Page 26 of Incarnate

"Dominus."

She withdraws without looking up, not waiting for a reply that’s not going to arrive. They have learned not to linger when the vanum blood is on me. It means I’m taking care of what I need to, but my mood is never improved by victories that should not have been necessary.

It’s madness that thins my patience.

I dip a strip of cloth into the basin, using it to clean my skin of the blood.

I’ll slay these bastardizations for a century if I must, to keep her safe…

The conch shell on its chain rests against my chest, where it always sits. It has been warm for days, not the searing heat of her presence at the Devotion statue, but a low, persistent glow, like coals that refuse to die. She is nearby. Somewhere in my Realm, answering to a name I don't know, and the bind between us is shattered, frayed, held together by nothing more than the fragment of what we once formed.

It’s too fragile for my liking. I can only slay so many vanum before I’ll begin raiding every home in Carden.

I need to feel her again.

The reports from the day sit in a stack on the table beside my throne. Census data from Carden's new establishments. Cross-referencing arrival dates. Reaper patrol patterns. Every blonde novus in the Realm has been cataloged, examined, and cleared. She is not among them, which means she has been disguised, and whoever is hiding her knows enough about my methods to stay precisely one step ahead.

I will find her. Not through sheer patience, but because I am relentless. There are many I can and will call upon that will make it hell for whoever is concealing her, and I might as well enact that by tomorrow if I don’t⁠—

The bind shifts, into something deeper, more resonant, as if a door that has been locked has been cracked open. She has removed whatever it is that keeps her from me.

I move toward the balcony, slowly placing a hand on the stone railing, staring out at the city below, vanum blood forgotten. The torches pull inward, the shadows thickening at the edges of my vision. Every sense I possess narrows to a single point, to the impossible gossamer line that connects my soul to hers across whatever distance separates us.

"Nara," I say softly, and the word leaves my mouth like smoke.

No reply. But I can feel her, faintly, like pressing a hand against a wall and feeling warmth from the other side. She is alive. She is confused. She is...

Asleep?

It doesn't matter. The bind is open, and I can feel her for the first time in over a day, and the relief is so acute it borders on pain.

"Nara... where are you?"

Nothing coherent. Just the murky static of a sleeping mind. I grip the stone until it starts to crack, trying to feel out where she is but that doesn’t shift inside of me. I narrow my gaze when I sense the smell of woodsmoke, many candles in the room she sleeps in. A piece of the railing cracks off in my hand when I realize I can almost see where she is, a persistent ache in her chest mirroring my own so perfectly I cannot tell where mine ends and hers begins.

What are they having her do? Who are they? Is she hurt at all? The trickster—it must be the trickster, the one from the dying pantheon, the shapeshifter who has been watching me for years and thinks I don't know. She wants Nara for her gods. Her lesser gods. As if they deserve her. As if their dying pantheon is worth the risk of my mate's existence.

If I could go there myself, I would.

To send her back alone?

Her end stirs more. The sleep is thinning, consciousness rising like something surfacing from deep water.

I release my grip, trying to channel whatever gentle calm I can.

"Nara... there you are."

She does not fully wake, but the bind thrums, as it used to when she lay beside me and pressed her chest to mine, when the connection between us sang with a resonance that made the walls of Nightfell vibrate. It hasn't felt like this in decades. I breathe with a purpose I haven't known since she left, each inhale pulling her closer, each exhale sending something of myself back through the thread.

"I will find you. Do not worry. Things will be different."

I mean it. I have had decades to understand what I did wrong, even if I will never call it wrong. I kept her because losing her was not something my soul could survive. I locked the doors because the world outside them wanted to take her from me. I was not wrong to want. I was perhaps wrong in method.

Perhaps.

She wakes.

The murky dreaming sharpens into awareness, the confusion crystallizing into recognition. She feels me. She knows I'm here, on the other end of this thread. And I still can’t fucking tell where she is.