Page 10 of She Who Was Severed

But part of me wants to scream that I don’t know what this is either. That I didn’t ask for it. That it didn’t ask for me.

I take shelter near the edge of the training green, behind the old wall that separates initiates from the open fields. From here, I can see them.

The Paths in practice.

A Stormbound boy rises ten feet in the air and calls lightning with a twist of his hand. A Veilmarked girl walks into the same space and disappears, reappearing on the roof. Tidewalkers chant and spiral water between them like a dance. A Flameborn girl—Ariss, I think—sparks her entire blade alight with no effort at all.

I should be watching in awe.

I watch in hunger.

This should’ve been mine. Not the flame, not the tide. But something. Anything.

And then I feel him.

Kellen’s heat precedes him. It always did. That slight shift in the air that says something alive is near. I hear his voice before I see him—low, steady, the kind he uses when he wants to sound like he’s not hurting.

He’s talking to a councilman. Standing straight. Regal. Pretending.

But his eyes flick toward me.

I duck back.

The chain tightens.

Not hard. Not cruel. Just responsive.

I hate that.

Did it react to him? Or did I?

His voice follows me.

“They lit the Kestril fires today.”

I don’t answer. He’s not talking to me. He can’t be.

But the chain pulses once.

The Kestril fires mark the end of Bonding Week. In every city—from Virelle to Raleth-Kai—temples light sacred flame along the old rites, honoring the newly bonded across all of Aetherra. I should’ve lit mine this morning.

Instead, I’m hiding from light.

I keep walking. Deeper. Away from the torchlight, the noise, the ghosts in silk robes pretending not to see me.

Virelle’s Temple Quarter gleams like it wants to be Solenn. All curve and gold and pretense, like the capital’s smaller, holier cousin. But the deeper you go, the more the walls show their seams. Down here, beneath the sanctum, everything rots politely.

I slip into one of the shadowed alcoves beside the prayer vault. Curl my fingers inward.

He follows.

Of course he does.

I hear the shift in his breath before he speaks again—closer now. Not enough to touch, but enough to burn if he tried.

“Today would’ve been your veil blessing.”

Veil blessings are given to the newly bonded during the closing rites. A second name is spoken into the Veil—one only your beast knows. You’re veiled in phoenix-thread silk, doused in ashwater, declared seen. Known.