them, finding snarls of mana, obstacles of flow, and blockages.
Clearing them. Sweeping them away with threads of love and intent.
Kailorien made a low, satisfied sound as her hands moved along his back. “Feels… good,” he sighed. “Like you’re undoing knots I didn’t know were there.”
“You’re full of them,” she teased, but her voice quavered in excitement—because this was working. This was right. The runes knew her. They accepted her.
She moved up, hands skimming over Hjarta, then toward Krathar. Even that one, the brutal strength rune etched like a brand into his shoulder, bent to her touch. Folded. Yielded.
She smiled.
Until her fingers shifted.
Just a breath too far.
She hovered above the base of his neck—just below his hairline.
Vargrún.
The rune was dormant.
But it felt her.
You reach for the sky with burning wings, emberling.
Her blood turned to ice.
How amusing. You seek to tame me? To tame madness?
Her hands paused, frozen above Kailorien’s skin. Mana crackled at her fingertips.
And yet, there is something...soothing...in your touch. A memory long lost. A thing not meant to be.
She couldn’t move, her body stiffening as though the voice had pulled her into a trance. With every word, his voice encroached. Grew louder. Closer.
Your Resh’Agar will break before your fingers find my leash.
Try, little ember. Try.
I will devour you and him BOTH.
Beneath her, Kailorien stirred.
“Auryn?” His voice was sleep-rough and thick with concern. “What is it? You’ve stopped.”
She blinked. The hold on her shattered. The voice vanished. Her hands dropped to his shoulders instead—safe, solid.
“…Nothing,” she whispered, keeping her voice even. “I think we should stop here tonight.”
But her head spun. Too much mana spent too fast. She swayed where she sat. He turned beneath her with slow, liquid grace, reaching for her waist.
“You’re unsteady,” he frowned. “Are you—”
“I’m alright,” she cut in. “Just…dizzy. That’s all.”
He studied her. Silent. Not believing her, but unwilling to push.
She touched his chest, palm flat over the slow rise and fall of his breath. “Do you…ever hear it?” she asked. “The voice? Vargrún’s?”
His eyes went distant, then narrowed. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Perhaps not. It’s been a part of me so long, I can’t always tell where my thoughts end and…his begin.”
She looked down at him, heart aching. “He spoke to me.”
His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her to lie atop him. She sank into him, cheek on his chest, letting his body heat melt away her trepidation.
“What did he say?” he asked.
Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to repeat the words.
“Many things. A blur, really. It was hard to make out,” she lied.
He stroked her back in slow, even circles. “If he speaks again—tell me.”
She nodded, knowing she might not.
Not yet.
Not until she understood it herself.
“Kailorien…”
“Hmm?”
“What…are we to each other?”
He made a sound of mild amusement. “I’ve known you for decades, sweet one, and somehow you still catch me off guard too often with your questions.”
She made circles over Ansuz with her index finger. “I just…worry, at times.”
“You worry always,” he corrected, chuckling when she pinched him. “Forgive me, ask again, and I’ll do my best to answer.”
She hesitated now, but forged ahead. “Last week, the Council spoke of the Gliders and diplomatic relations with them. They spoke of Vessar and other words to label relationships between two people. The Matriarch has petitioned for Vessar with you for her daughter.”
“She does every decade or so,” he sighed. The topic wasn’t of interest to him, not now, and not when the Council brought it up. “Krystopolis always turns her down. Politely. Usually with plentiful supplies of Lustrals, tinctures, runework, and other luxuries.”
“You’ve never been interested in any of the candidates?”
He hummed. “Are you so eager to give me away?”
Her hand paused. “I do not own you. I simply adore you. If you chose to—” she stumbled over her words, pushing past the tightness in her chest, “to be with another physically, I would not block your way. As long as you come back to me and lay with me as you are now. Make love to me as you always do.” Her voice softened.
Lowered. “And breathe for me. And touch me in passing. Kiss me…”
“That’s a long list of demands, starlight,” he teased. “With so many duties, I have no time to look elsewhere.”
