POV: Cael
Fever dreams usually taste like metal and old fear. This one tastes like her palm.
I wake in slices. A ceiling. A flag. A shadow that remembers my name. I try to sit. My body says no in ten languages. I lie back and breathe.
“Mara?” I rasp.
“I’m here,” her voice answers from the doorway, from the bedpost, from inside my ribs. It takes me a second to understand the last part isn’t poetry. It’s real. A line, warm and alive, runs from my chest to where she stands. When she moves, the line tugs. When she laughs—soft, wrecked, mine—the line hums.
I swallow. “I can feel you.”
“I know,” she says, cheeks pink. “I can feel you too.”
Pia appears behind her like a gossip bird. “You’re haunted by a living man,” she tells Mara cheerfully. “King of problems, queen of solutions.”
“Out,” Silvie hisses, shooing her with a towel. Pia flees, giggling.
I try to grin and end up groaning. Mara is at my side before the sound finishes. She doesn’t touch my face; she touches the back of my hand, thumb small and sure.
“How bad?” I ask.
“You almost left,” she says, and doesn’t dress it in other words. “We dragged you back. You’re allowed to be angry about it later.”
Rhun rolls over under my bones like a satisfied animal. “Anchor.”
“Anchor,” I agree, eyes stinging.
Jax leans in the door. “Good afternoon, my lord. You owe four people beer and the healer a vacation.”
“Make it two vacations,” the healer grumbles from somewhere. “And a new pair of scissors.”
“Done,” I say, because I would promise the river a crown if it kept this room from emptying.
The line between Mara and me keeps pulsing. Not overwhelming. Not loud. Just there. When she steps toward the door, it stretches and I feel it like a thought I might lose. When she comes closer, it eases and I can breathe without counting.
“Sorry,” she says, flushing. “I keep… checking.”
“Don’t apologize,” I tell her. “If you leave, my chest complains.”
Her eyes water. “Mine too,” she whispers, and we both pretend we’re not crying because Jax is still in the doorway and will write a song.
He doesn’t. He clears his throat. “Council has a label,” he says to the room at large, voice dry. “They call what you two did a ‘resonance violation.’”
I snort. It hurts. I do it anyway. “Of course they do.”
Mara’s jaw sets. “They can call it soup for all I care.”
“Care later,” Silvie says, setting a bowl down like a treaty. “Eat.”
I obey because I have learned the laws of this room. Between spoonfuls, I try to put words in order.
“What did we do,” I ask Mara, quiet. “Exactly.”
“Half,” she says, just as quiet. “A seal. It kept you from drifting. It kept me from breaking.”
“Good,” I say, and mean it. “Thank you.”
She shifts on her feet, suddenly shy. “You’re welcome.”
Silence stretches for a long moment.
“Why didn't you tell me?” She asks finally. Not accusing. “About the prophecy. About… Me.”
I sigh. She knows.
“Mother told me?”
“She had no choice after I saved your life with “divine intervention” or however she called it.”
I smirk, even though the situation is not funny. Mara never loses her spark.
“I wanted to protect you,” I admit finally, and it feels like a rock off my chest. “It was too dangerous.”
Mara doesn't answer, but I see quiet acknowledgement in her eyes.
The healer clicks her tongue and starts packing salves back into her satchel. “For the record,” she mutters, more to the room than to us, “tying your heart to someone else’s pulse is a terrible medical decision. Powerful, yes. Terrible. Shared strain, shared shock. You burn too hot, she burns too. You fall, she feels it.” She glares at both of us in turn. “So perhaps try not to be idiots at the same time.”
“We’ll take turns,” I say, dry.
Mara huffs a tiny laugh that sounds suspiciously like agreement. Her fingers tighten around mine for a heartbeat, then loosen, but the bond-line doesn’t. It hums between us, steady now, a quiet second heartbeat I know will never fully leave.
We sit in a soft noise that feels like a bed after a long march. Outside, the city sharpens—chains oiled, orders carried, banners moved like chess. I can hear distant steps, the low grind of carts, the murmur of Shields changing shifts under Moon Silence rules. Inside, my skin remembers her touch and my heart keeps counting the same strange number it learned at her palm. Every breath I take brushes against the new tether and finds her there, annoyed and kind and stubborn as stone.
The Regent pauses in the doorway once, says nothing, just looks. At me, at Mara, at the invisible line she can’t see but absolutely feels. There’s a storm in her eyes. Then she inclines her head—so small I might have imagined it—and moves on, cloak whispering over the stone. Approval, for now. Reckoning, later.
“Rest,” she says, brushing a wisp of hair off my forehead like she doesn’t remember not touching me. The line hums. Rhun purrs. I close my eyes.
“Don’t go far,” I mumble.
“I couldn’t if I tried,” she answers, and the smile in her voice warms the fever better than the soup.