Kaelen stepped out of the tea shop, pulling his collar up against the snow. His mind was still tangled with the system mission he had hopped to give the protagonist information and leave now the trafficking ring, the seal-breaker, six weeks until midwinter, death if he failed.
He turned the corner toward the main thoroughfare and nearly collided with a chest.
"Careful," said a voice like slow honey.
Kaelen looked up and saw the face that had been hunting his sleep.
Lysander stood there, snow dusting his dark hair, dressed in a plain grey coat that did nothing to hide the breadth of his shoulders. His pale eyes caught the grey light and held it.
Kaelen braced for the usual burn in his cheeks, the mortifying rush of heat.
It didn't come.
Instead, something strange happened. His pulse, which had been racing since the tea shop, slowed. His shoulders dropped. The knot behind his ribs loosened. He felt calm an unnatural, familiar calm, like a storm that had forgotten how to thunder.
Lysander tilted his head. Slowly, deliberately, he reached out and pressed two fingers to Kaelen's forehead.
Kaelen forgot to breathe.
The touch was light, almost clinical, but something passed through it a vibration, a warmth, a key turning in a lock he hadn't known existed. His knees buckled and eyes glased.
Lysander caught his hand before he could fall. Strong fingers wrapped around his, steady and sure.
Then he pulled. Kaelen stumbled after him, half-dazed, into the narrow mouth of an alley. The snow fell thicker here, muffling sound. Lysander shrugged off his cloak and threw it over both of them, sealing them in a cocoon of wool and shared warmth.
"You have no idea," Lysander murmured, close enough that Kaelen could feel the words against his temple, "how alluring you are right now."
Kaelen looked up.
For a moment, just a moment he saw something in those pale eyes. Not indifference. Not the cold amusement he'd grown used to. Something hungrier. Darker.
Then Lysander's hand tightened on his, and without warning, mana flooded into him.
It wasn't gentle. It was a river breaking through a dam. Kaelen gasped as it surged through his chest, his veins, his heart and there, in the center of his ribcage, something cracked. A knot of rage he hadn't even known he was carrying. Days of fear, of loneliness. The cold weight of knowing he might die in six weeks.
Gone.
All of it, washed away in a single pulse.
Kaelen sagged, breathless, and found himself staring at Lysander's mouth. It was very close. Closer than it should have been. Lysander leaned in, slow and deliberate, his breath warm against Kaelen's lips—
A hiss.
High, furious, and distinctly feline.
Kaelen's eyes snapped open. The duke pulled a plack creature from his clothes. Sprite was latched onto Lysander's hand, tiny jaws clamped around the Duke's thumb, practically vibrating with indignant rage.
Lysander looked down at the creature. Blinked. Then, with the kind of patience one might show a slightly amusing insect, he peeled Sprite off and held it up by the scruff. Sprite dangled, hissing, paws cycling through the air like a wind-up toy.
"What," Lysander said flatly, "is this."
Kaelen's heart lurched not from the old panic, but from sudden, absurd sympathy. Sprite looked so small dangling there, all fury and no leverage, like an ant trying to push over a mountain.
Lysander gave Sprite a gentle flick on the nose. Sprite sneezed. Hissed again. It was deeply unthreatening.
"How weak," he said.
"Give him back," Kaelen said.
Lysander studied him for a long moment, then dropped Sprite into Kaelen's waiting hands. Sprite immediately scrambled up to Kaelen's shoulder, puffing up to twice its size, and glared at the Duke with unblinking yellow eyes.
Before either of them could speak, a figure appeared at the alley's mouth a man in nondescript clothes, face shadowed. He leaned in and whispered something into Lysander's ear.
Lysander's expression didn't change. But something in his posture tightened.
He sighed, a real sigh, heavy and tired and reached up to his own throat. His fingers found a fine golden chain there, nearly invisible against his skin. He unclasped it and held it out.
Kaelen stared. The chain seemed to drink the light. At its center hung a small, warm-colored stone, faintly pulsing.
"This should help heal your pathways," Lysander said quietly. "Your mana channels are damaged. You haven't noticed because you don't use them. But you will need them. Soon."
Kaelen took the chain. It was still warm from Lysander's skin.
"I don't—"
"You don't have to need it," Lysander cut him off, already stepping back. "Just wear it."
Then he was gone, the snow swallowing his footsteps, and the man in nondescript clothes had vanished with him.
Kaelen stood in the alley, holding the golden chain, Sprite still hissing at the empty space where Lysander had been.
The system flickered:
[Item Acquired: Amber of Valtor]
[Effect: Mana pathway restoration in progress.]
Kaelen closed his fingers around the warm stone.
His heart was calm.