The dock district operation went wrong in the third minute.
They'd breached the warehouse successfully, disabled the first wave of cultists efficiently, and were moving toward the corruption node when a hidden guard triggered an alarm. Suddenly, what should have been a quick extraction became a running battle through stacks of crates and shipping containers.
Kaelen took a cultist's blade across his ribs—not deep enough to be fatal, but deep enough to hurt like hell and bleed profusely. He powered through on adrenaline and Soulrender's absorbed energy, but by the time they'd secured the site and performed the resonance cleansing, he was light-headed from blood loss.
"You need medical attention," Lia said sharply when she saw his blood-soaked shirt. "Now."
"I'm fine," Kaelen lied.
"You're pale, swaying, and leaving a blood trail. You're the opposite of fine." She grabbed his arm—careful to avoid the injured side—and steered him toward the exit. "Ronan, we're extracting early. Kaelen's injured."
"How bad?" Ronan's voice crackled through the communication crystal.
"Bad enough," Lia replied. "We'll head to the safe house. Send a healer if you have one available."
"All healers are deployed to the other two operations. You'll have to manage with mundane first aid."
"Understood. Out."
The safe house was a small apartment three blocks from the docks, maintained by the Shadow Hunter network for exactly these situations. Lia practically carried Kaelen up the stairs, his weight increasingly leaning on her as the adrenaline wore off and the pain made itself known.
Inside, the apartment was spartanBasic furniture, a bathroom, and a bedroom with medical supplies stashed in a lockbox. Lia sat Kaelen on the bed and immediately began pulling out bandages, antiseptic, and needle and thread.
"Shirt off," she commanded.
Kaelen tried to comply but found his coordination lacking. His fingers fumbled with the buttons, slippery with blood.
"Here, let me." Lia's hands replaced his, efficiently unbuttoning and peeling away the ruined shirt. Her touch was clinical, professional, but Kaelen was acutely aware of how close she was, how her fingers brushed against his skin as she worked.
The shirt came away, revealing the gash across his ribs. It was uglier than Kaelen had thought—about six inches long, deep enough to need stitches.
"Damn," Lia breathed. "You said you were fine."
"I said a lot of things. Being truthful wasn't one of them."
"Clearly." She poured antiseptic on a cloth. "This is going to hurt."
It did. The antiseptic burned like liquid fire, and Kaelen hissed through clenched teeth as Lia cleaned the wound. Her hands were steady, practiced, moving with the confidence of someone who'd done field medicine before.
"Where did you learn this?" Kaelen asked, partly to distract himself from the pain.
"Master Elena insisted all her students know basic medical treatment. Said rune mages who couldn't handle blood had no business studying forbidden artifacts." Lia threaded a needle. "This part will hurt worse. Try not to move."
The first stitch was agony. The second was worse. By the third, Kaelen had grabbed the bedframe to keep from flinching away.
"I'm sorry," Lia murmured, her concentration absolute. "I'm trying to be quick."
"You're doing fine," Kaelen managed. "I'm just... not great with needles."
"Most people aren't." Another stitch. "Although most people don't carry cursed swords that eat souls, so your pain tolerance is probably higher than average."
"Doesn't feel like it right now."
Lia worked in focused silence for several minutes, her hands occasionally brushing against his skin as she pulled the thread through. Kaelen tried not to think about how close she was, how her breath warmed his shoulder, how the tip of her tongue appeared between her lips when she concentrated particularly hard.
Finally, she tied off the last stitch and sat back. "Done. I'll need to bandage it, then you should rest."
She retrieved clean bandages and began wrapping them around his torso. This required her to reach around him, bringing her even closer, her body pressed against his side as she worked the bandage under his arm and across his back.
"Lift your arm," she instructed softly.
Kaelen obeyed, and she continued wrapping, each pass bringing her marginally closer. He could smell her now—soap and rune-ink and something uniquely Lia that he'd never noticed in combat situations. Could feel the warmth of her body against his, could see the delicate line of her collarbone where her shirt had shifted.
"Almost done," she said, her voice slightly rougher than usual.
