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“Wonderful,” he gushed, teeth only slightly gritted.

“Tolek, you need to be honest with me,” she said.

“I am,” he shot back. “I am truly fine, Santorina. The salves are welcome after hours of riding, and the stretching is necessary, but I feel okay.”

Their voices faded as I sat before the fire, fiddling with my necklace. Beside me, my sister twisted a ring around her finger, a bright pink gem catching the light.

“Jez?” I asked, and she hummed in response. “What happened with Erista?”

Jezebel’s spine straightened as she was pulled from her thoughts. Her eyes flickered across our group, over Cyph and Vale staunchly ignoring each other and Tol and Rina bickering vividly.

“We had a fight.” She spoke slowly, like she didn’t want to admit it. “We fought a lot in the days leading up to her return to their territory. She wanted me to go with her. I wanted her to stay with me. Both of us knew it wasn’t really a choice.”

Duty came before love in times like these. It was the standard excuse. But it shouldn’t be.

“You could have gone with her,” I encouraged.

“No,” she denied, shaking her head, but it was clear her heart was in the desert. “After father…I wanted to be with you. I wanted to see through what we’ve started and uphold my promise to protect each other.”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but I knew one thing. “He’d want you to be happy, Jez. And I’m sorry, but I can tell you aren’t without her.”

“We’ve written,” she clarified. “It’s…tense. After so long of being apart, then finally being together, going back to the distance is hard. And I don’t know if we’d be writing at all if it weren’t for the emblems.” A non-committal nod of her head. “But it’s something.”

Spirits, I wanted more for her than strained communication. I wanted her to bask in the love I’d seen between them. The one I thought was bringing her back from her dark place, with the girl who’d stood by her all those years during the war.

“Why did she have to return?”

“To prepare. Their Animasse is approaching.” The Soulguider version of our Undertaking. “It’s imperative for the potential heirs of the noble families to prepare and conquer.”

The only thing I could see coming between two warriors as fierce as my sister and Erista was loyalty to their families. Hopefully they’d reconcile because I knew they each considered the other to be a true piece of that family. Spirits, I missed Erista, and not only for the way she helped my sister.

“You’ll be okay,” I said, pulling her into my side. “I promise.”

She looked up at me with large tawny eyes bathed in uncertainty, and it tore at my heart. Her mouth opened on a thought, but she seemed to reconsider and closed it.

Behind us, Tolek cursed colorfully, and I shook my head.

“What’s going on with you two?” Jezebel asked.

My head tilted. “What do you mean?”

She leaned away, giving me a look as she pulled her knees in, rested her elbow on one, and propped her chin in her hand. A picture of innocent curiosity.

“We’ve set…boundaries,” I explained carefully, and Jezebel released a small laugh. “What?”

“Boundaries?” Jezebel’s brows raised.

I cast her a glare. She rolled her eyes in return, and for a moment it felt normal. Like we were back to our old, undamaged selves, bickering in the family sparring circuit.

“Ophelia, subtlety has never been Tolek’s strong suit, and patience has never been yours. It’s clear how you feel. You move like a string ties you together. Why boundaries?”

It was such a blatant question, such a boiled down explanation of what Tolek and I were, I almost felt foolish for my reservations. But my chest was crowded, a pressure mounting between my ribs.

I wasn’t ready to give that part of myself to him. Not because I didn’t trust him or didn’t want to—cursed Spirits, I wanted to more than anything—but I didn’t feel whole after everything I’d been through. I’d rushed it in the bathing chamber on Daminius, consumed by our isolation from the world, and the battle had changed everything. Had been an alarm in my head reminding me how fragile we all were. That healing was worth the wait.

And something was haunting Tolek, something in those nightmares had been amplified after his coma. He deserved every good thing the world had to offer, and I wouldn’t force broken pieces of myself into his hands when he was facing so much. Intimacy was something I’d used as a crutch before. I wanted better than escapism for us.

A piece of me was scared to voice my feelings, to make them matter that way when everyone was dealing with their own troubles. I was still trying to find the right words to explain the pain I went through after Malakai. Trying to understand why I was afraid now. So instead, I stretched a hand to that ring Jezebel fiddled with.