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His knee buckled. He caught himself on instinct, breath hissing, one hand braced hard against the wall. For a moment, just a moment, the control slipped, but she reached him first.

He muttered something in an ancient language and pulled her with him into a side corridor, then through a narrow door into an empty chamber. A passing soldier saw only a superior escorting a hooded figure.

The door closed swiftly behind them. For a moment, neither of them moved. The corridor outside had forced them close; nothing forced them now. And still neither of them stepped back.

Maia tore back her hood, breath unsteady. “You said you would heal.” Her voice cracked on it, more accusatory than she had meant it to be. “You promised me quicker. Look at you.”

“I am healing,” he replied immediately, too fast and practiced. “What do you think you’re doing? If they noticed—”

“I do not care. I had to see you,” she said. “I couldn’t not come. If you were—”

Caelith looked at her then, truly looked, with darkness behind his eyes. He stepped toward her before he could stop himself and caught her by the arms, calmly but hard enough that she felt the tremor beneath his control. He sighed.

“They separated us because of this,” he said, his voice deep and serious. His grip gentled without releasing her. One hand slid up to cup the side of her neck, his thumb resting just beneath her jaw. It stopped there. He didn’t pull her closer. He didn’t let go. She could feel exactly how much air stood between their mouths, and counted it in heartbeats instead of inches.

“I didn’t ask for any of it,” she said, leaning into his hand.

“It does not matter, Maia. They do not tolerate what they cannot control. Your understanding is more dangerous to them than defiance.”

“I told you, I don’t care about them,” she said, quieter now. “Not if it means not seeing you.”

His hand tightened slightly at her neck. Something in his face came apart for half a second. An unhidden want that he usually kept buried three doors down from where she could reach it.

She looked up at him, eyes wide.

“You could, you know.” Her voice was barely there. “I’d let you.”

“I know.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because I have very little left, Maia, and I am spending all of it on not doing it.”

Then, as though catching himself mid-fall, he let go and lowered himself onto the edge of a cot, careful with his injured side.

She took the stool by the wall, accepting she was not to push him too far. For a while, she let the silence sit, because she had learned that people gave you more in the gaps than they ever did when pressed.

“Can I ask you something?” she said eventually, needing to put something between them. “And will you tell me the truth, even if it’s not the answer I’d want?”

“That depends entirely on the question.”

“The women,” she said without hesitation. “In the lower ruins. They weren’t prisoners. And they weren’t afraid, exactly.” She chose the next words carefully. “Do your kind… care for humans, in that way? Is this something that happens between you? Is this—” she gestured to the closeness between them “—ordinary, for your kind?”

He looked at her with a kind of weariness, as though she’d asked after an old habit he’d half-forgotten he had. “You really want to know that?”

“Yes,” she replied.

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “It happens. More than your histories would admit. We are long-lived, and the years are also long. And there is a particular loneliness in standing apart from a thing you are sworn to protect.” He looked at the bare wall rather than at her. “There have been women. Human men, for some. Warmth borrowed for a night and given back by morning. But you must know that it costs nothing. That is the point of it, for us anyway.”

“Right. That’s what I thought.” She hesitated for a moment. “And the word he used. Claimed.” She looked at Caelith. “The one with the scars, in the ruins beneath the Archive. He said I wasn’t. But you told him I would not be touched.”

His gaze came back to her, sharp with recognition. “You remember that.”

“I remember everything from that night,” she said. “Especially the parts you clearly hoped I wouldn’t ask about.”

There was a long pause.

“Claimed is not just borrowed warmth,” he said at last. “It is the other thing. It’s… physical. Ownership. Other Umbralyn, or men, cannot touch. It’s archaic and not used often.” He didn’t elaborate, and she understood he wasn’t going to. “I told him you were not to be touched. But I do not own you. That is all it was.”