Three seconds later, Aurelia Draconis opened her eyes.
And realized she had no idea who Aurelia Draconis was.
Cold hit first.
Not poetic cold. Not "winter's kiss."
Real cold—the kind that made joints ache and teeth chatter and lungs refuse to work.
Jina tried to inhale and choked.
Her throat burned. Her chest felt wrong—heavy and tight, like she'd swallowed a stone. She blinked hard, eyes watering.
Stone beneath her cheek.
Wind slicing over her skin.
She was on the ground.
Outside.
Somewhere that smelled like dust and blood and… sulfur?
Her brain fired through a checklist on instinct.
Airway. Breathing. Circulation.
She tried to push up. Her arms shook. Her muscles didn't feel like hers—too long, too weak, like she'd woken up wearing someone else's limbs.
Something wet slid down her chin.
She wiped it and stared at her fingers.
Blood.
Not a little.
Her stomach lurched.
Okay. Okay. Don't panic. You've handled worse. You've been elbow-deep in a wolf with a torn gut and—
Wolf.
The thought didn't finish before her eyes snapped to the figure kneeling beside her.
A man.
Tall. Lean. Wounded. Eyes like a wolf's.
He was staring at her like she was a ghost that had crawled back into its corpse.
"Your Highness," he said.
His voice was hoarse. Controlled. One wrong breath away from breaking.
Jina's mind stuttered.
Highness?
Her pulse hammered.
She opened her mouth to ask Where am I? and something slammed into her like a truck.
It wasn't pain.
It was information.
A flood of it—light and shape and tension—but not through her eyes.
She saw something in the air.
Threads.
Four of them, stretching away into the distance like ropes tied to her ribs.
They weren't physical. They weren't metaphor. They were there.
Jina's breath caught.
This wasn't a symptom.
This wasn't hallucination, hypoxia, shock.
This was… a connection.
Her mind tried to slot it into a category and failed.
Each thread thrummed with a living presence at the other end.
And all four were… wrong.
Jagged. Twisted. Stained.
One burned hot with fury and pride.
One shimmered with laughter that tasted like knives.
One was cold, tight, controlled—terror wrapped in logic.
One was fire. Not warm fire. Starving fire. Wild.
Then the threads yanked.
All at once.
Pain detonated in her chest so hard she saw white. She gasped and the world tilted. The man's hands shot out to catch her shoulders, gentle but firm.
"Your Highness—!"
Jina clutched at him without thinking, fingers digging into his sleeve like a lifeline.
"Don't—" she choked, not sure what she meant. Don't touch? Don't leave? Don't let this be real?
The threads thrummed again.
It didn't feel like a hand around her throat.
It felt like a knot inside her chest tightening wrong—like something meant to be anchored had slipped loose and was snapping back into place.
This isn't someone hurting me.
This is the connection itself—failing
Somewhere far away, someone screamed through the link.
Jina didn't hear it with her ears.
She felt it in her teeth.
Her vision blurred. She tasted blood again.
Breathe. Breathe. It's pain, not drowning. It's pain, not drowning.
She forced herself into sharp, shallow pulls.
The man's eyes were locked on her face like he was searching for something—recognition, proof, anything.
"Aurelia," he whispered.
The name hit her like a memory she didn't own.
Images flashed—gold walls, kneeling figures, a crown heavy on her head, hands stained red.
A voice in her skull that sounded like someone else.
Aurelia.
Jina's stomach turned.
She shook her head, small and frantic. "I—"
Her voice came out wrong. Lower. Rougher. Not hers.
"I'm not—" She swallowed. The wind stole the rest of her words.
Don't say it.
The thought was instant. Animal.
Because if she said it—if she blurted I'm not her—what happened next?
The man beside her looked dangerous in the way a guard dog looked dangerous. Controlled until it wasn't.
He was close enough to snap her neck before she could blink.
Would you kill me if you knew?
Jina didn't know him. She didn't know this world. She didn't know the rules for what possessed bodies were called here.
Demon. Curse. Imposter.
There were a lot of words people used when they wanted permission to burn you.
Jina swallowed again, forcing the panic down where it couldn't be heard.
"Who are you?" she managed instead.
For the first time, the man looked like he might fall apart.
His grip tightened just enough to steady her, not enough to trap.
"Lysander," he said.
Like the word mattered.
