Page 14 of Fourth

The words were sand in his mouth. Dry. Unwanted.

“That... death thing you mentioned before?” Her brow creased. “You said it was scheduled. Like some kind of biological suicide.”

“Affirmative.”

She looked down at herself, at the place where he had watched light pulse beneath her skin. Her muscles flexed subtly against the restraint, acareful motion, not a struggle, not panic. Testing limits with a sharp-edged focus.

Giving up, she returned her attention to him. “So what does that mean? That just being near you was enough to make it stop? That doesn’t make sense.”

“No. It does not.”

Her head jerked up, sharp and fast, eyes snapping back to his face as if those four words carried more strength than everything else he had said before. “Explain.”

He exhaled slowly. “No one has ever interrupted a Final Flight once the heat flash was in progress.”

“And yet here I am,” she said. “Alive. And apparently breaking all your rules just by breathing.”

Her voice carried something new now. Softer. Warmer. As if the defiance wasn’t just about rules anymore but about the charged silence stretching between them. Riv’En watched her mouth form the words, his focus sharpening on the way her lips shaped each syllable, slower than before.

His pulse slowed to match hers. His gaze slid lower, noting the subtle lift of her chest and the faint flush at her throat, but what held his focus was the quiet tension coiled in her posture. Atension that mirrored his own, waiting, as if both of them were holding breath they refused to release first.

The air around her shifted subtly, carrying an edge of heat that threaded into the quiet hum of the ship’s systems. It was restraint woven tight around something ancient and rising. He let it settle in the air between them like a line sketched, waiting to be crossed.

He didn’t speak. Couldn’t for endless count-marks. “You are alive,” he said at last, voice like iron dragged over stone. “That is what matters.”

“You saw it, though, right? The light that appeared on me?”

He hesitated, eyes narrowing slightly. “I saw it,” he admitted finally, each word drawn out, his voice dipping lower than before. “It should not exist.”

The admission pulled tension through his frame like a slow pulse, heat stirring beneath his skin, sharp and unwelcome. But it was not just the truth that cost him. It was the strength of her eyes on him as he spoke, the way her breath caught like she sensed it too. That low, inescapable pull between them, tightening degree by degree by endless degree.

“Riven. Isaw your face. You looked at me like I’d grown a second head.” Her voice dropped lower now, the edge of itrougher, throatier, as if she experienced the connection between them but refused to name it. “What the hellwasthat? You recognized it. Iknow you did.”

Her gaze flicked down again, unbidden, as if attracted by some magnetic pull to the place where the shimmer had burned into her skin. His eyes tracked the movement, catching the subtle flush creeping up her throat, the shift in her breathing. It came like a low thrum under his own skin. The bond pulsing before either of them admitted it aloud.

“There is no written record of this light that appeared on you.”

“There’s no written record, yet you know what it is. What does it mean?” she pressed. “Why did it happen?”

His gaze dropped before he meant it to. Just once. To her chest. No light. No shimmer. Nothing.

He looked away, his stance cut from stone, every line of him yanked taut as if forged to withstand impact. Not avoidance. Discipline. Every reflex pressed against his skin like an unspent command, but he forced it back, forced himself to focus on the wall instead of her. And yet even that did not quiet the awareness. The scent of her still edged sharp in his lungs. The faint shift of her breath behind him pulled at him like a tether, impossible to sever. Her presence was a constant pulse, heat lingering beneath his skin in a way that refused to fade. It was maddening, primal, and utterly undeniable.

“There are... tales,” he admitted. “My mother spoke of them when I was very small. Before I was taken into the Intergalactic Warrior program. Elaroin stories not found in databanks. Private. Sacred. Rituals never spoken of beyond the Elaroin home world. Ancient and dismissed by those who had neverseen them, because most who have, never live to explain. Among my mother’s people, it is called the Mating Flame.”

She stilled. “What is the Mating Flame?”

“Irrelevant.”

“Try me.”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because the heat had pulled back, receding from the edge of death in a way that should have been impossible. Something ancient and forbidden had been triggered between them, something he had no words for, no protocol to follow. And that realization alone was enough to destroy themboth.

Her voice cut through the silence again, sharp and unrelenting. “You do not get to decide what’s irrelevant, Riven. Not if it means I’m stuck here with you.” She pulled against the restraints, testing them with more force this time. “If whatever that light was can stop your Final Flight, Ideserve to know. Because if you burn up in one of those heat flashes, Iburn up with you. Or did you forget I’m still locked down?”

His head turned just enough to meet her gaze. That cold, unwavering stare. “Noted.”

“So, what is it?”

---