Chapter 13 Kess
Kess
I wake to the smell of steel and sex, my cheek pressed against rough canvas and my whole body aching like I've been thrown down a mountainside.
For a moment I don't know where I am. Stone floor beneath me—no, a training mat. Weapons racked on the walls, gleaming dully in the pale morning light that filters through high windows. The armory. Right.
I'm alone. The mat beside me still holds the impression of his body, the fabric creased where he lay, but the warmth is long gone.
My thighs are bruised, my hips feel like someone took a hammer to them, and the bite on my shoulder throbs in time with my heartbeat.
The weapon rack we fucked against is still askew, two swords and a spear lying on the floor where they fell, and looking at it brings back a flash of sense-memory so vivid I have to close my eyes—his hands lifting me, the cold metal at my back, the brutal stretch of him forcing his way inside.
But something's wrong.
The light through the windows—it's only been one night. I can tell by the angle, by the particular quality of early morning sun I've learned to recognize in my weeks here, the way it paints gold stripes across the eastern wall.
One night.
My last heat lasted four days, waves of fever and need crashing over me until I lost track of where I ended and he began.
Before that—the blackout heats I spent alone in the wilderness—three or four days each, as far as I could tell from the gaps in my memory, from waking bloody and sore in unfamiliar clearings.
This one hit like a wildfire and burned out just as fast.
I press my hand to my chest, feeling for the fever that should still be raging, the desperate need that should be clawing at my insides.
Nothing. Just the normal warmth of my own body, the lingering satisfaction humming through my blood like an echo of pleasure.
The desperate, clawing need that drove me to lock myself in the armory—gone, vanished, like a storm that blew through and left only wreckage behind.
That's not how heats work. They don't just... stop.
I think about the way it came on—sudden, violent, no warning, my body betraying me mid-strike.
The way it peaked so fast I could barely think, could barely do anything but fight him and fuck him and bite chunks from his throat.
The way it's gone now, completely, like someone snuffed out a candle between their fingers.
A flash heat. I've heard whispers about them—rare, unpredictable, tied to magic or curses or bonds gone wrong. But I've never experienced one, never heard of anyone experiencing one outside of old stories told around winter fires.
What the hell is happening to me?
The ruined door scrapes against stone, and I grab for the nearest weapon—a practice sword, instinct overriding thought—before I register who's stepping through the splintered frame.
Rhystan.
He's carrying a tray laden with water, bread, dried meat, a bowl of something that steams gently in the cool morning air.
His shirt is fresh—he must have gone back to his chambers at some point—but there are still scratches visible on his forearms, angry red lines that I remember making with my nails while he drove into me against the weapon rack.
He stops when he sees me sitting up, sword in hand, and something flickers across his face that might be relief or might be wariness.
"It's just me." His voice is rough, careful in a way that makes me want to snap at him. "I brought food."
I lower the sword but don't let go of it. "You left."
"You were sleeping." He sets the tray down on a weapons crate, his movements deliberate and slow, like he's trying not to spook a wild animal. "I didn't want to wake you. Wasn't sure if you'd want me here when you woke up."
There's a question buried in that statement, something vulnerable underneath the careful neutrality. I'm not sure how to answer it, not sure what I want the answer to be.
"The heat's gone," I say instead.
His jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble. "I noticed."
"That's not normal."
"No." He's watching me with those golden eyes, and I can see the worry he's trying to hide beneath the mask of calm, the fear he doesn't want me to see. "It's not."
Silence stretches between us, heavy with everything we're not saying. The ruined door hangs crooked on one hinge, a testament to what he did to get to me. Somewhere in the castle, a bell chimes the hour.
"Do you know what's happening?" I ask. "To me?"
He's quiet for a long moment, long enough that I think he's not going to answer, that he's going to deflect or change the subject or find some way to avoid the truth.
"I have theories," he says finally. "Nothing certain."
"Tell me."
"Kess—"
"Tell me."
His hand comes up to rub the back of his neck—a strangely human gesture from someone so inhuman, and it makes something twist in my chest to see it.
