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“Would you like one?” I hold up the bottle of MountainSpirit.

She shakes her head. “No, thank you. I …” Her tongue licks across her lips. “Will you show me?”

I pause, glass halfway to my lips, a momentary stillness that betrays my surprise. “Show you what?”

“Your power. The shadow.” Her eyes meet mine. “I’ve seen some. The raven, the way you created a shelter in the desert, the way you …” She licks her lips. “What you did in the mountains. But I want to understand what it is. Not just what it can do, but what it means to you.”

The request catches me off-guard. Most fear what flows through my veins, even those who fight by my side. Yet she asks to witness it, as though understanding my nature is essential to understanding me.

But my power is not a trick to be played with. Not something to be paraded for idle curiosity. It is a weapon and a tool, but more than that, it’s an extension of self. But there’s something about the way she’s looking at me, the silver flecks in her eyes catching the lamplight, that makes me want to break my own rules. To let someone see not just what I can do, but what I am.

Setting my glass down, I extend my hand, palm up. Shadows seep from it like smoke, darkness bleeding from my veins, elegant tendrils spiraling into form. The familiar cold clarity washes through me as the darkness solidifies into my raven, its feathers inky black, eyes gleaming. It’s the simplest manifestation of my power.

But that isn’t what she asked for. I let my restraint slip, just a fraction.

The shadows stir and deepen, rising higher along my arms, across my shoulders, spilling in restless patterns across the floor. Newshapes appear in the dark. Creatures half-formed, humanoid outlines blurred by distance, buildings crumbling at their edges. And in their midst: a blade. A broken crown. A ring.

Moments in history I don’t speak aloud. Reminders of what the shadows remember, even when I’d rather forget.

Her lips part on a silent gasp. But the fear I expect doesn’t come. Instead, she takes a step closer. Then another. Close enough that I can see the reflection of the raven, and the shifting darkness around it, mirrored in her eyes.

“It’s beautiful.” Wonder fills her voice. Not fear. Not revulsion. Wonder.

The raven preens beneath her attention, spreading its wings to cast long shadows that move across the chamber walls. The other shapes dissolve back into smoke.

Strange.

What makes most recoil in fear only draws her closer. Another way she defies the pattern of things.

Then, before I can stop her, she reaches out, her fingertips grazing the raven's wing where shadow becomes almost-substance.

My shadows twist. The air contracts around us. Instinct pulls tight, an order to sever the flow, pull the raven back.

Too late.

The world fractures.

A shockwave rips through me—throughus—fierce, blinding, a collision of forces I didn’t anticipate. My breath locks in my throat as something deeper than sight, touch,reason,ignites between us.

Connection.

Not physical. Not even magical in any way I've known before, but something soul-deep, primal, inescapable. A bridge spanning the chasm between separate minds.

She gasps. So do I. The sound is identical, the same breath, the same sound, as if for one infinite moment, we are the same being experiencing the same revelation.

Because I am inside her mind. Andsheis insidemine.

Iseeher. Not just the surface, not just the determined set of her jaw, or the stubborn glint in her eye, but everything beneath. The bone-deep confusion that keeps her awake at night. The grief she does not allow herself to name for the world and life she fears are lost forever. The desperate, clawing need to understand, to survive, to hold on to whatever control she can grasp in a reality that constantly shifts beneath her feet.

Andsheseesme.

She sees everything I keep buried beneath layers of control. The crushing weight of my decisions. The burden of every life I hold in my hands—those I've sacrificed and those I've saved. The ruthless calculations running behind my every action, every word, every gesture.

Loneliness so deep it's carved itself permanently into my bones, a solitude I accepted as the necessary price for power and purpose.

But worse, she feelswhat I see in her. The way I've studied her. The way I've watched her. The way I've measured her value against my needs. The cold assessment and the unwanted warmth that follows it.

We are utterly exposed, secrets laid bare in a heartbeat that lastsfor an eternity, defenses shattered by something neither of us could have prepared for.