POV: Rena Vale
Stone bites my knees as I skid across cracked marble, but I barely feel skin tear; all sensation funnels into the stillness of the man slumped against the wall.
“Kai!” My voice rips raw. “Kai—no—please—”
Blood threads from his hairline, sliding over his temple in a thin, dark line. Lashes rest against his cheek like he’s only sleeping—except his chest isn’t moving fast enough, his mouth is too slack, his color wrong. I catch his face between both hands that won’t stop shaking.
“Wake up,” I beg, breath hitching. “Please wake up… please, please—”
Fingers dig into his jacket, knuckles white. I fold down over him, ribs screaming, forehead pressed to his sternum like proximity can bargain with fate. Warmth radiates through leather; it isn’t enough. Tears fall, hot then cold as wind hits them. Every thought turns into apology.
“I’m sorry—this is my fault—I didn’t mean it—I lost it—Kai, please—”
Bootsteps pound behind me; a blur drops to my right. Auren. He plants himself on his knees, one arm wrapping around my shoulders and pulling me in as if he can brace both our bodies against the impact of what might be happening.
“Hey—hey,” he murmurs into my hair, voice hoarse, steady by force. His palm moves over my back in slow circles, trying to set a rhythm my lungs will obey. “He’ll be fine. He will. Breathe with me. In—hold—out.”
“I can’t,” I choke. “I can’t—what if—”
“He’s stubborn,” Auren says, attempting a laugh that breaks in the middle. “Refuses to die. It’s obnoxious. Keep breathing.”
Light still trembles under my skin, skittering in panicked bursts like trapped birds. I press it down, terrified of touching him with anything that could hurt. Fingers hover over his cheeks, then settle with feather weight. “Please,” I whisper into his slack heat. “Come back.”
Muscle twitches along Kai’s jaw. Barely. I freeze. My heart forgets where it was going, then slams forward again.
“Kai?” I breathe, the syllable a prayer I never learned but suddenly know by instinct. “Kai, I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m here.”
Another twitch. A slow inhale lifts his chest under my cheek. A sound ghosts his throat—rough, small, more scrape than voice.
“Rena…”
Everything inside me floods and empties at once.
“Don’t cry,” he manages, hoarse, each word dragged over gravel. Lids flutter. Storm-gray fights through fog, unfocused, then finding me.
Relief detonates so violently it turns into anger for a beat. Fist thuds his chest—gentle by any other measure, wild for me. “Don’t ever scare me like that again!”
He tries to smile and almost makes it. One corner lifts. “I’m—” cough “—harder to kill than that.”
“Not funny,” I snap, except it sounds like a sob wearing a costume. “Not remotely—”
“Agreed,” Auren mutters, exhaling so hard his shoulders drop two inches. He scrubs a hand down his face and leans back a fraction to give us space, eyes still tracking every twitch Kai makes.
Kai winces and tries to sit higher; I brace him, sliding an arm behind his shoulders. He’s heavy and hot and shaking, and I can’t tell if that last part is him or me. His fingers fumble for me, find my wrist, and hold like he believes in anchors.
“Look at me,” he whispers, breath ghosting my mouth. “You’re—” he swallows “—safe.”
A hysterical laugh snags on my tongue. “You’re bleeding, and you’re telling me I’m safe?”
“Yes,” he says simply, because he’s himself, and the word lands like a promise hammered into stone.
Guilt snakes up, hot and acidic. “I hit you.” The admission scrapes. “I said I’d control it and—and I threw you into a wall.”
“Technically,” Auren says, aiming for light and landing on gentle, “you threw everyone into a wall. He just had the poor judgment to be closest.”
“Not helpful,” I hiss without heat.
Kai’s thumb traces a stuttering line along the inside of my wrist. “Listen to me.” The command is softer than a plea. “You didn’t intend it. You’re training. You’ll learn. I’ve survived worse than a luminous girl who trusts me.”
“I don’t want you surviving me,” I whisper, forehead falling to his again. “I want you… whole.”
His breath tickles a damp strand of my hair. “I am.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Decorative.”
“Kai.”
He exhales a laugh that hurts him; I feel it against my chest. “Fine. Slightly less decorative.”
