Kion’s POV
Room 203, Binding Post Inn, Brandholt City
Fifteen minutes after Writ left the inn.
He hovered in the empty room for several long, useless minutes.
Wings beating out of habit, not intention. Each flap slower than the last.
Then the strength bled out of him. His wings folded, and he sank onto the floorboards.
Drifting, then falling.
The tether’s muted hum thinned with each step Writ put between them, yet every pulse still tapped inside his skull.
Soft, controlled taps he’d felt before. Her effort to stay functional, to not break.
The Silent Writ mask pulling tight over Lunlun’s edges.
Usually that mask kept everything out.
Usually he felt almost nothing when she slipped into that state.
Usually he could toss the sensations the tether fed him into the back of his mind and leave them there.
So why couldn’t he now?
Why did the muted hum feel as loud as a shout pressed against his ear?
Why did her breath echo inside his ribs?
Why did her heartbeat thrum like it was lodged under his sternum instead of hers?
He had never felt her mask this sharply.
Never felt the distance collapse like this.
Never felt its edges dig into him.
Not until after she pushed him away.
The tether constricted. A tightening band around his chest, throat, lungs.
He dropped fully to the floor, palms flat, dragging in ragged, insufficient breaths.
Was this why tethered pairs never fought?
Was this why they patched over arguments so quickly, because the pain was unbearable when their hearts pulled in opposite directions?
Or was this just him? The one-way tether?
Or just the consequence of his own choices. Letting the tether sink too deep for too long, letting it nudge his thoughts into worship, letting it take too much root?
He wrapped his arms around himself, claws digging into skin.
It didn’t work. Nothing eased.
He knew it was his fault.
He knew he’d said he would bear whatever consequence came once Writ noticed he’d planted those wounds.
He just hadn’t expected it to be like this.
This violent.
This consuming.
His heart was already split raw from the moment Writ closed the door and told him to go. He didn’t need the tether to hammer the memory into every pulse.
Didn’t need it to scream that he was wrong, wrong, wrong and should crawl back and beg her to forgive him.
How was he supposed to try when it wouldn’t even let him move?
What a stupid, broken design.
He slammed his fist into the floorboards.
Again.
Harder.
Until the skin went red and warm droplets dotted the wood.
His gaze dragged toward the spot under the window.
The place she had folded herself into his arms. The place she’d guided his hand to her neck so he could strip Caedern’s stench from her. The place she’d clung to him like he was the only thing anchoring her.
It didn’t help.
His vision slid toward the half-open bathroom door.
He could still see her there. Kneeling, choking out nausea that the tether shoved through him too. He could still feel the helplessness of leaning against that frame, cursing himself because he could do nothing except witness her pain.
It didn’t help.
A slip of paper peeked from beneath the desk. Her handwriting curling across it, unmistakable.
It didn’t help.
Her scent still hung in the room. Soft, familiar, everywhere. In the air. In the sheets. On his skin. Even after she left.
It didn’t help.
He reached toward the bed. To the empty space she always left beside her. She always scooted to the edge, leaving room for his bed-pillow. Letting him settle next to her. Letting him wake to her face in the first light.
It didn’t help.
He felt her stop walking. Felt her settle into a new place. Her next lodging, probably.
He hoped she’d feel better there.
At least she wouldn’t have to see this bed. The one Caedern had touched. The one she’d been forced into.
Maybe the tether would ease.
It didn’t.
Pressure slammed through it instead, shoving him inward, making him fold tighter. Knees to chest, wings crumpled, breath thin.
And he followed it, because resisting felt wrong and curling small felt right.
He stayed that way.
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The tether did too.
Time crawled.
Maybe he adjusted.
Maybe he convinced himself he adjusted.
Then the nausea hit.
It rolled through him like a punch. He forced himself toward the bathroom on instinct, knocking into everything in the way. The wall, the doorframe, the mirror, the sink.
He tried to lift, to hover, to fly, but altitude refused him. So he collapsed halfway through the doorway, sprawled over the threshold.
He tried to vomit onto the tiles. Nothing came.
The nausea didn’t ease.
It sharpened, constricted, crawled up his throat, choking him. The dry heaves kept coming, body obeying a command that had no end.
Then the pain struck.
A cracking sensation. Splintering.
As if his heart itself was tearing.
He couldn’t take it. Not one more beat.
He grabbed at the tether at his own chest, and tried to rip it out, to uproot it from his body.
He pulled with everything he had, nails scraping skin, magic flaring reckless and useless.
He didn’t care about consequences.
He didn’t care about damage.
He just needed it to stop.
Just stop.
Please.
Please.
A raw sound tore from his throat. A scream, louder than he meant, louder than he could control.
He didn’t care who might hear. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t put up a barrier.
Not like this, not when he couldn’t even hold himself upright.
The pain didn’t let up.
He slammed his head against the floor. Once. Twice. The impact sparked white behind his eyes.
It helped a little. Just enough to drown the tether’s agony for a heartbeat.
He screamed again. Louder.
Thoughts spiraled, frantic, wrong. Things he’d never normally think, dark edges scraping the inside of his skull.
He didn’t hear the vent open.
