“I am,” she concedes. “There’s a lot at stake.”
But Teddy’s no fool. “I am not so easily convinced that you’re being truthful. You raise your eyebrows just a fraction when you lie, Seri.”
Of course he notices.He always does.
He flashes that easy smile again.
Fucking Aetherstrides.
“It’s much easier to lie to Ronyn, you know,” she grouses, though she huffs a laugh.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Seri. Ronyn is the one who told me to check on you,” Teddy says, face full of cheek.
That wily bastard.
He sees more than he lets on. More than anyone gives him credit for. Not that it surprises her. Beneath his insufferable and cavalier charm, Ronyn is a master of manipulation.For the better.Always knowing what the room needs—levity, vulnerability, charm, recklessness.
He passes it off as comedy, but she knows it for what it really is: deep, real love. Buried beneath performance.A mask.
And beneath that mask, there is a man she barely knows.
She looses a long, loud exhale.
“I want to belong, Teddy. Truly belong. Mavyrn spoke of witches long before I knew I was one—I think she was leaving me clues. And then her dying words:Find Lara. Something inside of me—an instinct, a knowing—believes they’re connected,” she whispers, though there’s no mistaking her desperation. “I need to know who I am, Teddy. Because this world…” she gestures around them. “It’s not mine. No matter how much I wish it was.”
Because if she doesn’t know who she is, she’ll spend her life mistaking what she was given for what she was meant for.
Teddy doesn’t respond straight away. His gaze turns distant, contemplative.
But it snaps back to her in less than a heartbeat, and there’s a heaviness there. A layered, complex thing that Seren can’t place.
Is it grief? Guilt? The look of a man who feels he’s betraying his wife and the mother of his Star-sent child?
But Teddy doesn’t explain.
His hand finds hers, halting to a stop between stores of quills and leatherbound journals. He splays her palm across his chest plate.His heart.
“Where you belong, I belong,” he promises, but the words are strained, rasping. Like every syllable pulls against an oath he has not yet broken. “We’ll find Lara.”
He says it like every word demands a sacrifice she doesn’t yet understand. He doesn’t linger. Simply releases her hand with a chaste kiss to her fingers, and Seren already misses the weight of his hand against hers. He spins on his heel to the only side he’s ever really been at:Kael’s.
And despite the conflicting emotions that she can’t unsee, no matter how many times she’s tried—her heart swells at his promise.
Chosen.
Even if the choice feels fragile, tentative.
Her eyes linger on Teddy, and she doesn’t miss the way he’s been keeping a closer watch on Kael over the last couple of weeks. The way he barely leaves his side. The way he holds his breath just a little tighter in his presence. The way he lingers in front of the fire with a glass of amber liquor until Kael turns in first.
Which means she’s not the only one who’s noticed:Kael is different.
Not just the grief. Something… else.
Elarion Castle rises before them, elegant and awesome in its beauty. Cradled by the mountain and hovering above the city proper, the castle makes a statement: beauty has a place here.
Rocky tracks follow the arc of the sun as it rises to its peak, and the group walks in easy silence until a small Shade in gray robes appears without a sound from around the brush. “Elandor awaits,” he whispers, as if afraid he’ll unsettle the insects by speaking louder.
Teddy doesn’t flinch—he heard the Shade long before he revealed himself.
