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Kaia

I need silence.

Not the comfortable quiet that comes with trusted company, but the kind of silence that doesn’t ask questions or offer solutions. The kind that lets you fall apart without witnesses.

Four days of Callum’s careful observations and helpful suggestions have left me feeling like I’m being studied under glass.

Four days of watching Patricia’s formations deteriorate while pretending not to notice.

Four days of Kieran’s distance and the growing certainty that I’m losing pieces of myself I can’t name.

The bonds in my chest hum with tension, a web pulled so taut it might snap if anyone breathes wrong. I need space. I need water. I need to remember what it feels like to be alone with my own thoughts.

The lake spreads before me like black glass, reflecting the last traces of sunset in shades of deep purple and gold. It’s perfect—isolated, quiet, mercifully empty. I wade in slowly, letting the cold water shock some clarity back into my system .

My shadows drift nearby, uncertain. They hover at the water’s edge like they’re afraid to follow, their usual protective instincts confused by my need for solitude. Even Mouse has remained at camp, sensing that this grief is something I need to carry alone.

I sink deeper, letting the water rise to my chest, my throat, until I’m floating in silence broken only by gentle lapping against the shore. For the first time in days, I can breathe without feeling like I’m performing for an invisible audience.

That’s when I hear footsteps behind me.

“Whoever you are,” I call without turning around, “I need a few more minutes.”

The footsteps don’t retreat. Don’t pause. They continue with deliberate, measured precision until they stop at the water’s edge.

I turn, expecting to see Torric’s concerned scowl or Finn’s worried grin.

Instead, I find Callum standing at the shoreline, his silver eyes taking in my exposed shoulders, the way the water clings to my skin, with an assessment that makes my stomach clench.

“You need to leave,” I say, my voice sharper than intended. “Now.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away. Just studies me with the same calculating attention he’s been giving everything else for the past four days.

“You thought hiding in water would protect you?” His voice carries an odd note of amusement, like I’ve done something predictably foolish.

“I’m not hiding.” But even as I say it, I know it’s a lie. “I came here to be alone.”

“Did you?” He steps closer to the water’s edge, close enough that I can’t rise without putting myself within his reach. “Or did you come here because the bonds are starting to hurt? ”

The question hits like ice water, stealing my breath. How could he possibly know about the ache that’s been building in my chest? The way the connections feel strained, wrong, like they’re pulling in directions that don’t make sense?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do.” His smile is gentle, almost kind. It makes my skin crawl. “You feel it every time you look at them. The certainty that something’s missing. That someone’s missing.”

My heart starts to race, water suddenly feeling too cold against my skin. “Get out of here, Callum.”

“You think it’s all about love,” he continues, ignoring my demand. “That they chose you. That you chose them.” He pauses, letting the words settle. “But your final bond? That was chosen long before you were born.”

The world tilts, reality sliding sideways like I’m looking at it through broken glass. “What?”

“It’s Darian.”

The name hits like a physical blow, sending shockwaves through the bonds in my chest. The connection I’ve been trying to ignore, trying to bury beneath the others, flares to life with painful intensity.

“That’s not possible,” I whisper, but my body betrays me. The bond pulses, recognizing truth in his words even as my mind rejects it.

“He was made for it. Just like you.” Callum’s voice is matter-of-fact, clinical. “Light and shadow. Control and chaos. Did you really think your connection to him was an accident? A leftover from academy drama?”

I’m shaking now, water around me starting to respond to my agitation with small, dark ripples.

“He’s not a scar, Kaia. He’s the key. ”

“The key to what?” The question tears from my throat like a scream.

His smile widens, and for the first time since I’ve known him, it reaches his eyes. “You’re the one who opens the gate. And he’s the one who makes sure you do.”

The words feel like prophecy, like riddles wrapped in certainty I don’t understand. But the bond—god, the bond—it recognizes something in what he’s saying. It pulls, sharp and insistent, toward something I can’t see but feel in my bones.

“Alekir bound you before either of you could walk,” Callum continues, his voice soft with mock sympathy. “You were never supposed to choose him. You were supposed to need him.”

The revelation shatters something inside me. Not my heart—something deeper. The foundation I’ve been building my choices on, the belief that what I feel, what we all feel, is real and chosen and ours .

“No.” The word comes out broken. “No, that’s not—”

“Isn’t it?” He tilts his head, studying my reaction. “Every choice you’ve made, every bond you’ve formed—did you really choose them? Or did they choose you because they had to? Because something in them recognized what you are?”

I can’t breathe. Can’t think past the horrible logic of his words, the way they fit too neatly with fears I’ve been carrying since the bonds first formed.

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?” He turns to leave, his purpose apparently served. “Ask yourself this, Kaia—if it’s all real, if it’s all choice, why does the thought of him still make you ache? Why does saying his name feel like coming home to something you never chose to leave? ”

And then he’s gone, leaving me alone with the wreckage of everything I thought I knew.

I stand frozen in the water, his words echoing in my head like a curse. The bond—the one I’ve been fighting, denying, trying to bury—pulses with recognition. With need. With the terrible certainty that maybe, just maybe, he’s right.

“No.” I say it to the water, to the sky, to the silence that offers no answers. “No. No. No.”

But my magic responds anyway, shadows exploding from the lake bottom like something buried has finally clawed its way to the surface. The water churns around me, dark and violent, responding to chaos I can’t control.

I scream—raw, desperate, furious—and my shadows explode outward like something buried has finally clawed its way to the surface.

Ice spreads from where I stand, Aspen’s power bleeding through our bond uninvited, turning the lake’s surface into a fractured mirror of black water and white frost. My shadows writhe beneath the ice, wild and directionless, feeding off my grief and rage.

The magic rips through me, wild and uncontrolled, until I’m drowning in shadows and ice that shouldn’t be mine. Until I sink beneath the surface and wrap my arms around herself and wish I could disappear entirely.

That’s how Malrik finds me.

Not running toward the chaos—walking.

Like he felt the exact moment my world ended and came to witness the aftermath. He wades into the water fully clothed, his expensive boots squelching in the mud, his silver eyes never leaving mine .

He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask what happened or try to fix what’s broken. He just kneels in the water in front of me, opens his arms, and waits.

“I don’t know if I’m meant for any of you,” I whisper, the words scraping my throat raw. “But I need you right now.”

He breathes my name like a vow—“Kaia”—and reaches for me.

And I let him.

His arms close around me, solid and warm and real in ways that make the bonds sing instead of ache. The water swirls around us, still touched with residual magic, but it feels less chaotic now. Less like drowning, more like being held by something larger than myself.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs against my hair, and for the first time since Callum spoke, I believe that something might actually be mine to keep.

Even if I never chose it.

Even if it was always meant to be.