Caldan's guards found her before she found her breath.
Two of them. Tall, silent, dressed in the black and silver of the Fallen Heir's personal retinue. They materialized on either side of her like shadows given muscle, and without a word, without so much as a glance at Auren, they closed formation around her.
Auren stopped walking.
Arin stopped too. The charm was still humming — that low, sick vibration that made her teeth ache — but Dhaelon's laughter had faded. Not gone. Never gone. Just pulled back, like a cat retracting its claws after drawing blood.
"So that's how it is," Auren said quietly.
He wasn't looking at the guards. He was looking at her. And there was something in his golden eyes that she wished she hadn't seen — not anger, not jealousy, but a kind of tired recognition. Like a man watching a door close that he'd known would close eventually.
"He's protecting me," Arin said. The words tasted like ash.