Her finger started circling his runes again.
“I’ve never seen a Glider up close,” she murmured. “When they attacked at Stonewake, everything was a blur. Just wings and explosions. But…are Glider females tall? Strong?”
He scratched his chin. “It depends on the bloodline. Glider females are the warrior caste, and size and purity determines their place in society.”
“So you’ve rejected them, but they continue to petition?”
“For Vessar?” he raised a brow.
“Or Ketraan.”
“Ketraan is for those who’ve known each other for years and have formed a bond. How could I wear the Thread of someone I’ve never met?”
“Then…is that what we are?” Auryn reached up and tugged at the cluster of hair hidden close to his nape. The hairs were white, not black like the rest. Traces of the ribbon she'd Woven into his hair nearly half a century past. “Isn’t this…a Thread?”
He turned his hypnotic blue gaze to her. “If that’s what you wish, but my feelings for you reach much deeper than Ketraan.”
“That’s why I asked. Because the word we use…love…it isn’t used lightly in Elendria. It doesn’t even exist here in Krystopolis where children are Bred and there are no bonds between anyone.” She took a breath. “And Vessar…”
“Vessar implies the agreement to raise a child,” he reminded her. Carefully.
They fell silent for a moment, looking into each other’s eyes. When he next spoke, Auryn already knew what he was going to say.
“Is that what you want? A child with me?”
She tried to imagine it. A small little person with silver eyes and black hair. The thought hurt in a place she didn’t expect. She couldn’t answer him. Not yet.
“Auryn,” he sighed. “As the Resh’Agar I am—” he paused. “Because of my Runesgram, my seed cannot quicken in a woman’s womb.”
“Like the Reskala?”
He nodded. “I was forged to protect, not to create.” He cupped her jaw. “Even if I could, you’re so small and delicate, love. And until we understand more about your Flares, I wouldn’t risk it.”
Her hand covered his. “Would you want it? If we could?”
He was silent a long moment. Then his hand trailed down, settling on her belly. The azure of his eyes brightened to aquamarine, and when he looked at her again, her heart squeezed once again.
“Yes,” he said. “With you. Only with you.”
Auryn couldn’t understand why, but her eyes filled with tears. A strange new sorrow suddenly hung suspended between them, and they leaned into each other, both wanting to sweep it away with something more certain, something more familiar.
He kissed her temple. Then her brow. Then lower, lingering at the corner of her mouth until she turned into him, lips meeting his.
The kiss was soft. Then deeper. Then hungrier.
His hands roamed her back as hers found his shoulders, slipping beneath his arms, greedy for warmth and grounding.
He rolled them until she lay beneath him, framed in moonlight and shadows, her breath catching as he kissed the line of her throat.
Her fingers threaded into his hair, tugging carefully on his unbound onyx waves.
“Breathe for me?”
He did.
Her Silari’s breath moved through her like a tide, slow and warm, anchoring her soul to his as mana wove between their bodies.
Her dizziness abated, replaced with the heat of something deeper, something urgent and needful.
Her hands slid across his back, fingers brushing the runes she’d just soothed, and he groaned as they flared in response, hips pressing into hers.
He lifted her nightshift and she arched into him, welcoming.
Their mouths never parted. Their hands never stilled.
They fell back into the familiar ocean of their adoration, moving with its tides, with the kind of patience that burned hotter than haste.
He worshiped every inch of her with touch, with breath, with the subtle glow of magic flowing between them, and she marveled at the beauty of his runes when they glowed white instead of red or azure.
White. The color of the Sokar. The color of her love.
And as her head tipped back, lost in the depth of him, a voice rumbled through her mind like the growling of a coiled beast.
What you call love is madness wrapped in the illusion of choice.
I will show you what such delusion can cost.
But she did not flinch. Did not stop. Did not fear a thing.
Because Kailorien’s heart beat beneath her ribs. His hands were her tether, his breath her anchor in all things.
And she would always choose this madness.
Again and again.
No matter the cost.