Darkness still blankets the world,but Seren knows dawn is approaching; Teddy pulls his boots on. Systematic. Routined. The same way he does every morning before the world wakes. Seren watches him from bed—the way everything he does is practiced, honed into efficiency. Controllable.
They never touch. Which somehow feels more intimate than if they did. Only lie next to one another. Taking comfort from each other’s presence.
Sometimes she feels his eyes boring into her in the dark. Notices the twitch of his fingers like he’s fighting the urge to touch her. Feels the shift of his breath when he finally slips into sleep after lying awake for too long.
Seren feels the lingering warmth of him in bed. The imprint of his form in the blankets. The way the absence of him leaves an ache in her chest.
She raises her arms over her head, forcing herself to rouse after too little sleep, talking into the wee hours of the morning.
Seren told him everything—the exact mechanics of the ocean, the Silent Choir, Lara, The Harrows, the question, The Widow’s Waters, the figures, the way she rewrote the rules.
Teddy listened—intently, reverently.As he always does when it comes to her.
He looked at her in the way only he does. As if he’s looking at a hologram. As if she’ll disappear if he blinks.
“Time for training, Seri,” he says, voice hoarse and sleep-addled.
She pushes herself up to sit, her muscles screaming from yesterday’s exertions, her wounds pulling tight after scabbing over, her fractured bones grinding against one another.
She groans audibly against the pain.
Teddy huffs a light laugh. “You already sound like every soldier I’ve ever trained.”
Seren presses her feet into the floor, striding toward Teddy. She cups his cheek softly, “I don’t want to be like everyone else, Teddy. I want to be theonly.”
Her words stun him.
Teddy’s eyes don’t move. They catch on her, holding on her face in surprise at how forthright she is. He swallows thickly, but doesn’t respond. Simply drops his gaze back to his boots and finishes tying them. Like answering her would require dismantling something he’s spent years building to survive.
She knows she’s being direct.
She knows he doesn’t lack words—just the courage to say them.
But Seren is tired of waiting. Of waiting to be chosen.Claimed.
So she’ll push until he chooses either way. Until she forces the words he holds onto to spill from his lips. Because at somepoint, she’ll stop waiting for him to choose her at all. Because opportunities are living things. Leave them untouched for too long and they wither. And Seren is not the sort of woman who waits forever at a closed gate. Because eventually, waiting becomes its own answer.
Soft morning light peeks over the horizon, sending splinters of gold through the window, illuminating the fresh pile of leathers, boots, and undergarments folded in surgical squares on the chaise. The same way Teddy folds his own—perfectly. Precisely.
Seren’s eyes snap to him. “For me?”
A smirk presses a dimple into his cheek. “Who else?” he answers.
She picks up the leathers, holding them up in the light. They’re not just washed and pressed.They’re new.Exquisite. Finely made, every seam perfectly stitched, every panel delicately fitted.
“They’re incredible,” she breathes.
“If you’re going to train like a warrior, you need to dress like one,” Teddy replies as if it’s nothing, shrugging his shoulders indifferently. He’s watching his army descend on the courtyard from the window, their approach disheveled and disorderly.
She knows it’s more than clothes. More than practicality. Knows it’s an act of tenderness. But she lets him keep his illusion.
“Thank you,” she says, stepping into the leather pants, pulling them over her hips, and fastening the tie under the hem of her tunic.
They slide into place like a second skin. Thick enough to resist a weapon, supple enough to move with her.
She looks at Teddy with heaviness in her eyes. “I won’t wait to be chosen forever, Teddy.”
The words rent the air, layered and complex, slicing through Teddy’s illusion like steel through flesh.
