Chapter 27 Malrik #2
I let my foot trace along Kaia’s calf. Slow. Deliberate. Unmistakable now.
Her breath catches — a soft hitch that she covers by shifting position.
At the same moment, I tap my other foot lightly against Finn’s leg. Once. Twice. I’m here. I’m not forgetting you.
He makes a sound low in his throat. Barely audible. Quickly swallowed.
His hand moves under the water.
Finds Kaia’s.
I watch their fingers intertwine beneath the surface. Watch Finn’s whole body shudder at the contact — such a small thing, but for him it might as well be a declaration.
Kaia squeezes his hand. Doesn’t let go.
Aspen’s smile has become a full grin.
I’ve known him for months. He doesn’t grin. He offers controlled almost-smiles. Careful expressions of mild amusement.
This is different. This is a real grin, spreading across his face like he can’t contain it.
Torric notices. Follows his brother’s gaze. Studies me, then Finn, then Kaia. Studies the way we’re positioned — closer than we were. Angled toward each other.
“Oh,” he says.
Aspen makes a sound that’s definitely a laugh, quickly smothered.
“Oh,” Torric repeats, understanding dawning.
He starts grinning too.
Kieran registers the shift.
His expression shutters — that careful blankness he uses when he’s feeling something he doesn’t want to show. His gold eyes move from Kaia to Finn to me, tracking the invisible lines between us.
Something flickers in his gaze. Not jealousy, exactly. Something else. More complicated.
Loved her since she was six years old centuries ago.
And he’s watching her choose someone else. Again.
But he doesn’t reach. Doesn’t push. Just withdraws a little further, that patient ache settling deeper into his features.
I see all of it.
I don’t know how to fix it.
The Eds have multiplied.
They’re up to Darian’s chest now — a thick ring of small dark shapes, bobbing and clustering and apparently having the time of their lives.
“No,” Darian says. “No no no—”
More arrive. They float across the water from all directions, converging on him like he’s the most interesting thing they’ve encountered in centuries.
“What the fuck,” Torric says, staring.
“Language,” Aspen murmurs, but he’s still grinning.
“The shadows are swarming him and you’re worried about my language?”
The Eds pile higher. Shoulders now. Creeping toward his neck.
“I can’t— They won’t— Why is this happening—”
Carl tries to join the swarm from the left. Steve tries to intercept him. They collide, tangle, and crash into the water with a splash that sends ripples across the entire pool.
Patricia’s notebook is strobing now. Flickering so fast it’s practically a light show.
Bob observes the chaos with the expression of a general watching his troops descend into anarchy.
“Should we help him?” Kaia asks, but she’s laughing too hard to be serious.
“I don’t know how,” Finn admits. “This is unprecedented. Historic. I’m witnessing shadow history.”
“I hate you,” Darian says, muffled by Eds. “I hate all of you.”
“That’s fair,” Finn says cheerfully.
Torric uses the chaos.
He stands — water streaming off his massive frame — and stretches like he’s been in the pool for hours instead of twenty minutes.
“I think it’s time to get out.”
“What?” Kaia looks up at him. “Why?”
“Because we’ve been in here a while.” His eyes flick to me. To Finn. To the way we’re arranged around Kaia like planets around a sun. “And some of us probably want some privacy.”
“Privacy for what?”
Aspen chokes on nothing.
Finn goes very still.
Torric just grins — wide and knowing and completely unsubtle. “Figure it out, Kaia.”
Aspen is already moving, following his brother toward the pool’s edge. “We should check on Callum anyway. Make sure he hasn’t done anything stupid.”
“I can check on Callum,” Kieran offers, but he’s already standing. His gold eyes find Kaia’s one last time — a long, soft look that says not tonight, but someday.
She meets his gaze. Something passes between them. Understanding, maybe. Or a promise.
Then he turns and follows Aspen out of the pool.
Torric reaches down and physically hauls Darian out of the water. The Eds come with him — clinging to his shoulders, his arms, his chest like a living cloak.
“They won’t let go,” Darian says miserably.
“They’ll let go eventually.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m choosing to believe it. Come on.”
Carl attempts to follow and trips over Steve. They both go down in a heap of shadowy limbs.
Finn watches the whole thing with obvious delight. “Ten out of ten. Perfect dismount. The judges are impressed.”
“Finn,” Darian hisses.
“What? I’m being supportive.”
Torric pauses near the pool’s edge, glancing down at Callum’s unconscious form. He’s still out cold, propped against the rocks where we left him.
“We should move him,” Kieran says quietly.
“I’ve got his legs,” Torric grunts.
Kieran takes his shoulders without argument. Between them, they lift Callum like he weighs nothing — which, compared to what they usually carry, he probably doesn’t.
“Berserker hall,” Aspen says. “There’s space to lay him down properly.”
The twins’ hall. Of course. Somewhere Callum can be monitored without being in the way.
Darian trails after them, still draped in Eds, looking like a man who has accepted his fate but resents it deeply.
Aspen pauses at the cavern’s edge. Looks back.
His eyes meet mine.
“Malrik,” he says. Just that. My name. But it’s loaded with meaning — approval, understanding, a hint of finally.
I nod once.
He smiles and disappears into the shadows.
“Don’t break anything,” Torric calls over his shoulder.
“That’s not—” I start.
“I’m talking to Finn.”
“Rude,” Finn says, but he’s grinning.
And then they’re gone.
All of them.
Just the three of us left.
The silence is deafening.
The motes drift lazily around us. The water laps gently at our skin. Bob has turned his back at the pool’s edge, posture rigid with forced nonchalance — though I suspect he’s monitoring through some shadow-sense I don’t fully understand.
Kaia looks at me. At Finn. At their hands still intertwined beneath the water. At my legs still tangled with theirs.
“Oh,” she breathes. “Oh.”
Finn’s laugh is shaky. “So.”
“So,” I agree.
“They, uh.” He swallows. “They weren’t subtle about leaving.”
“No.”
“Like, really not subtle.”
“No.”
Kaia’s blush has spread down her neck, across her shoulders. Her shadows are curling in slow, lazy spirals around the three of us — possessive and approving and completely uninterested in giving us space.
“I didn’t—” She stops. Starts again. “I wasn’t sure if—”
“Kaia.” I keep my voice steady. Certain. “We’re sure.”
Finn nods rapidly beside her. “So sure. Very sure. The surest.”
“That’s not a word.”
“It is now. I’m making it a word. For this moment. Because I’m—” He exhales shakily. “I’m really fucking sure, Trouble.”
She looks between us. The man she’s already chosen. The man who’s been waiting.
And the one who wants them both.
“Well,” she says, her voice steadier than I expected. “I guess we should stop pretending we came here to talk.”
Finn makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a prayer.
And I finally let myself reach for what I’ve wanted.
For both of what I’ve wanted.