Behind her, Shade said nothing.
That, more than anything, told her how deeply the last trial had unsettled him.
Normally, silence from Shade was a weapon, a thing he shaped and aimed with the precision of a blade.But this silence had no edge.It just sat between them, heavy and tired and annoyingly sad.
Myanin hated sad.Sad did not fight fair.
“You’re being very quiet,” she said, eyes still fixed on the corridor ahead.
“I assumed you would enjoy the reprieve.”
“I would, if it didn’t feel like the emotional equivalent of finding a dead rat in my soup.”
A faint sound came from behind her.Not quite a laugh.Not quite pain.
Progress, apparently.
She finally turned, slowly enough that her braid slid forward across her shoulder.Shade stood several feet behind her with one hand braced against the parchment wall, his fingers spread wide against the layered paper as though he were the only thing keeping it from collapsing inward.His head was slightly bowed, dark hair falling across his brow.The gold light bleeding through the corridor caught the hard line of his jaw and the exhaustion carved beneath his eyes.
For once he looked less like an arrogant djinn warrior who had decided the universe was personally inconveniencing him, and more like a male who had been emotionally flayed open and was still deciding what to do with all the exposed pieces.
That was unfair.He should not get to look wounded and beautiful at the same time.There should be laws.
“You look terrible,” she said.
His mouth twitched, the barest curve.“And here I thought you were about to be kind.”
“I am being kind.I could have said you look like emotional roadkill.”
“Comforting.”
“I’m excellent in a crisis.”
He pushed away from the wall, and she caught the brief tightening at the corner of his eyes, the small adjustment in his shoulders, the way his weight shifted carefully onto his left foot before he committed to the right.Whatever the last trial had done to him, it had not let go yet.It bothered her more that it wasn’t physical pain he was in.
Myanin narrowed her eyes.“What did it do to you?”
“Nothing I cannot manage.”
“Oh, wonderful.We’re lying now.That’s refreshing and not at all stupid.”
His gaze lifted to hers, and for a heartbeat all the old arrogance flickered back into place.Not fully.Not enough to be reassuring.But enough to make her pulse quicken in a way she absolutely refused to examine.
“I have survived worse than a trip down memory lane.”
The words should have annoyed her.They did annoy her.But beneath the annoyance sat something worse, something soft and aching and inconvenient, because she believed him, and because she knew he had.
Myanin crossed the space between them before she could talk herself out of it.The parchment floor sighed beneath her boots, and she ignored it.Shade watched her approach without moving, his expression shifting in increments she could chart: guarded first, when his shoulders subtly squared; curious next, when his head tilted a fraction; then carefully blank, the way his face always went when he was feeling too much and hated every second of it.
Good.Let him suffer a little.
She stopped close enough that the edge of his coat brushed the bare skin of her arm, the fabric warmer than it had any right to be.Then she lifted her hand and touched his face.
Shade went completely still.
The contact was nothing.Barely anything.Just her fingers along the rough scrape of his jaw, turning his face slightly toward the light so she could see him properly.But the moment her skin met his, the corridor around them breathed.
Pages rustled along both walls in a slow, deliberate wave.
