“You glow in your sleep,” Kael replied, keeping his voice low. “It’s not exactly subtle.”
Kael leaned back against the wall, letting the silence stretch. Outside, a wagon clattered over wet cobblestones. Somewhere distant, a dog barked. Normal sounds. Human sounds. They felt obscene against the fragile strangeness sitting cross-legged on a pile of sacks in front of him.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she turned and led him into the abandoned weaver’s loft, her bare feet leaving faint, glowing prints on the rotten floorboards that faded after a few seconds. True Bond -Ch.1 Part 5- -Cloudlet-
For one impossible second, he had felt what she felt: the hollow ache of a stolen childhood, the razor-sharp focus of a mind hunted for ten years, and beneath it all, a small, fierce warmth. A memory of sunlight through leaves. A lullaby hummed in a language he didn’t know. It had lasted less than a heartbeat, but it had carved itself into his chest like a brand.
Kael shifted, and the old floorboard groaned. Lian’s eyes snapped open—clear, dark, and utterly alert. She didn’t sit up, but her body tensed like a wire. “You glow in your sleep,” Kael replied, keeping
Spectral residue , he realized. From the moment she had touched him last night.
Kael stared at her open palm. At the soft, luminous thing hovering just above her skin. Every instinct he had—every lesson from the Academy, every scar from the field—screamed at him to refuse. To keep his distance. To treat her as a source, an asset, a problem to be solved. Somewhere distant, a dog barked
“Now you know,” she whispered. “The real me. The one they made and threw away.”