A Light and Shadow's Kiss
Danger clung outside the sanctum. The campus of the Academy, so brimming with teenagers' energy and arrogant smugness on any given day, lay still, foreboding. Elira stood at the crystal-glass windows of the Eastern Watchtower, the harsh wind tearing through her wild hair. Her fingers continued to shake, not with cold—but with what she saw in Kael's memory.
What the Void found.
His suffering.
His sacrifice.
The brutal wails of a lost world wallowing in the darkness. The tiny, broken child clinging to nothing but hatred and the whispers of a name no one would ever speak.
She placed a hand on her heart. It ached—not of fear, but of something deeper. Of sadness and stubborn defenderness she hadn't even known she'd lived. No one had told her to be someone else's to bear their weight as well.
She knew now why Kael had constructed walls so high.
And why, despite those walls, her heart still ached for him.
"Are you ever going to stand up?" Kael's voice cut through her haze.
Elira spun round, surprised. He stood in the doorway, his arms folded, but the tense jaw line gave away the mood. The black cape flowing at his back unfolded wide as wings, and the shadows that clung to his presence unwound and curled round him like the coils of a snake. She was accustomed to embracing it—the otherworldly beauty of his physique. But today, it was different.
He was. exhausted.
Tired, as by a blow to deep.
"I waited for you," she breathed. "You left without words."
"I didn't wish for you to recall me so."
"Too late."
They stood there. Kael moved forward into the illumination of the window. The silver mark of their union glowed gently at the base of his throat. Elira's eyes went to it, and then to him.
"You saw it all, didn't you?" he said.
She nodded.
He did not look away. "Then you know what I really am."
"You're Kael," she cut in curtly. "That hasn't changed."
He looked at her as if attempting to discover a falsehood in what she was saying, some thread of fear or distaste.
"There's more where that came from," he said to her. "The Council won't stop after this. They know we're not a fluke."
"I don't care what they think. I care about what we do next."
Kael blinked. The words surprised her, even to herself. But they were true. The Academy would blame her, the nobles would mock her, and the Council would fear her—but this bond with him was not magical accident. It was fate—or at least rebellion. Either way, she made up her mind now.
He came up to her in slow, deliberate steps. "You're changing," he said.
"Good. I'm tired of being a joke."
He smiled, a short, anguished curl of the corner of his mouth. "You were never a joke. You were a storm waiting to come alive."
She gazed up at him, and in this moment all that bottled-up anguish that had been wound like a snake these past few days finally burst forth straight through. Her hand wrapped around his. His around hers.
"Thanks," she whispered, her voice barely above the quiet hush of air between them. "For believing in me. For allowing me to carry your grief."
"I didn't have any choice."
"That's not true."
His eyes dropped to her mouth. And before he could get his taut legs to move—or before she could think for longer than a second about it—he took a step forward and kissed her.
It was not hungry. It was not hungry. It was still. It was soft.
A question, not a claim.
A statement, not a possession.
And Elira replied to it.
Her loose hand slid up along the plane of his cheek, resting there gently. Light waves traveled on her fingertips, a warm gentle summons to the gentle thrum of his darkness. Once—twice—their rapport beat, and then it developed its own rhythm like a heartbeat.
They shattered when they did, in silence. They did not have to.
But the moment could not be held back.
A deafening boom tore through the stillness. A white-faced, panting professor stood before the tower. "You must go at once. Both of you."
Kael's expression went icy. "What is it?"
"It's Headmaster Varien. He's fallen. And there's something. glowing in the Vault."
Elira exchanged a bitter look with Kael. The Vault held the oldest relics of Arcanis—wards and swords tied to forgotten prophecies ancient times.
"Take us there," Kael barked.
They followed in its wake, their footsteps off stone halls. They nudged students out of the way to let them through, their whispers. Whispers followed them like ghosts.
"Is she with him again…"
"Void-tainted girl…"
"Do you see that mark on her neck? Spreading."
Elira no longer flinched.
They stepped into the Vault, shielded by twin statues of starstone. The doors—ordinarily closed by six spells—were slightly ajar. Inside, the chamber radiated with a gold light. In the center, the Headmaster was unconscious, his fists holding aloft a glass sphere floating over his chest.
"Is he—" Elira began.
"Alive," the professor stated. "But something's not right. The sphere glowed when he touched it. And only responds to certain bloodlines."
Kael's eyes widened. "What bloodlines?"
"Aetherion," the professor whispered.
Elira's blood ran cold.
"That's impossible," she stated.
But the sphere flashed again—once, twice—as if calling to her. Her mark burned through her skin.
Kael took her wrist. "You don't have to—"
"I do."
She went on. As her fingertips rested on the orb, it shattered.
Gold script unraveling on walls. The blaze ringed the ceiling and streamed a path over onto an etched message upon the domed ceiling of the room.
"The soul-bond will open the way," Kael read. "Bound light and void will bring deliverance. or destruction."
Shrieking voices now filled the room—ghostly, tiered.
The prophecy stirred.
And Elira Thorne had lit only something ancient. Something that watched.
Something waiting.