"Flash heats are rare. They happen sometimes with new bonds, when the connection is still settling.
Or when..." He stops, and I watch him weigh his words, watch him decide how much truth to give me.
"When what?"
"When something is changing." He meets my eyes, and there's a rawness there I wasn't expecting. "In one or both partners."
The words hang in the air between us like smoke. I think about the scars on my hips, the way they've been hardening. The ache in my nail beds that's been getting worse. The speed that's been building in my limbs for weeks, the reflexes that surprise even me.
He knows. He has to know.
But he's not saying it, not naming the thing that's happening to me. And I'm not ready to ask, not ready to hear him confirm what I've been suspecting.
"Eat something," he says quietly, and the gentleness in his voice makes me want to throw the practice sword at his head. "You need to recover your strength."
"From one night?"
"From whatever that was." He gestures at the wrecked weapon rack, at the scattered blades and the gouges in the stone floor. "I've never... heats aren't usually like that. Not that intense. Not that fast."
I reach for the water and drink deeply, buying myself time to think, to push down the complicated tangle of feelings his concern stirs up. He watches me, that worried crease still between his brows, and I hate how much I want to smooth it away with my fingers.
"I should get back to my chambers," I say when the cup is empty. "Clean up."
"I'll have Bessa draw you a bath."
"I can manage."
"I know you can." Something flickers across his face—frustration, maybe, or hurt, or some combination of both. "I'm offering anyway."
I don't know what to do with his gentleness, don't know where to put it inside myself.
It's easier when he's the monster, when I can hate him cleanly, when the line between us is sharp and clear.
This careful concern makes everything complicated, blurs the edges I've been trying so hard to maintain.
"Fine," I say. "Thank you."
He nods once, then turns to go, and I watch the way his shoulders move beneath his fresh shirt, the tension he carries in every line of his body. He pauses at the ruined doorway, one hand on the splintered frame.
"Kess."
"What?"
"If something's wrong—if something's changing—you can tell me." His back is still to me, shoulders tense, and I can hear the effort it takes him to say the words. "I'd rather know than wonder."
The irony isn't lost on me. He's asking me to share secrets while keeping his own, asking for honesty he's not willing to give.
"Same goes for you," I say.
He doesn't respond. Just walks out through the splintered frame, his footsteps fading down the corridor until I can't hear them anymore.
I wait until the silence settles around me. Then I press my hand to my hip, feeling the hardened scars through my torn leathers, the texture that shouldn't be there.
He's hiding something.
So am I.
I gather my shredded clothes and wrap myself in my torn training jacket as best I can, though it barely covers anything. I look like I lost a fight with a wild animal, which I suppose I did, in a way.
The corridors are mostly empty this early, the castle still waking around me. I pass a kitchen boy carrying a basket of bread who takes one look at me and flattens himself against the wall, eyes averted, cheeks flushing red. Smart boy.
My chambers are exactly as I left them yesterday morning—sheets rumpled, water basin full, breakfast tray waiting outside the door.
I eat mechanically while I wait for the bath to be ready, standing at the window and watching the castle come alive below me, my mind churning through everything I don't understand.
When Bessa comes to tell me the water's hot, I thank her and head down the corridor to the bathing chamber, grateful for her perpetual disinterest in conversation.
The examination can wait until after I'm clean.
Steam rises from the water's surface as I lower myself in, and the heat soaks into my abused muscles like a blessing, drawing out the tension knot by knot. For a few minutes I just float, letting the warmth unknot my shoulders and ease the ache in my hips, not thinking about anything at all.
Then I hold my hands up to the light filtering through the narrow window.
There.
Under the beds of my nails, barely visible unless you're searching for it—a faint purple tint, like someone took a bruise and spread it thin beneath the keratin.
My stomach drops even though I knew this was coming, even though I read about it in the archives and pieced it together from fragments and burned pages.
Contamination from alpha blood entering through wounds instead of being swallowed clean. The signs were always the same in every text I found.
Purple fingernails. Red ring around the pupils. Skin hardening where the blood entered.
Then death.
Except I'm not dead.