Auren shakes his head like he can torque reality back into something sensible. His hand finds the side of my shoulder again, squeezing once, then letting go. “We need ice. Bandages. Riven will have a fit if we don’t get you checked.”
“Riven can fit later,” Kai says, stubborn threaded through fondness. “Rena first.”
“I’m not hurt,” I start to insist—then flinch as the afterburn in my arms wakes, tight and sting-bright.
“Liar,” Auren says, not unkind. He nods at my hands. “You’re shaking so hard your bones are trying to leave.”
“Stay,” Kai murmurs, pulling me close with an effort that costs him. Both arms wrap around me—shaky, yes, but sure, sure, always sure. My face finds the hollow between his shoulder and his throat and fits there like it was made for this exact catastrophe. “I’m here,” he says, breath warm in my hair. “I’m here.”
“I almost—” The sentence breaks before I can finish it.
“You didn’t,” he answers, like his voice can stand between me and any history I might try to write with guilt. “You stopped.”
“I didn’t stop,” I whisper. “It stopped me.”
His hold tightens. “Then next time we teach it to listen sooner.”
“You still trust me?” The question escapes small, awful, feral.
Kai doesn’t hesitate. “More than anyone.”
Auren’s jaw ticks once at that—tiny, involuntary. He looks away toward the arch and the world beyond it, inhales like it tastes wrong, then looks back at me. “I trust you too,” he says, and the words sound like he carved them out of bone to hand them over. “This was an accident. Not an omen.”
“Thank you,” I say, breaking again.
His mouth tightens. “Don’t thank me for telling the truth.”
I shift to check Kai’s cut, blinking through the blur. Blood matted in hair; the flow already slowing. “We need a cloth,” I say, pulling my sleeve over my hand and dabbing, too gentle to be useful. “And water. And—”
“On it,” Auren says, already moving. He pushes to his feet with a groan he pretends I don’t hear, jogs to the corner where a training-table sits littered with towels, canteens, salves. He returns in seconds, dropping to his knees again, unscrewing a cap with his teeth, pouring water onto linen.
“I can—” I start.
“I’ve got it,” he says softly.
He hands me the damp cloth; I press it to Kai’s temple. Kai hisses once and then stills like pain has to ask permission to stay. I stroke my thumb along his cheekbone to distract him, and he closes his eyes as if that alone could knit his skin.
“Good,” Auren murmurs, evaluating the cut with war-born efficiency. “Shallow. Ugly. He’ll live.”
“Ruin my mystique,” Kai rasps.
“You don’t have mystique,” Auren replies. “You have… presence. And a stupid number of people who think they can take it from you.”
“Let them try,” Kai says, but the words are softer than his usual weaponized calm. He tilts his face into my hand like a man who knows how to be held, and the sight of it breaks and heals me in one move.
I fold over him again, body trembling so hard my teeth click. He rubs circles low on my spine, repeating it under his breath like a spell: “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”
“Don’t ever do that again,” I whisper into his neck, tears cooling on my lips.
“Which part,” he asks, voice almost smiling. “The flying or the landing.”
“Both,” I say, punching his chest again, lighter, because moving means he’s real. “All of it.”
“Noted,” he breathes, and threads his fingers into my hair. The shake in his hand confesses what his mouth won’t—he was scared too.
Silence slides down, warm despite the wind. Ward-lights murmur their steady line around the courtyard; somewhere, metal clinks as a guard adjusts a grip. My heartbeat slows, arrhythmic to steady. Kai’s breathing evens. Auren sits back on his heels, watching us with something in his eyes that hurts to see.
“Thank you,” I tell him, and I mean for everything—pulling me when I broke, not blaming me when I needed it, running when I said run.
He nods without trust in his voice. “Just… be careful with him,” he says, so quiet I almost miss it.
“I am,” I whisper. “I will.”
His gaze flicks to our hands—mine clenched in Kai’s jacket; Kai’s fingers curved in my hair—and whatever’s left of his composure trembles. He masks it badly for once.
“Right,” he says, and stands too fast, palms skimming his knees as if touching himself can keep him from touching me. Jaw locks. Eyes go glass-bright, then hard again. He turns before either of us can say anything soothing or stupid.
Auren watches them, jaw clenched, eyes full of heartbreak—and leaves the courtyard silently.