Page 16 of Sokâr

She stopped herself. Slammed her defenses down against the longing in her soul. She’d never meant to ask him that.

“I do,” he said, his brow furrowing. And then again, with more force, "I do."

For a moment, everything around them went silent.Still.As though time itself held its breath. Auryn allowed herself a moment—a spark—of hope. But just as quickly, she stepped back from it, looking towards some bookshelves behind him.

“Surelysomethinghas changed,” she countered with neutrality. “Fifteen years is not a short amount of time.”

“No,” he insisted, pulling her gaze back to his with a hand on her shoulder. “I mean what I say.”

She made a sound of bitter amusement. “Another oddity, then, to add to the list.”

“List?”

“The Sokâr and her shapeless, colorless, body. Pale skin, white hair, silver eyes. Like a thing grown old yet somehow clinging to life. Never aging. Never changing. Is she a child? Certainly, she cannot be a woman.”

“Auryn…”

She looked up at him and shook her head. “It’s alright. Believe me, after fifty-three years of it, I have outgrown the need to contradict every voice that would judge me.”

His hand tightened on her shoulder, but he did not answer. And Auryn did not expect any such thing from him. After all, he could not force Krystopolis to bend around her. To accept her. Enough that he’d bled to crown her his Sokâr.

But I won’t lay dormant forever. My time will come. The right moment for change. I have Seen it. Have paid the price to witness it. As long as I can be by his side in some capacity, as long as I can find my own purpose, my own freedom, then I will keep fighting against this cage in my own way. And I will protect him this time. I will not allow this Void to take even one more piece of him from me.

This time, she took his hand, guiding it to her heart.

“I am myself, as I have always been. I’ve just missed these eyes,” she brushed a finger to his cheek, “these eyes that trulyseeme.”

Another silence lingered, this one less heavy. There was hope in it again, but this time Auryn did not step away.

“I’ve brought you something,” Kailorien said, his voice suddenly gruff. “It’s not a rare tome like all the treasures in these Archives, but when I saw it,” he pulled something from the inside of his inner cloak pocket, “I thought of you.”

In his hand was a small trinket. A glass orb trimmed in gold lay within an icosahedron, each side carved with a mystic symbol she’d never seen before. It was worn smooth at the edges, as though hands had handled it too often. Attached was a chain.

Auryn didn’t move.

Only stared at him.

At the gift.

At the man beyond it.

The man she’d waited for, yearned for. She didn’t know what to say, and so she did not speak. Not right away. Kailorien didn’t move. Still held out the trinket. Her hand trembling, she took the bauble from his hand, cradling it in her palm as though it might dissolve.

Dizzy, she leaned in.

Close enough to feel his body heat, to breathe him in.

“Your sweat still smells strange.”

A callback to their time in the Moores. A test.

Kailorien blinked without recognition.

A moment.

And another.

Time raised its head, then. Slowly, like a thing waking at the dawn of Growth after a stasis. For a moment, the chasm between them narrowed.