“He already suspects,” Zeidan replies.
“Oh?”
“He told me I look insufferably pleased when you enter a room.”
I tilt my head back to look at him. “Do you?”
A faint, almost embarrassed flicker crosses his face.
“I do not monitor my expressions.”
“Mm,” I hum. “That sounds like a yes.”
His thumb traces once along the small of my back, absentminded, grounding.
“For the record,” he says quietly, “I do not regret being different.”
I press my forehead lightly to his chest, just for a heartbeat longer.
“Good,” I whisper.
Then I step back, because if we linger much longer, we may never make it to the temple at all.
“Come on,” I say, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. “Let’s go uncover treason before your brother decides to stage an intervention.”
Zeidan huffs softly, but his hand finds mine as we turn toward the exit. He doesn’t let go. And neither do I.
The eastern templeis less ruin and more wound.
Stone columns lean at tired angles, half-swallowed by creeping vines. The roof collapsed long ago, leaving the central altar exposed to sky and rain. Moss blankets cracked tiles, and the air carries a faint, sour undertone beneath the scent of earth.
Blight. Subtle. Breathing. The moment we step past the threshold, the bond shifts. Like stepping into a chamber where sound has always existed but was previously muted.
Zeidan’s fingers brush mine, not by accident. His wings remain hidden, but I feel the restrained edge of his power as keenly as my own. The sacred ground recognizes us, not as invaders, but as something aligned and altered.
The altar at the center is carved with older sigils than the current coven uses. Rootwork spirals outward in concentric circles, but along the outermost ring, something darker stains the stone.
I kneel.
The blight here is thin, but deliberate. It threads into cracks like ink spilled with purpose.
“Do you feel that?” I whisper.
“Yes,” Zeidan answers. “It’s not spreading randomly.”
“It’s being directed.”
The air shifts. A wind that does not belong to the weather curls through the broken columns, stirring leaves without touching branches. The temperature drops slightly, enough to raise gooseflesh along my arms.
Zeidan steps closer.
The altar pulses once beneath my palm. Then again.
A figure forms, translucent, woven from light and root-shadow. Not a ghost. Not entirely a spirit.
A guardian remnant.
Its voice is not sound. It is pressure against thought.
