Page 45 of She Who Was Severed

He reaches into his cloak and pulls out a folded square of cloth. Thick. Dark. Warmer than anything I’ve been given since they locked me below. I don’t ask where it came from. I just take it. My fingers brush his again. This time, they stay.

He meets my eyes. Steady. Intent.

Like nothing I’ve done—not the fight, not the trial, not the chain—has made him look away.

“Do you think they’ll listen?” I ask.

He doesn’t flinch. “Not for a long time.”

The honesty hurts more than I expect.

“But I’ll make it cost them when they don’t.”

And that hurts worse.

Because I believe him.

He settles beside me. Legs stretched out now, palms braced behind him on the stone. I lean into the warmth of the cloak. Let my head tip until it rests on the wall just behind his shoulder. I don’t ask for more. I don’t need to.

We stay like that.

Breathing in time with nothing but each other.

Long enough for the cold to ease. Long enough for my pulse to stop trying to prepare for pain.

Eventually, the light outside the cell door shifts. Silver now. Cold-veined and patient.

Kellen stands.

I don’t.

I watch him from where I sit—bare feet pressed to cold stone, hair damp with sweat, cuffs still cinched tight around my wrists. I probably look like a girl half-broken.

I almost laugh.

There’s no probably about it.

And yet he still looks at me like I’m whole.

Like I haven’t fractured a dozen times since the chain took root.

Like he’s not bracing for the moment I break again.

Like he remembers something about me I’ve already started to forget.

Like I’m still worth betting on.

He crouches down once before he leaves. Braces a hand on the cot. Lets his forehead brush mine—just a breath, not a claim. Then he leans in and presses the softest kiss to the hinge of my jaw, just beneath my left ear.

Not my lips. Not my cheek.

There.

The spot no one else thinks to touch.

The place only he ever found.

“It’s not a goodbye,” he murmurs.