She secured the bandage with practiced efficiency, but when she finished, she didn't immediately pull away. Instead, she stayed there, her hands resting on his shoulders, close enough that Kaelen could count the faint freckles on her cheeks.
Their eyes met.
"You scared me," Lia said quietly. "When I saw all that blood. I thought..." She swallowed. "I thought you might actually be seriously hurt."
"Takes more than a blade to kill me," Kaelen tried to joke.
"Don't." Her hands tightened on his shoulders. "Don't joke about dying. Not after everything we've been through to keep you alive."
"Lia—"
"I can't do this again," she continued, words tumbling out. "Can't watch someone I care about throw themselves into danger without regard for their own life. Master Elena did that. She kept pushing, kept sacrificing, kept telling me she'd be fine until she wasn't. And then she was gone."
"I'm not your master," Kaelen said gently. "And I'm not planning to die."
"Nobody plans to die. That's the problem." Lia's eyes were bright with unshed tears. "You just keep fighting and fighting until one day you don't come back. And I'm supposed to just... accept that? Just keep patching you up and sending you back out until—"
Kaelen pulled her into a hug, cutting off the spiral of fear and grief. She resisted for half a second, then collapsed against him, her head on his uninjured shoulder, her body shaking with suppressed emotion.
"I'm here," he said quietly. "Still here. Still breathing. Still fighting."
"For now," she whispered against his skin.
They stayed like that for a long moment, drawing comfort from proximity and touch. Kaelen could feel Lia's heartbeat against his chest, rapid and strong. Could feel her breath warming his collarbone. Could feel the tension in her body slowly unwinding as his presence reassured her that he was, in fact, alive.
When she finally pulled back, her eyes were red but dry. "Sorry. That was... unprofessional."
"Lia, we're way past professional. We passed that milestone when you nearly died purifying my Soul Scars."
"Still." She wiped her eyes self-consciously. "I shouldn't have—"
Kaelen caught her hand. "Don't apologize for caring. That's not something to be sorry for."
Their hands remained clasped. Lia looked down at them, then back up at Kaelen, something unspoken passing between them.
"You should rest," she said softly. "The stitches need time to set, and you've lost blood. I'll..." She hesitated. "I'll stay, if you want. Make sure you don't develop complications."
"I'd like that," Kaelen admitted.
Lia helped him shift properly onto the bed, arranging pillows to keep pressure off the wound. She pulled a blanket over him despite the warm summer night, her fingers lingering at the edge of the fabric.
"Thank you," Kaelen said. "For taking care of me. For..." He gestured vaguely. "Everything."
"Thank you for not dying," Lia replied. "Please continue not doing that."
"I'll add it to my list of priorities."
She smiled, and some of the tension left her features. "I'm going to clean the blood off the floor, then make some tea. Call if you need anything."
Kaelen watched her move around the small apartment, tidying and organizing with the focused energy of someone avoiding heavier thoughts. When she finally settled into the chair beside the bed, two steaming cups in hand, they sat in comfortable silence.
"Kaelen," Lia said after a while, "what we have—this partnership, this..." She searched for words. "Whatever this is. It's important to me. More important than I probably should admit."
"It's important to me too," Kaelen replied honestly.
"Good." She set down her tea. "Then promise me you'll actually tell me when you're hurt next time. No more pretending you're fine when you're bleeding out."
"I promise," Kaelen said. "And you promise to stop treating your life as disposable when you're purifying my corruption. Fair trade?"
"Fair trade," Lia agreed.
As the night deepened and exhaustion finally claimed him, Kaelen drifted to sleep with the awareness of Lia's presence beside him, steady and warm and real. When nightmares of shadow and blood tried to intrude, he could hear her breathing, feel her hand occasionally checking his forehead for fever, and the darkness retreated.
In a life defined by violence and corruption, these quiet moments of connection were the tether keeping him human.
And he would guard them as fiercely as he guarded any life he'd sworn to protect.
Perhaps more fiercely.
Because some things, he was learning, were worth more than victory.
Some things were worth everything.