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Caelith didn’t hesitate. “I will.”

Julen nodded once, then disappeared back into the corridor, leaving the chamber quieter than before.

And Maia and Caelith alone.

46

Confessions

The chamber settled into a strange, suspended emptiness after Julen left it. But it did not quiet completely.

The low resonance that threaded through the walls remained, deeper now. The sharpness had dulled, as though whatever forces governed this place had turned their attention elsewhere.

Caelith felt it first. But he was not looking at the chamber. He was trying to look at her, and not quite managing it.

“They’ve moved the outer alignment,” he said quietly.

Maia frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means we’re not being watched. Not yet,” he replied. “We have a little time.”

The hum of the Fracture pressed faintly through the stone, but it no longer dominated the space between them. Something else had taken its place. Something far more difficult to ignore.

Maia took a step forward.

Up close, there was no mistaking it now. How he held himself was deliberate, but it did not hide what lay beneath it. The tension in his shoulders, the slight rigidity in his stance, the way he controlled his breathing even though it pained him to. He could barely look at her.

“You’ve been here too long,” she said. “You’re not yourself.”

Caelith’s mouth curved faintly. “That was the intention.”

Her jaw tightened. “They’ve been hurting you?”

“Yes, but that’s nothing. They hurt you, too. And it’s my fault.”

He didn’t soften it nor deflect. Maia steadied herself. There were too many things crowding her mind at once: too many questions, too many moments she had imagined differently.

“Did you know they knew it was you? Who’d broken the formation?” she said.

“Of course they did. I wasn’t careful.”

Her voice almost went. “It wasn’t just that. You vanished. They took you. I thought, again, that you were…” She stopped, pressing her lips together, forcing the words through anyway. “I thought you were dead. There was nothing from you. Did you even try to tell me where you were or what was going to happen?”

“Maia, I would have died trying to reach you, once I knew what they had done. But I was powerless, and I was too late.”

The calmness of it hit harder than if he’d shouted. He still didn’t look at her.

Maia stared at him. “I wondered if you’d given up. Or changed your mind.”

“What? No. I would never give up on you, Maia.” He frowned. “But I was so foolish. I… could have stopped it, I could have waited, kept my composure, and stuck to the plan, even. Stopped it from within. But I gave myself away. They saw and they hurt you.”

“What happened? What changed?” she demanded, stepping closer.

Something in him shifted then. “I found I could no longer choose anything else.”

Maia frowned. “What does that mean?”

“You know what it is. You saw,” he said, his voice tightening for the first time, “that the plan was no longer the only thing that mattered.”