Chapter 19
Kane
The wind still lived in my hair when I walked through the front door. Flying with Lyssara was the only time the ache of distance from Tess and Mason went quiet. Up there, with cold air in my teeth and the hum of her magic vibrating through our new bond.
She banked when I leaned, dove when I asked, and when I didn't ask for anything at all, she just flew—wide, lazy circles over the mountains until my jaw unclenched and my hands stopped gripping the harness as though I expected it to vanish.
"You held on less today," she murmured through the bond.
"Still held on."
"Progress, Rider."
I'd stopped correcting her on that. There was no winning an argument with a creature who'd been alive since before my bloodline had a name.
The residence was quiet when I stepped inside.
I set down my flight harness by the door and rolled my shoulders.
My body felt good. Strong in a way I was still getting used to—the bond with Lyssara had deepened my magical reserves, and it was bleeding into the physical.
Muscles that used to ache after a long flight barely registered the strain now.
I heard Kali in the kitchen. The soft clink of a glass, the creak of a cabinet. Saturday afternoon—she'd probably been studying. Mason would be—
I shut that thought down before it landed.
"Kane."
Lyssara's voice. Gentle. Alert.
I felt it a half-second later—the hallway went cold, my father's mood preceding him around the corner.
Silvius appeared at the far end of the corridor. Study door open behind him. He was still dressed formally—he'd been working, or meeting with someone, which meant whatever was eating at him had been building for hours.
His eyes found me and his jaw tightened.
"Where have you been?"
"Flying." I kept my voice level. "Training with Lyssara."
"Training." Contempt in every syllable. His gaze dropped to the harness by the door, then back to me. Measuring what I'd become against what he could still control. "You spend a great deal of time with that dragon."
"She's my bonded. That's the point."
I shouldn't have said it. I knew it even as the words left my mouth—not because it was wrong, but because it was the kind of steady, unbothered truth that made him violent. My composure. My calm. The fact that I had something now that existed entirely outside his reach.
"That dragon," he said, stepping closer, "is a tool. One the Guild assigned to you. You'd do well to remember the difference between a weapon and a birthright."
"I know the difference."
"Do you." Not a question. His hand was already moving.
The backhand caught me across the jaw and snapped my head sideways. I tasted copper. My shoulder hit the wall and I registered—distantly, analytically, the way I registered everything—that he'd put real force behind it. More than usual.
It should have hurt more than it did.
The thought was clinical. That impact should have sent pain radiating through my cheekbone, maybe cracked something. Instead, the ache was dull. Present, but manageable. The dragon bond—Lyssara's arcane amplification wasn't just magical. It had reshaped me, strengthened what was already there.
Silvius noticed. I saw it in his eyes—a flicker of confusion, then fury, because the hit hadn't landed the way he wanted.
"Something to say?" I asked. Quiet. Level.
His fist connected with my ribs. Harder.
I didn't double over. My body took the blow without breaking. The force spread through me.
His breathing changed. He hit me again—kidney, precise—and this time I let my knees buckle because I'd learned a long time ago that showing pain was the fastest way to make it stop. Give him what he wanted. Let him feel powerful. End it.
But my body wasn't cooperating the way it used to. The dragon bond had made me harder to hurt, and we both knew it.
A sound from the kitchen doorway.
Kali.
She stood at the edge of the hall, glass of water in her hand. Dark eyes wide. Kali had seen worse than this in the ring. She wore recognition. Understanding. The look of someone who'd thought she'd escaped one kind of house and was realizing she hadn't.
Silvius straightened. For a moment—just a moment—awareness crossed his face. He used to be meticulous about this. Never where anyone could see. Never where it could become a story someone told. The fact that Kali was standing there, witnessing, and he hadn't even checked the hallway first—
He was slipping. Whatever was grinding him down was grinding hard.
His lip curled. He looked at me—on one knee, performing the damage he'd wanted to inflict—and raw ugliness moved behind his eyes.
"They think they can just—" He cut himself off. His hand flexed at his side. When he spoke again, his voice was low, almost to himself. "As if I haven't held that line for decades. As if I'd simply hand over—"
He stopped. His jaw worked. Then he turned and walked back into his study. The door closed with a precise click that was somehow worse than a slam.
