Kael didn't sleep.
Sleep was for men who had homes, and peace, and the luxury of silence in their heads.
Even if he had wanted it and he didn't sleep didn't come. Every time he closed his eyes, the chains around his wrists and ankles pulsed with a heat that wasn't fire. Not pain, exactly. Something older. It sang against his bones in low, thrumming hums that vibrated just beneath thought.
It kept him suspended somewhere between waking and the edge of dreams.
And that edge was dangerous.
Because when he drifted too close, it wasn't his own dreams that greeted him.
It was Sylen's.
Flashes, slipping through the cracks of his consciousness like water through a shattered window:
A willow tree, heavy with silver leaves, bathed in moonlight.
A scream that wasn't his but landed behind his ribs.
Hands he didn't recognize, reaching for someone already gone.
A warmth at his back. Familiar. Comforting.
Gone before he could name it.
He woke with clenched fists and a throat scraped raw from silence.
The cell was the same: stone walls slick with cold, the stench of old magic clinging like sweat to the air, the single torch burning low on the far wall. Light spilled unevenly across the floor, flickering over faded runes etched into the stone like scars. His wrists ached where the glyph-chains rubbed raw, but he barely noticed anymore.
His focus was on the other presence in the room.
Across the chamber, Sylen had moved.
The fae now faced away from him, sitting in the corner where the torchlight couldn't quite reach. His spine was straight, too straight ridges like fine bone sculpture beneath his pale skin. His silver hair draped over one shoulder, catching a glint of light. He looked like a statue chiseled by some god who had grown bored halfway through and left him unfinished.
His breathing was slow. Deliberate. Like the ocean after a storm, trying to remember how to be still.
Kael's voice cut through the quiet.
"You're leaking into me."
Sylen didn't turn.
"The bond is awakening," he said, voice like frost brushing glass. "It's to be expected."
"I don't want your memories in my head."
A pause.
Then: "You think I want yours?"
Sylen's tone sharpened not louder, but harder, a blade rather than a whisper.
"You think I want to feel your grief choking me every time I try to breathe? I can't even close my eyes without seeing your war. Your brother. His face when he fell. The smell of iron and smoke and... guilt."
Kael flinched. He hated that he did, but the words landed true.
"I didn't ask for this," he muttered, shifting upright. The chains hummed in warning as he moved. Another pulse of pain. Duller this time, more familiar.
"Neither did I."
Kael stood, teeth clenched against the throb that moved like liquid fire down his arms. He didn't cry out. He would never give Sylen the satisfaction. But the burn made his knees falter as he staggered toward the low iron bars separating their halves of the cell.
"Then end it," Kael said. "Break the bond."
Finally, Sylen turned.
His movements were smooth, fluid, as if time had learned to slow for him. His face sharp-jawed, high-cheeked, beautiful in the way all dangerous things were tilted slightly as he looked up.
In his eyes, Kael saw something more than arrogance.
Exhaustion.
Fury.
And something quieter, buried beneath centuries.
Something Kael didn't have a name for.
"Magic this old doesn't break," Sylen said softly. "It unravels."
Kael frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means it's slow. It means it's painful. It means it will take blood. And trust."
Kael laughed. Bitter. Hollow.
"Then we're doomed."
Sylen stepped forward. His chains dragged softly across the floor like wind through snow. The glow from the glyphs shifted from red to blue for a breath, then settled back to a quiet pulse.
They stood a mere breath apart now. Close enough that Kael could see the lines beneath Sylen's eyes, the small crack of a half-healed cut across his collarbone. Battle damage. Magic-born.
Sylen didn't break eye contact.
"You hate me because I'm fae," he said.
Kael didn't deny it.
Sylen's voice dropped. "And I hate you because you remind me I was foolish enough to believe peace was possible."
Their gazes locked again swordpoints without motion. Neither willing to move. Neither willing to retreat.
But something changed in the silence that followed.
Something shifted.
A pulse soft and sudden rippled through Kael's chest. It wasn't heat or pain. It was a cold warmth, a paradox, like stepping into moonlit water barefoot, like memory surfacing when it isn't wanted. His heartbeat stutteredslowed then synced to something not his own.
His breath hitched.
"I felt it," he whispered.
Sylen's voice was barely a breath. "You will again."
Kael leaned back before he could stop himself, spine meeting cold stone. He turned his head away, eyes burning with the weight of something that wasn't entirely anger anymore.
The bond wasn't dormant.
It was watching.
Listening.
Feeding on proximity and hatred and history.
Kael's voice was rough. "This... thing. It's in our heads."
"It's in our souls," Sylen corrected.
Kael swallowed hard. "Then what happens when it goes deeper?"
Sylen looked away first this time. "I don't know."
Neither of them spoke for a long while.
The silence stretched between them like thread drawn taut, thinner by the breath. Not peaceful. Not safe. But not as hostile as it once had been.
Kael slid down the wall until he sat against it, knees bent, head tipped back. The torchlight danced above them, casting shadows across the curve of the ceiling. His body still ached, but the pain was duller now. Muted. As though the bond had fed on it and grown fat.
"You said it takes blood," Kael murmured. "And trust."
Sylen looked up. "Yes."
Kael scoffed. "Then we're fucked."
A ghost of a smile curved Sylen's mouth. "Utterly."
Kael closed his eyes for a moment. He didn't want to see the cell. Didn't want to see the shimmer of magic in the air between them. But behind his eyelids, new images sparked to life.
Not his memories.
A hand holding a shard of ice, trembling. A lullaby sung in a language Kael didn't understand. A promise made under stars he'd never seen.
Kael opened his eyes again.
The torch was dying.
Sylen had turned away, his breath slow and steady once more. Meditating. Or pretending to.
Kael let the silence settle again, but this time it was different.
Not peace.
But the beginning of something.
Something fragile and terrifying and inevitable.
"Then we'd better find a way," Kael said at last, voice low, "to survive each other."
And this time
Sylen said nothing.
But he didn't argue.