Barely.
Since then, her altered body had cycled between guarded wakefulness and exhausted sleep. She remained conscious for longer periods each night, but the transition had not finished settling through her bones.
Rhen returned more often than duty required.
He never sat beside her.
Never remained close.
The tether dragged him back to the doorway or the far wall with relentless regularity, and he hated it for every inch it claimed.
He watched because his blood had made her survival his responsibility and because the trace of heretic magic still clinging to her remained unexplained.
Attention was not mercy.
It was control.
The tether pulsed beneath his skin—deep, brutal, and constant. A living reminder of what he had done and what she had become because of it.
Veya had offered him neither forgiveness nor the clean fury he expected. Only exhausted questions, guarded resistance, and a refusal to tell him everything.
He could work with anger.
He knew how to destroy violence.
Her quiet distrust was harder to confront.
Then there was Leena.
Always Leena, like a blade he had chosen to leave buried because removing it would damage everything he was sworn to protect.
He should have been with his brothers, planning for the heretics, sharpening steel, doing something useful for the clan.
Instead, part of him remained tethered to the woman sleeping across the room, while the rest strained toward the private chambers farther along the east wing.
A soft knock disturbed the silence.
Rhen’s head snapped toward the door, every muscle tightening as it opened.
Sule stepped inside.
He carried the authority of a king, but something beneath it had shifted. Strain tightened the edges of his mouth. His control looked forced rather than effortless.
His gaze moved once toward Veya before locking onto Rhen.
“What?”
Rhen’s voice emerged rough and defensive, as though anger could prevent whatever came next from mattering.
Sule did not waste time.
“It’s Leena.”
Cold moved through Rhen’s body.
Fast.
Vicious.
