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Her hands were still trembling. Perhaps it was only the cold, or the last of the adrenaline draining out of her.

But standing in the dark corridor above the ruins, she understood the feeling for what it actually was. It wasn’t fear. It probably never had been.

And the worst part - the part that made her press her palms flat against the cool stone and bite her lip - was that she didn’t want to make the feeling stop.

16

The Weight of Silence

She had not slept, and she had given up pretending she would.

The previous night kept playing behind her eyes whether they were open or shut: Bleddyn’s hand on her braid, the scarred face too close to hers, but more than that: Caelith’s voice, and the way the whole room had stopped.

And the thing he had said, in front of all of them, in a voice she had never heard him use. You have never once been afraid of the right things.

She pressed a hand to her ribs and made herself breathe. She would have to face him this morning. She would have to face all of them. And she had no idea yet what her own face would do when she did.

***

By the time she reached the Archive to begin her work, the storm had darkened the sky to bruised steel. Rain streaked the tall windows like a flood now, muting the morning light. The chamber looked almost dream-like. The shards on the table pulsed faintly, as though the storm outside carried a message they could hear.

Julen was already at their worktable, rifling through notes with restless hands. He looked up, eyes narrowing as he took in her pale face.

“Sleepy?” he said.

“Always,” she admitted, not able to meet his eye.

“Did you manage to find Caelith last night?”

Maia froze, stomach lurching. But he didn’t accuse her like she’d expected him to.

“I was only wondering. HE never came back. I looked later, not in the eastern stacks, not in the lower alcoves. The shards… they were agitated.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice faltering.

Julen’s frown deepened. “Maia. I think something’s going on.”

She shook her head too quickly. “Really? He’s probably helping with containment—”

Then a familiar presence brushed the edge of her perception, stopping her speech in its tracks.

He was there.

Oh, Gods, she said to herself.

Caelith didn’t look at her, yet his presence pressed against her all the same, like the drop in pressure before a storm breaks.

Julen noticed. Of course he did. His gaze moved from Caelith’s carefully averted eyes to Maia’s carefully still hands, and something in his expression sharpened.

“Really?” he muttered. “So now you can’t even look at each other.”

Maia flushed. “Julen.”

Caelith kept his eyes trained on the fragments, his posture deceptively calm. But she knew better. There was something restrained in the line of his shoulders, something close to anger held very still.

She was no longer afraid of him. What frightened her now was the relief and the delight that had moved through her the moment she saw him, how her pulse had answered before her mind caught up, how unbearable his silence had become in the space of a single morning.

The day slipped into its familiar rhythm, though nothing felt familiar at all.