Chapter 11 #2
The pain in my chest is settling into something that's less a crack and more a presence, like a note held too long, like a door that's been pushed open and now requires active effort to close. My absorption reaches toward it instinctively and I pull it back. "Is it supposed to hurt this much?"
"Partial bonds are unstable. They're not meant to hold indefinitely." Another pause, longer. "The pain is from the incompletion."
I pull back from him. He lets me, which is the right call, and I put three feet between us and stand up straight on legs that have mostly decided to cooperate again.
The bond-presence in my chest doesn't diminish with the distance.
If anything, the three feet make it ache more, a low persistent pull that runs from my sternum toward him like something with direction.
This is the part I don't say out loud.
"You need to tell me what a partial bond means for you," I say instead. "Practically. What it does."
Something crosses his face. "I can feel your emotions through it."
"Right now?"
"Right now." His jaw is tight. "I'm working on limiting it."
"What can you feel?"
He's quiet for a second. "Exhaustion. Pain. Something you're not saying."
"I'm always not saying something."
"This is specific." His eyes are on me in a way that's harder to bear than the bond-ache. "You already know what this means. You're scared of what you know."
My chest tightens. Not the bond. The rest of me. "Stop reading me through it."
"I'm not doing it on purpose."
"Then get better at the shielding."
He almost smiles. Not quite. "Yes," he says, and I hear the effort it costs him to keep his voice even.
"I'll add it to the list." He turns and looks at the treeline, the cleared sky, the empty grounds.
His hands are at his sides now, the death magic fully recalled.
"We need to report this. The wraith numbers, the ward failure, the timing. "
"The bond," I say.
He doesn't respond to that immediately. "The wraith numbers and the ward failure," he repeats. "The rest requires more careful handling."
"You're not going to tell anyone about the partial bond."
"I'm going to tell the appropriate people through the appropriate channels when I've had time to understand what we're dealing with." His voice is flat again, the classroom voice, the one that doesn't give anything away. "Until then, you don't discuss it."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good."
We stand on the empty grounds with the bond humming between us and the sky finally going dark overhead, the real kind of dark that follows actual sunset rather than wraith-driven atmospheric collapse.
My absorption is still running quiet, still sated in that way that feels wrong because it shouldn't be sated from another person's magic, it should be running neutral, it should be mine and only mine.
"Does it hurt you?" I ask. "The partial bond."
He doesn't answer fast enough, which is an answer. "I'm managing it."
"That's not what I asked."
"Angelic." He says my name in the tone that means he's done with this line of conversation. Not cruel, just closed, the wall going back up brick by brick in real time. "Go check on your friend. Get off the grounds. Don't come out here alone again until the ward situation is assessed."
"You need to be checked for overextension," I say. "The amplification pulled more from you than a normal fight would. Your magic is running thinner than it should be."
"I'm aware of my own reserves."
"I pulled from them. I'm the one who knows how far they went.
" I take a step toward him. He doesn't move back, which costs him something, I can see it in the set of his shoulders.
"You need rest and you need to eat something with caloric density in the next hour or your magic is going to bottom out before morning. "
A beat. Then: "Is that what you do? After you've been drained?"
"That's what works," I say. "Your body can't regenerate magical reserves if it doesn't have physical resources to draw on. Basic biology."
"I know the biology."
"Then act on it." I hold his gaze for a moment and the partial bond does something I'm going to categorize as irrelevant, a warmth, a pull, the door-pushed-open sensation intensifying briefly before I put a wall up on my end and it levels out.
"I'm going to check on Sage. You're going to eat something and sleep. "
He looks at me with the expression he gets when I've done something he didn't predict. He gets it more often than he'd like, probably. "You're giving me orders."
"I'm giving you medical advice. You can choose to ignore it. But you won't."
"Why won't I?"
"Because you're too practical to dismiss good information just because you don't like the source.
" I pick up my belt pouch from where it fell during the fight and sling it back across my hip.
"And because the bond is a two-way connection, which means if you bottom out tonight I'll feel it, and I'd like to sleep without that particular experience. "
Something shifts in him. Fast. Gone before I can name it. "You'll feel it if I bottom out."
"Through the bond. Yes. Presumably." I keep my voice practical. "So eat something. For entirely selfish reasons."
He's quiet for a moment. Then he says, "The amplification. What you did with my magic. Has that ever happened before?"
"Not like that." I don't elaborate. He knows what my absorption does. He's seen it documented in enough reports to fill a filing cabinet. "The combination of contact and the shared draw under that kind of pressure made it different. More controlled than usual."
"More controlled," he repeats, and something about the way he says it makes me wonder what he felt on his end when the amplification hit, what it was like to have his own power come back at him doubled and directed.
"You should write it up," I say. "For whatever report you're filing. The amplification mechanics might be relevant to the ward failure analysis."
"I intend to."
"Good." I start walking toward the east dormitory. My legs are steadier now, the exhaustion more manageable with something to move toward. The bond-ache follows me as I go, distance feeding it, the pull running between my chest and the man standing behind me on the empty grounds.
I don't look back. I know he's still standing there. I know it the same way I know my own heartbeat, without checking, without needing confirmation.
That's new. That's the part I won't be putting in any report.
Inside the east dormitory, Sage is sitting up in bed with a mug of tea and a borrowed blanket and Malik Stone in the chair beside her, and she takes one look at my face when I walk through the door and says, "What happened to you?"
"Wraith attack. Grounds are clear now." I drop onto the end of her bed and press the heels of my hands against my eyes. "How are you feeling?"
"Better than you, apparently." She sets down her mug. "Wraith attack. Plural?"
"Plural and coordinated." Malik's head comes up at that. "They came in waves. Took out all the perimeter wards before the first one showed up."
"Ashford?" Malik asks.
"Was already on the grounds." I drop my hands. "We handled it."
Sage is looking at me with an attention she usually reserves for texts she's halfway through decoding. "You handled it."
"We handled it."
"Together."
"Yes, Sage. Together. That's what the word means."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "And?"
"And the wraiths are gone and the grounds are clear and you need to finish your tea." I pull the blanket up higher across her feet. "Sleep. Both of you. I'll take first watch."
Malik is still watching me. He's quiet, the way he's always quiet, but his eyes are doing the same careful cataloguing that Sage's are doing, and I don't have the energy to perform normalcy for both of them right now.
"I'm fine," I say, before either of them can ask again. "I'm tired and I need ten minutes and then I'm fine."
Sage puts her hand over mine on the blanket. Her fingers are warm now, fully warm, nothing like the cold skin from earlier this morning. "Okay," she says. She doesn't push.
That's why she's my safe space. She knows when to stop.
I sit with them until Sage's eyes close and Malik's breathing evens out in the chair, and then I sit with the silence for a while longer, my hand still under Sage's, the bond-presence in my chest running its low persistent warmth like a fire that has no intention of going out.
Somewhere across the academy, Ryder Ashford is probably filing a report, or building his mental shields higher, or eating whatever I told him to eat because he's too practical to ignore good advice even when it irritates him to take it.
I feel none of that specifically. Just the warmth.
Just the pull. Just the awareness of a door that's been opened between two people who built very careful walls and now have to figure out what that means.
I close my eyes and stay very still and don't answer the question.
Not tonight.