Chapter 6 Zephyra
SIX
ZEPHYRA
The words snag in my mind. “You think you could be? Strong enough?”
He holds my gaze. “I think power evolves. I think there are ways to become more than what you started as. And I think the Arbiter’s been the gods’ executioner for too long.”
The objections line up in my mind—belief isn’t evidence, hope isn’t strategy, we’re two people against a divine creature that’s never been defeated.
None of them make it past my teeth.
“The magic’s building again.” I turn back to the path, breaking the intensity of the moment.
He doesn’t argue. Falls into step beside me, our arms brushing with every few strides. I could create more distance. Move faster, force him to trail behind.
We travel in silence for a while. The ley-roads twist and branch around us, crystalline walls pulsing with corrupt blue light.
I navigate by instinct and Auric Veil, choosing paths that won’t collapse under our feet or discharge magical energy without warning.
Tyr follows my lead, trusting my sight the way I’m starting to trust his violence.
The realization sits heavily in my mind. I’ve spent years avoiding exactly this—relying on anyone, letting anyone rely on me. Dependencies are vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities get you killed.
But here I am, leading a dragon through corrupted ley-roads, and he’s following without question. Here I am, trusting.
Twice, I guide us around sections where the magic’s built to dangerous levels—pockets of energy that would’ve fried us both if we’d walked through them.
Once, he catches my arm and pulls me back from a floor section that collapses into a void three seconds later.
No warning from my sight—the collapse was too sudden, too random. His instincts saved us.
“How did you know?” I stare at the gap in the floor, at the darkness yawning beneath where I would’ve been standing.
“Felt wrong.” He releases my arm, but his fingers linger for a moment before pulling away. “Can’t explain it better than that.”
I don’t press. Some survival instincts can’t be articulated. They exist below language, in the animal parts of our brains that recognize danger before our conscious minds catch up.
An hour passes. Then another. The ley-roads seem endless, paths looping and reconnecting in patterns that defy normal geography.
My eyes ache from reading the magic. My bones feel brittle from the divine pressure bearing down.
Even my breath’s coming harder, lungs struggling against air that’s thick with the Arbiter’s magic.
“There.” Tyr’s voice breaks my concentration. His hand touches my arm—brief, deliberate contact that sends heat racing through my veins despite my efforts to ignore it. “Alcove ahead. Left wall.”
I follow his gesture. He’s right—there’s a wider section where the ley-road walls curve outward, creating a sheltered space. Big enough for two people, barely. No corruption that I can sense. A pocket of relative safety in this frozen hell.
“Good eye.”
“You’re exhausted.” His voice carries no judgment, just certainty. “The Auric Veil takes a toll.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He moves toward the alcove, not waiting for my agreement. “We rest here. Thirty minutes.”
Every instinct bristles at taking orders. I’ve been navigating these kinds of dangers since before he decided to make me his project.
Instead, I follow him into the alcove.
The space is cramped. We have to sit close—shoulders touching, legs aligned. The blue light from the ley-road walls casts strange shadows across his features, highlighting the sharp planes of his face.
His body radiates heat against mine. Hotter than it should be, given the cold pressing in from every direction. Dragon blood, probably. Internal fire that keeps him burning even when the world tries to freeze him out.
I shouldn’t notice.
But I notice. I catalog. I’m aware.
And I can’t make myself stop.
“You should sleep.” His voice is quieter here, intimate in the enclosed space.
“Someone needs to watch.”
“I’ll watch.”
“You’re still healing.”
“I’ll watch.” He shifts slightly, and suddenly his body’s positioned between me and the alcove’s entrance. Blocking any threat that might approach.
“Twenty minutes,” I hear myself say. “Then we switch.”
“Thirty.”
“Twenty.”
A ghost of amusement flickers in his expression. “Twenty-five. Final offer.”
My mouth opens to protest. Nothing comes out. The Auric Veil’s drained more from me than I want to admit, and the divine pressure in these roads is wearing me down with every passing hour.
“Fine.” I let my eyes close, let my head rest against the crystalline wall behind me. The cold seeps through my hair, my scalp. I should mind. Don’t have the energy.
“Zephyra.”
His voice pulls me back from the edge of sleep. I open my eyes to find him watching me with an expression I can’t quite read—something between vigilance and something else entirely.
“Sleep.” The word comes out low, almost careful. Like a man who doesn’t give comfort often and isn’t certain he’s doing it right. “I’ve got the watch.”
I close my eyes.
His presence stays solid. His breathing stays steady in my ears. And despite everything—despite the divine magic pressing down, despite the Arbiter hunting us, despite the odds stacked so high they block out the sky—I find myself drifting into rest.
Letting a predator guard my sleep.
When I wake, he’s exactly where I left him. Watching the ley-roads.
“Twenty-five minutes.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks. “Time’s up.”
I stretch, feeling the ache in my muscles, the lingering fatigue in my bones. “Any trouble?”
“A discharge in the eastern branch. Magic built and released while you slept. Would’ve killed us if we’d taken that path.”
“Good thing we didn’t.”
He turns to look at me then, and the expression on his face makes my breath catch. Not soft—nothing about him is soft. But there’s recognition in his eyes that wasn’t there before.
“Good thing you knew the safe path.” He offers me a hand. “Your sight saved us. Again.”
I take his hand. Let him pull me to my feet. The contact lasts a moment longer than necessary—his fingers steady against mine, his grip sure and certain.
When I step back, his hand stays extended for a half-second. Like he didn’t want to let go.
I pretend I don’t notice. He pretends he didn’t do it.
We move back onto the ley-roads, and this time, when he positions himself at my side, I don’t bother with excuses.
I let him stay there.
The paths stretch ahead, blue and cold and dangerous. The Arbiter’s influence presses down from above, searching for us in the corrupted magic.
I felt less hunted than I had in years.