I stayed down for three seconds. Counting. Making sure.
Then I stood up.
Kali hadn't moved. The glass of water was steady in her hand—she'd learned stillness in the ring, and it never left her. But her mouth was pressed into a hard line, and her eyes tracked the study door.
"Upstairs," I said quietly.
She turned without a word and moved toward the staircase. I followed.
She led us to my bedroom without ceremony and went straight to the edge of the bed.
I crossed to the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. Beneath a folded stack of training shirts was the small cedar box where I kept the potions. I set the box on top of the dresser and flipped the latch.
"Sit properly," Kali said. "You're swaying."
I wasn't, but I sat on the stool by my desk anyway. She watched me measure out a careful dose and take it. It worked through my ribs and jaw, not healing exactly, but accelerating what was already happening.
She looked at the cedar box. "Where do you even get those?"
"Contact in the fae quarter."
"Uh-huh." She tilted her head. "How much?"
"More than you want to know."
"I want a few."
I almost laughed. It came out as an exhale. "What would you possibly need them for?"
"Emergencies."
"Kali."
"What? You have a whole box."
"I have a whole box because—" I stopped. Looked at her. Fifteen years old, arms crossed, demanding fae potions from her brother's best friend as though she were negotiating for candy. "Because I live here."
"Exactly. And I live here too."
"You're not getting a potions."
"One."
"No."
"Half of one."
I shook my head, and my chest loosened for the first time in weeks. This. This easy back-and-forth, the edge of humor, her needling me because she could—this wasn't strained. It wasn't careful. It wasn't the slow, painful thing every interaction with Mason had become since the Guild Trial.
I didn't have to watch my words with her. I didn't have to feel him deciding, again, that I was someone he used to know.
I closed the cedar box and set it back in the drawer. "If you ever actually need one, you come find me. Don't stockpile."
"Deal." She paused. "So that's a no on the half."
"That's a no on the half."
She leaned back on her hands, watching me the way she watched everything.
"It's fine," I said.
"I didn't ask if it was fine."
Fair.
She waited. Kali was good at waiting. She'd spent ten years in a cage learning that patience was the only weapon no one could confiscate.
"You should stay in your room when he's—"
"When he's what? Losing it?" She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. I'll just hide. That's worked great historically."
The sarcasm was earned. I didn't push it.
We sat in silence for a moment. The tincture worked its way through me—warmth chasing the ache, not erasing it. Nothing erased it. You just got better at holding it alongside everything else.
"So," I said. Kept my voice easy. "How's your brother doing?"
Kali's expression shifted. Not much—she was too controlled for much—but the hard line of her mouth softened, and her eyes narrowed slightly, the way they did when she was turning something over.
"He's stressed." She paused. "He's up to something.
I don't know what. He disappears a lot. Training, he says, and I know some of it is, but—" She shrugged.
"Not all of it. He's got something eating at him and he's not telling me what. "
"He tell you anything?"
"He tells me he's fine. Which is how I know he isn't."
That landed. I let it.
"He's okay, though?"
"He'd be better if his best friend would talk to him." She said it flat and direct. Fifteen years old and utterly out of patience with the two of us. "But sure, let's keep doing this thing where you both pretend you don't care and I just stand here watching. It's super fun."
I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say that wouldn't be a lie or a confession, and I wasn't ready for either.
Kali watched me not answer. She sighed.
"Boys," she muttered.
She pushed off the bed, collected her glass of water from where she'd set it on my desk, and walked out. Her footsteps went three doors down the hall, and her bedroom door closed with a quiet, pointed click.
I sat alone in my room. The potion was warm in my blood, the ache fading to background noise.
Lyssara's voice drifted through the bond. "You carry so much, my Rider."
Distant, curled in her den in the mountain, but present. Always present. Her warmth pressed against the inside of my chest.
I didn't answer her. She didn't need me to.
The mutter. My father's mutter.
As if I haven't held that line for decades. As if I'd simply hand over—
Hand over what? And to whom?
I turned it over. He'd sounded squeezed. Not like a man exercising authority—like a man running out of room. Whatever line he'd been holding for decades, someone was pushing him past it. And my father didn't get pushed. He'd built his entire life on being the one who pushed others.
They. Who were they?
I stood up. The stool scraped softly against the wood floor.