Gerick expected anger to rise.He wanted anger.Anger was clean.Useful.He understood what to do with it.Anger could be shaped into battle plans and sharpened into purpose.
This was not anger.This was grief wearing armor.
Peri’s voice came carefully.“Gerick.”
“Don’t.”
“I wasn't going to lie.”
“No.”His eyes closed briefly, lashes dark against the high cut of his cheekbones.“That would require you to have developed tact in the last ten minutes.”
“Fair.”
A longer silence settled.The forest shifted around them, branches murmuring overhead in a wind Gerick could not feel against his skin.Somewhere in the dark above, leaves spoke to leaves in a language older than he was.
Peri turned slightly toward the book, her arms still folded, but her shoulder angled now in a way that was almost protective.“I told you what Myanin told me.What Shade was to her.What she ran from.What she buried.”
“Yes.”
“But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.”
The words landed exactly where they were meant to.And still missed the wound.
Gerick swallowed against the pressure in his throat.“I know.”
Peri’s eyes flicked to him.He kept his gaze forward, fixed on the Nushtonia as though force of will alone could keep him upright.
“That’s the problem.”
The words came out too quiet.Too honest.He hated them for it.
Gerick had known violence.Betrayal.Loyalty.War.He had stood in rooms heavy with the scent of blood and watched enemies decide whether death or surrender offended them less.He had obeyed orders that cost him sleep.He had led warriors into battles where victory tasted too much like ash to celebrate.
But none of that had prepared him for loving someone who loved him back and still might not be his.
The book pulsed once.A low, dull throb beneath the stone, felt rather than heard, like a heartbeat several rooms away.
Peri stiffened.
Gerick’s breath caught.
Myanin.
The sensation moved through him like a thread pulled tight inside his chest.Not pain exactly.Recognition.A moment of warmth, of ache, of longing so fierce it nearly drove him to his knees.His left hand lifted halfway to his sternum before he caught the motion and forced it back down.
Then another presence moved through that same thread.
Shade.
Gerick stepped back as if struck.His boot scraped against stone, and the small, sharp sound of it was the only warning before his control snapped.
Magic flared around his hands before he could stop it, dark and gold and furious, crackling through the clearing hard enough to make the nearby mist recoil.The air thickened.The temperature dropped, then climbed, then dropped again.In the trees beyond them, draheim rumbled, the sound rolling through the mountains like distant thunder shifting in its bed.
Peri moved instantly, faster than he’d seen her move in a long while, one hand catching his forearm and gripping hard.Her fingers were warmer than he expected.
“Gerick.”
His magic snapped violently against the ground, scorching a black line through moss and stone.The smell of burnt earth and ozone bit at the back of his throat.
