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‘Thought you might want it back, or that maybe you should give it back to Adrienne…’

The furrow in Wilder’s brow deepened. ‘Adrienne?’

‘Oh.’ Thea flushed. ‘I just assumed it was hers… From before. It’s fine, I just —’

Wilder couldn’t help the broad grin that broke across his face. ‘You mean all this time you thought I was carrying around a jewel that belonged to a former —’

‘I didn’t know what to think!’

Wilder laughed. ‘Thea, this belonged to Talemir’s mother.’

Thea’s blush deepened further. ‘Oh.’

Shaking his head and still chuckling, Wilder pocketed the sapphire. ‘Apparently she gave it to him when they had to part, and told him that “Sometimes, to love someone, we have to let them go”. He then gave it to me when I left him in Naarva, angry at him and raging at the world. Suppose I’d better give it back after all these years. Unless you’d like to keep it?’

‘Not really my style, Warsword.’

‘I didn’t think so.’

‘You probably should give it back,’ Thea said, her cheeks still tipped pink.

Wilder loved her even more in that moment, and moved to wrap his arm around her, but this time, he couldn’t hide his grimace of pain.

Thea perched herself behind him on the back of the bench, hands finding his shoulders and beginning to knead the tense muscles there. Wilder moaned, the sensation of instant relaxation sweeping over him as she worked through his knotted upper back.

‘I do like coaxing those noises out of you,’ Thea murmured in his ear, digging her thumbs right into a tender spot that needed loosening.

Wilder closed his eyes, savouring the relief her touch offered. She seemed to know exactly from where each hurt stemmed, her strong fingers rubbing firm circles through all of his aches.

As a good kind of pain bloomed through his shoulders and down his spine, he started to decompress from the day, from the pressure he’d forced onto himself as he’d trained his unit into a similar state of exhaustion. He knew it wasn’t just the lack of movement in the tower’s cells that had him struggling – it was the drugs they’d misted over him time and time again; it was the lack of nourishment and water. It was everything.

‘Fuck,’ he muttered, raking his fingers through his hair as Thea continued the massage. Her hands moved over his back expertly, like she knew every dip and hollow, every tightly coiled cluster of muscles.

‘It’s going to be alright,’ she said quietly.

How can it be? Wilder wanted to ask her, so badly that the words were burning on the tip of his tongue. But he bit them back. She had rescued him from those horrors, mere days after facing her own nightmares in the Rite – things that still plagued her dreams now – and yet here she was, comforting him. How had he faced so much in his life, only to come undone now?

Wilder didn’t reply. Instead, he looped his arms behind him, wrapping them around the backs of her legs, pulling her close to him. All the while, her fingers worked the tension from his muscles as they looked out onto the quiet courtyard, where ivy and midnight roses rustled in the cool breeze.

Moments later, Dratos came jogging towards them from the main building, his wings tucked tightly behind him. ‘You seen Ry?’ he called.

‘Not since this morning,’ Thea replied.

Wilder shook his head when the shadow-touched ranger reached them.

‘Shit,’ Dratos replied. ‘Tal and Drue can’t find him. No one’s seen him…’ There was no mistaking the note of panic in his voice.

Thea gave Wilder’s shoulders a firm squeeze before reaching for her boots. ‘We’ll help you look.’

Wilder launched himself onto his feet. ‘Where have you looked so far? Does he have any favourite hiding spots?’ He could only imagine the sheer terror gripping Talemir and Drue. They were both seasoned warriors, but a missing child was a different kind of fear altogether.

‘All checked,’ Dratos told them with a grimace.

Thea finished with her laces and faced Dratos, a determined gleam in her eyes. ‘We’ll find him.’

Dratos nodded stiffly. ‘We’ve searched the entire building from top to bottom,’ he said. ‘Though a fresh set of eyes might be all we —’

A bone-rattling explosion sounded, shattering the tranquillity of the quadrangle in one fell swoop. It seemed to emerge from the very depths of the underworld, a thunderous blast that echoed through the air.