The tent flap hadn’t even closed behind the last guard before Aiden’s knees went.

He caught the center pole. Missed. Hit the ground on one knee, teeth locked, a sound coming out of him that wasn’t quite a groan and wasn’t quite anything else.

The fractures under his skin pulsed white — visible through his shirt at the collar, at the wrists. Two breach sealings in four hours and a council vote that had carved something out of his chest he hadn’t named yet.

"Everyone out."

The Empress didn’t raise her voice. She never did. But the two aides near the supply table were gone before Aiden could lift his head.

She crouched in front of him. Red eyes level with his. Her amber hair was still pinned from the council, a few strands loose at her jaw.

"Can you stand?"

"Yes."

He couldn’t. She knew that. She took his arm anyway and helped him to the low cot against the far wall, and he didn’t argue because arguing required breath and he didn’t have any to spare.

She stripped his outer coat off with two pulls. His shirt came next — she worked the laces at his throat, methodical, unhurried, like she had all the time in the world and the camp wasn’t sitting on a fracture field. He let her. He was too tired to perform composure and too far past it to bother.

The fracture lines ran from his left collarbone down to his ribs. One branched at his shoulder. In the low lantern light they looked like cracks in old stone.

She pressed her palm flat over the worst one at his ribs.

The grinding stopped. Instantly. Like a door closing on a scream.

His breath came out slow.

"You sealed two breaches alone," she said. Her voice was low. Warm. Her mouth was close to his ear and she wasn’t making any effort to put distance between them. "I saw the records. No anchor support on the second."

"The council ran long."

"It did." Her thumb traced the edge of the fracture at his shoulder. Light pressure. His whole body registered it. "You don’t have to do this part alone."

He looked at her. She was already looking at him — had been the whole time, he thought, in that way she had, like she was reading something written just below the surface.

Their faces were close. Breath shared in the small space between them. Her hair brushed his white strands when she shifted her weight.

The fracture under her palm ached and didn’t ache. He couldn’t fully separate the two.

Her lips were — close. The lantern flickered. His golden eyes dropped to her mouth for half a second, and she didn’t move back, and the air between them went thick and still, and then a tremor cracked through him from the base of his spine.

She caught him. Both arms, pulling him in chest-to-chest, his face against her shoulder, her hands flat on his back over the fracture lines. He felt her exhale.

"Breathe through me," she said. "I can take it."

He breathed. The tremor worked through him in waves and she held the same position through all of them — no flinching, no adjustment, just steady weight against his back, steady voice in his ear: I have it. Stay with me. There. Her heartbeat was slow and even under his cheek and he hated how much that helped.

The tremor passed.

He was still in her arms. Neither of them moved immediately.

The tent flap opened. A runner, young, wide-eyed, a folded report clutched in both hands. "Empress. The foreign leak — the mage identified the route —"

"Set it there." She didn’t move. "Go."

He left the report and went. The Empress pulled back slowly, her hands the last thing to leave his skin. She looked at him once, steady, and there was that small smile — the one that never quite reached a full expression, that lived in the corners of her eyes.

"Rest," she said. "Twenty minutes."

Across camp, in the guarded east quarter, Flora had stopped crying ten minutes ago. Now she just sat on the ground with her back against the supply crate, arms around her knees, staring at nothing.

Catherine sat beside her. Not touching. Then touching — her hand on Flora’s arm, then Flora leaning in, and Catherine pulling her daughter close with the particular grip of someone who has been terrified for a long time.

"You hugged me," Flora said. Her voice was rough. "You hugged me in there. And then you said no anyway."

"Yes."

"How." Flora pulled back enough to look at her. "How do you do that. How do you hold me and look at what he’s going through and say no."

"Because I’ve seen what the surge does to you." Catherine’s voice was flat and controlled and the control was the tell, for anyone who knew her. "When the bond is open and he burns, you burn. Luna burns. I watched you scream through the last major sealing. I watched Luna’s nose bleed for six hours."

"We survived."

"You shouldn’t have to survive it."

"Mom." Flora’s voice cracked on the word. "He might not."

The silence between them was long.

"I know," Catherine said. She held her daughter tighter. She didn’t say anything else.

Nearby, Sabrina kept her voice low. Luna was sharpening a blade she didn’t need to sharpen, the rhythm of it mechanical.

"I feel it," Sabrina said. "Every time he hurts. You know I do."

"I know."

"But your safety —"

"I know." Luna set the blade down. She looked across camp — toward the command tent, where the lamp was still lit. "I know. You’ve said it. I believe you." A pause. "It doesn’t stop it from feeling like we already lost something."

Sabrina didn’t have an answer for that.

Isolde appeared at the edge of the light like she’d grown there. She had a cup of something hot and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

"The Empress held him through a full tremor," she said, conversationally. "Arms, chest, the whole thing. Soldiers saw." She took a sip. "The mothers cut the bond. Who looks stronger right now?"

Luna stood up. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"Go away, Isolde."

Isolde went. Still smiling.

Aiden sent for Catherine twenty minutes later. He was sitting up, shirt back on, the worst of the fracture pain dulled to a throb. The Empress stood at the far end of the tent, arms folded, reading the leak report. She didn’t leave.

Catherine came in alone. She looked at the Empress. The Empress looked back, then returned to the report.

"Unified command," Aiden said. "Temporary. I’m not asking for permanent — I’m asking for the window while Varen’s main force is still three days out. After that, the agreement dissolves. You write the terms."

"No."

He looked at her. She looked at him. The old heat was there — it always was, it always would be, packed down under everything else like embers under ash. Her voice had gone careful in the way it only did around him, and he knew she heard his voice do the same.

"Catherine."

"I’ve given you my answer twice now." But she didn’t move toward the exit. "Whatever you felt in the council — that wasn’t me choosing the camp over you. I am choosing them." A gesture toward the east quarter. "The two of them. Always."

"I know."

"Then you know this won’t change."

Two fingers under his chin. Gentle. The Empress turned his face toward her and he let her, and Catherine’s expression went very still. "She’s testing your loyalty," the Empress said, quiet and even. "I’m offering you something else." Her forehead tilted toward his, not touching, the space between them the size of a held breath. "Don’t confuse the two."

Catherine left.

The breach hit the outer pickets at half-past the second bell.

Not a major eruption. A small one — three fracture points, monsters pushing through where the sealing hadn’t fully bonded. Aiden was on his feet before the runner finished his sentence. His legs held. Barely.

The Empress was beside him in the tent doorway, and when the surge began to pull at him — the automatic draw on the bond that found emptiness, that found Catherine’s deliberate refusal — the pain hit white and sudden and his hand went to the door frame.

Her arm went around him. In the open doorway. In full view of the soldiers moving across the firelit camp.

She held him through it. His weight against her side, her hand flat on his ribs, her voice low and steady: I’ve got you. Right here. I’ve got you.