Didn’t hear the light flaps.
Didn’t sense the surge of air until a small gasp broke through the haze.
“Stars. Kion! What happened to you?” Seraithe’s voice cut in, thin and horrified.
He blinked, vision swimming as her pink translucence blurred into view. Her cool fingers touched his shoulder.
He tried to speak to her. To warn her off, to ask for help, he didn’t know. The words wouldn’t form.
His mouth refused to shape anything but another scream. So he screamed. High, cracking, uncontrolled.
A rush of wind wrapped around him.
Seraithe’s magic, a dome of air trapping the sound inside the room.
“Hold on,” she said, voice trembling. “Hold on, I’m calling the others.”
Pulses of wind shot out from her, one after another.
He didn’t know who she summoned. He didn’t care. He only needed the pain to stop.
He thrashed against the floor, against the air, yelling and slamming and curling and unfurling.
Whatever the tether demanded, he obeyed. Fighting it had slipped out of reach.
Seraithe lifted him with a swirl of wind, just enough to keep him from hurting himself worse.
Time blurred after that.
Minutes?
Longer?
He couldn’t tell.
More fairies arrived. Flutters, murmurs, hands trying to hold him down, trying to keep him still.
His vision jumped from one face to another, all distorted by magic, tears, light.
“I’m sorry, Kion,” someone said.
Close. Soft. Final.
He didn’t know who.
Didn’t manage to care.
It was the last thing he heard before everything went black.
His body felt sluggish the moment his lashes fluttered open, sluggish in a way that didn’t feel entirely his.
Every limb dragged behind the thought of moving, slow and uncooperative, as if he were surfacing through syrup.
There was no pain.
No physical pain, at least.
His chest still felt split, pried open by something that wasn’t quite emotion but wasn’t entirely magic either. A dull, devastated ache lived there, steady and hollow, nothing like the violent tearing from earlier.
This was aftermath. Echo. Residue.
He tried to sit.
Only managed a twitch of effort before his body refused, sinking heavier into the cushions beneath him.
Stone. He felt like stone. He could curl his fingers slowly, sluggishly, but his arms didn’t rise. His wings lay slack against the sofa, unresponsive.
Jura’s magic settled like packed earth. Heavy, grounding, cool enough to still the tremor.
Leta’s flowed instead, warm and dense, curling around him like deep water.
But right now his head was packed full of fog, damp and buzzing and soft around the edges. Even mana signatures blurred into the same haze.
If this fog also muted the tether’s bite, he wasn’t about to complain.
Let it dull everything. Let it smother the pieces that still throbbed.
He dragged his gaze upward, slow, unfocused.
Seraithe’s home.
He recognized the carved shelves, the way she stuffed too many wind chimes into too small a space, the faint sweet-salt scent her room always carried.
He lay on her sofa, the same place he’d crashed during sleepovers, the same one she kept a blanket folded on “in case an intruder feels too comfortable in my home,” she’d once teased.
The familiarity eased something in him.
Not the pain, but the panic that previously came with it.
He closed his eyes again, letting the room steady itself around him.
Breathed in. Waited until the breath left him without shaking.
When he tried to turn his head, it obeyed, barely. Enough to shift his view toward the window cutouts carved into the tree wall.
Moonlight spilled through in thin beams, softening the shadows into a pale silver wash.
Outside, insects hummed. A distant trill answered.
Windward Garden was always gentle at night. Quiet paths, quiet wings. No Bronze council staffs prowling this far into office overtime.
Seraithe herself was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t hear her moving either.
Likely asleep. She always slept early unless disturbed.
Whoever had stabilized him, either Jura or Leta, would have layered the sedation deep enough to keep him unconscious through the night.
He must’ve woken in the middle of it.
That explained the fog, the heaviness, the soft numbness around every thought.
Then the tether brushed him.
Not painfully. Not like earlier, when it had constricted so violently he thought it would crack his ribs apart.
Tonight it touched more like... a thread drawn across skin.
A quiet call. A reminder. As if the entire afternoon had been a fever he’d imagined.
He let his breath shake out on the exhale. Slowly, dazedly, he lifted the idea of “reaching back,” and the tether accepted the thought before he could shape it.
He apologized. Wordless, instinctive, half-formed through the haze. A mental bowing of the head.
A reassurance that he hadn’t meant to tear it out. That he wasn’t abandoning it. That he still didn’t see it as a mistake.
That he was sorry.
The tether warmed. Spread through his chest in a slow ripple, settling like a blanket over skin still too cold from sedation.
It felt like being held. Like the echo of her arms earlier. Like something he desperately wanted to believe in.
Or... maybe that was his mind trying to fill the gaps where her presence should be.
Maybe the tether was still trying to crawl deeper into his thoughts, take advantage of the fog softening his defenses.
His eyelids dipped, heavy, weighted more by magic than exhaustion.
The pull toward sleep thickened. The haze cushioned everything.
The ache, the fear, the guilt.
Even so, even knowing all that...
He still believed, on some instinctive level, that the tether wanted to protect him too. That it was reaching not to choke but to hold.
Was that true?
He didn’t know.
And right now?
He didn’t care.
Not tonight.
