The Ring flared cold. The pendant flared hot. Somewhere in my chest the fifth node pulsed with something that was not pain and was not power but sat in the space between them where every important thing lives.
Natalia kissed me.
Not the bruising claim she had planted in the hallway that morning. Not the performative display she had unleashed in front of twenty thousand people at the tournament. This was slower. Deeper. Her tongue traced the seam of my lips and then she was inside and the taste of her filled my mouth, cold mint and something sweet she must have stolen from Emi's abandoned tray, and beneath that the copper edge that was purely Natalia, purely mine.
I gripped her hips and pulled her flush against me and the friction drew a sound from her throat that made every neuron in my rewired brain fire simultaneously.
