The man I love sleeps with his arms around me for the first time in months.
I close my eyes.
For the first time in a long time, I do not dream of the void.
Iwake up to an empty bed and a sharp, clawing pulse of panic before I hear water running across the room.
Kaelren stands at the basin along the far wall, washing his face. His shirt is off, and the corruption marks run down his back in dark, branching lines that are darker than I remember. They spread across muscle and bone like living scars.
He must feel me watching, because he turns his head and catches my eye. The corner of his mouth lifts.
“You slept,” he says.
“So did you.” I sit up and push my hair out of my face. The blanket falls away, and I realize I am wearing one of the clean shirts from the shelf. It is soft and loose, smelling faintly of the Verdance’s green wood and warm stone. I do not remember putting it on. “Did you dress me?”
“You were asleep.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is precisely an answer.”
He dries his face and crosses the room. When he reaches the bed, he leans down and presses a kiss to my forehead. It is brief and warm. Almost casual.
The kiss someone gives when they have done it a thousand mornings in a row.
Except we have not had mornings like that. We have had stolen days and collapsing worlds and the long silence of the void.
The ease of it tightens something in my chest.
“The council meets in an hour,” he says. “Thalia sent word.”
Kaelren turns back toward me, his gaze moving slowly over the blanket barely covering me.
“You should probably get dressed,” he says. His voice is calm, but there’s a quiet warning beneath it.
“Why?”
“Because if you stay in that bed much longer,” he says, “I may decide the council can wait.”
My eyebrow lifts. “And that would be terrible?”
His mouth curves slightly. “For the council, yes.”
Up close, the Heartwood is even larger than it appeared from the bridge.
The trunk is easily a hundred feet across. The pale bark is smooth and seamless, glowing faintly where light filters through the Verdance canopy above. When I brush my palm against it as we pass through the entrance, the wood is warm.
Alive.
Inside, the tree is hollow but far from empty.
A spiraling staircase of living wood winds along the inner wall. The air smells like sap, rain, and damp soil. The entire interior feels ancient, like something that has been growing quietly for longer than anyone alive remembers.
The council chamber sits three levels above the entrance.
By the time we reach it, the sounds of the Verdance have softened to a distant murmur.
The chamber is circular, carved directly from the trunk. The walls curve upward into a domed ceiling where the wood thins enough to allow filtered green light to pass through. A long table grown from polished root fills the center of the room.
