Page 18 of She Who Was Severed

Kier smiles. “I say the temple doesn’t like questions it didn’t write down first. And you—” he steps closer “—look like a question waiting to become a catastrophe.”

He leaves the rest unsaid. But it hangs between us, taut as wire.

“If the chain speaks again,” he says, voice lower, “tell it we remember. Tell it the storm still has teeth.”

Then he turns, robes whispering across the moss. Gone.

My legs feel rooted. I sit again, slower this time. The garden hasn’t changed, but everything feels thinner. Like the world just learned I exist again, and it’s deciding what to do about it.

Another set of footsteps.

Lighter. Familiar.

Kellen.

He doesn’t announce himself. Just stands beside me without asking. The distance between us isn’t quite enough.

“Sky’s bruising,” he says after a long pause. “Storm coming.”

I nod.

“Stromyr was here,” he adds. “I saw him.”

I keep my eyes forward. “He didn’t touch me. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t answer. But his jaw ticks once—just enough to betray whatever thought he swallows.

His gaze slides to my wrist. A sliver of chain glints beneath the wrap.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he says.

I turn my head slowly. Let him see the heat rising up my throat. “Then stay.”

He does.

The space between us tightens like a drawn bowstring. The kind that doesn’t snap. Just hums with the threat of it.

We don’t speak.

His thigh brushes mine as he sits, not enough to be improper. Just enough to feel. His body radiates warmth like it always has—like fire just beneath the skin—but this close, it’s more than heat. It’s gravity. Pulling. Daring.

Somewhere above the temple, a low sound rolls through the sky—not thunder, not wind. A roar, deep enough to rattle ribs. I know that sound. Kiroth. His bonded dragon. I’ve only seen it once, but it left a mark I haven’t shaken since—wings like a stormfront, eyes like hammered gold, fire braided down its spine like it was born to burn the world clean.

Kellen tilts his head at the sound. Just once. No reaction but a flicker of recognition. He smiles—but not at the sky. At me. As if even that fire out there means nothing compared to what’s happening here, right now, between us.

His thigh brushes mine again, and I feel it—his heat, his restraint, his attention narrowing like a blade. Gods, I can’t tell if it’s him or the dragon watching. But I want both to see me break.

The chain stills. Not quiet—waiting. Beneath my ribs, something winds tighter, as if bracing for impact. My breath is steady. Too steady. My fingers press into my thigh to keep from moving. Reaching.

His arm shifts on the stone behind me. Barely. His wrist close enough now that I could lean back and graze it. Could tilt my head and feel that familiar warmth against my cheek. I don’t.

But I think about it.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I whisper, not because it’s a lie. But because I want him to disagree.

He doesn’t. He just looks at me with that war in his eyes. The one that always flickers right before he does something reckless.

His gaze drops. To my lips. My throat. My wrist—where the edge of the chain peeks from beneath the wrap like it’s testing the air.