Like it was all he had left.
Jina stared at him.
Lysander.
The threads inside her ribs hummed again, and this time it wasn't pain.
It was… recognition.
Not hers.
Someone else's.
A quiet, aching pull that didn't fit in her chest, like a shape forced into the wrong puzzle.
Her breath stuttered.
The four threads yanked again—harder—like whatever was at the other ends had felt her wake.
Fury. Fear. Confusion. Fire.
And beneath it, a single shared truth:
They were connected to her.
They were suffering because of her.
And she had no idea how to stop it.
Jina gripped Lysander's sleeve, fingers white.
"Help me," she said, and she hated how small it sounded. "Please."
Lysander's eyes didn't soften.
They sharpened.
Like a man hearing an order he'd waited his whole life for.
"Yes," he said.
"Does it… always hurt like this?" she rasped, pressing a fist to her sternum. "The bonds."
Lysander's jaw tightened. "Not like this."
He watched her breathe, eyes hard. "You endured it before."
"Then something's wrong," she said, voice rough. "Because it feels like it's tearing me apart."
Then he looked past her shoulder, into the howling, empty Wastes.
And whispered, to himself or to the world—
"She's alive."
Jina shuddered.
The threads answered—one after another—like a pulse racing down her bones.
And far away, through four shattered bonds, something woke up screaming.
Lysander moved.
Not frantic. Not messy.
Efficient.
He slid an arm behind her shoulders and lifted her just enough to pull her into the lee of the rock. The motion jarred her ribs and she hissed through her teeth.
Pain lit the inside of her body like someone had wired her nerves wrong.
She clenched her jaw and forced her eyes to stay open.
"Don't fall asleep," she muttered automatically.
Lysander blinked, as if the words weren't what he expected from "Aurelia." "What?"
"Nothing." She swallowed. "Put me down—no, wait—just… don't drop me."
He set her back against stone, then shifted in front of her again, blocking the wind with his body like it was instinct.
Like he'd done it a thousand times.
Of course he has, a thought whispered that wasn't hers.
Jina ignored it. She couldn't afford to chase ghost thoughts right now.
"Where are we?" she asked. "And don't say it like I'm supposed to know."
His gaze flicked over the horizon. He didn't answer right away, like speaking would waste time he didn't have.
"The Shattered Wastes," he said.
The name didn't mean anything to Jina.
The way he said it did.
"Okay," she said, pretending it did. "And you—"
"I'm your shadow guard."
The words landed like a fact. No pride. No warmth. No complaint.
Shadow guard.
Jina tried to fit it into a modern box.
Bodyguard. Assigned security. Someone paid to keep her alive.
But his eyes didn't look like someone who protected a client.
They looked like someone who'd been shaped around a single purpose until there was nothing left that wasn't that purpose.
A gust slammed into the rocks. Dust sprayed across her face. She coughed and her throat burned again.
"Poison," she rasped.
Lysander's jaw tightened.
"You know?"
"I can taste it." She swallowed, forcing air through the tightness in her chest. "And I'm… cold. Too cold."
He stared at her like he was measuring the difference between this voice and the voice he knew.
"Do you remember?" he asked.
It wasn't the dramatic kind of question. It was careful. Testing a fracture.
"Remember what?" Jina bought time.
His eyes held hers. "Me."
Her stomach flipped.
If I say no, what does he do? If I say yes, what do I know?
Jina's gaze darted over him. Blood on his sleeve. Split lip. Hands that looked used to weapons.
He was kneeling close enough to protect her.
Or close enough to end her.
Friend or enemy?
Guard or jailer?
She didn't know.
So she chose the only option that kept her alive in the next ten seconds.
A half-truth.
"I—" she started, then let her voice shake. Not too much. Just enough to be believable. "My head feels like it's full of glass. I remember… pieces."
Lysander's eyes narrowed.
Jina held his gaze anyway, forcing herself not to flinch.
Don't look guilty. You didn't choose this. But if you look guilty, he'll think you did.
The threads pulsed again, and Jina bit back a sound.
Lysander's attention snapped to her chest. "It hurts."
It wasn't a question.
Jina laughed once, sharp and miserable. "That's one way to put it."
His hand hovered near her collarbone and stopped, mid-air.
Permission.
He looked at her. "May I?"
The politeness hit her harder than the wind.
Jina nodded once.
Lysander pressed two fingers to the side of her neck, checking her pulse. His touch was warm.
Her pulse was fast. Weak. Skipping.
He frowned.
"You're freezing," he said.
"Yeah," Jina breathed. "I noticed."
His fingers stayed there, steady.
Then he said, very quietly, "You were dead."
Jina went still.
"What?"
His gaze flicked to her eyes, then away, like looking directly would break him. "Your heart stopped. Your eyes—" He swallowed. "I watched it."
A cold weight dropped into Jina's stomach.
She wanted to say, That's impossible.
She wanted to say, You're mistaken.
But the world around her didn't feel mistaken. It felt brutally, violently real.
And those threads—
Those threads were not a hallucination.
Jina's mind scrambled for explanations the way it always did in emergencies.
Cardiac arrest. Hypothermia. Shock. CPR.
Except there was no oxygen mask. No defibrillator. No ICU.
Only a wolf-eyed man kneeling in the dirt, insisting she'd died and come back.
Her breath came shallow again.
Lysander's hand tightened on her wrist as if he could hold her in the world by force.
"Don't," he said.
"What?"
"Don't leave." His voice was flat. Controlled. But his grip betrayed him. "Not again."
Again.
The word sliced.
Jina swallowed hard.
He watched her die. He watched—Aurelia—die.
And now he was staring at her face, trying to find the person he'd sworn himself to.
If he failed to find her—
What then?
Jina's tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
If I say I'm not her, does he kill me? Does he drag me back to the Empire in chains? Does he call priests?
Her gaze flicked to his throat. The pulse there. The way his jaw tensed when he held emotion down.
He was dangerous.
He was also… shaking.
Not in his hands.
In the tightness around his eyes, like he'd been holding grief on a leash and the leash was fraying.
Jina made herself speak.
Not truth.
Not lie.
A third thing.
A shield.
"I'm here," she said, voice hoarse. "I'm not… going anywhere right now."
Lysander's breath hitched once, small enough she almost missed it.
He looked at her like he was afraid to believe her.
Then he reached for the flask again.
"Drink," he said, rougher this time. Like the word was a command he was giving himself.
Jina took another sip. Forced it down past nausea.
The threads flickered.
Hot rage, distant.
Cold terror, distant.
Fire, distant.
The sensation made her spine crawl.
"Those… connections," she said carefully, eyes on the air. "Is that normal?"
Lysander's gaze sharpened instantly. "You can see them."
It wasn't a question.
Jina's mouth went dry.
Normal people can't. But you're not normal. You're… whoever she was.
She nodded once. "Yes."
Lysander stared at the air in front of her as if he could see what she saw if he looked hard enough. His face went tight.
"The bonds," he said.
"Bonds," Jina repeated, like the word might explain the pain in her chest.
His eyes flicked to her face again. "You made them."
Jina's stomach dropped.
How did Aurelia live with this?
The question flashed through her with a kind of sick awe. Years of this… and she'd still walked like a queen?
Because whatever "Aurelia" had done, it had been bad enough that even her shadow guard said it like an accusation he couldn't swallow.
Jina's mouth opened.
No words came out.
Not because she didn't have words.
Because she had too many.
I didn't.
She did.
I'm not her.
All of them would get her killed.
So she did the only thing that worked in emergencies: she grabbed the one fact she could prove.
"I'm dying," she said instead. "From poison. If you want answers, you're going to have to keep me alive long enough to ask them."
Lysander's eyes held hers.
For a heartbeat, he looked like he might argue.
Then he nodded once.
Decision made.
"Then we move," he said.
He rose in one smooth motion and offered his hand.
Jina stared at it.
Warm. Steady. Callused.
A hand that could pull her up.
A hand that could drag her somewhere she didn't want to go.
She didn't have the strength to refuse.
Jina put her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers—not tight enough to trap. Not loose enough to risk losing her.
And as he hauled her to her feet, the threads inside her ribs pulsed again—harder.
Four distant hearts, four distant lives, reacting to her standing.
Jina swayed.
Lysander's grip tightened.
He leaned in, voice low against the wind.
"They know," he said.
"Know what?" Jina whispered.
His eyes flicked to the empty horizon, then back to her.
"That you woke up."
The Wastes wind howled like laughter.
And far away, through four shattered bonds, something answered—hungry and awake.