Sera's POV
Kel stepped through the doorway—
and the world narrowed around him.
Not because he forced it to.
Because everything else suddenly felt… lesser.
The dining hall of House Vanhart was not built to be grand. It was practical northern stone, long table of dark wood, high-backed chairs worn smooth where hands had held them for generations. The chandeliers flickered with low flames, enough to push back the dark but not enough to banish it.
We were already seated.
Father at the head.
I at his right.
Reina and Landon further down, opposite.
The soft murmur of servants setting last dishes lingered—
Until the murmur died.
Not from command.
From sight.
Kel entered carrying Lysenne.
In his arms.
Her arms were lightly looped around the fabric of his sleeve, not clinging—but holding just enough to show she knew exactly how precarious her world had become, suspended between his hands and the chair waiting for her.
He didn't stride.
He didn't parade.
He walked with the same measured, quiet pace he used to cross barbarian hunting grounds, or Rosenfeld banquet halls, or the dead mist before Scarder Lake.
As if carrying the weight of another person was…
natural.
Obvious.
Expected.
My chest tightened.
Not with shock.
With something quieter. Heavier.
He moved through the hall like a line drawn through water—effortless, yet leaving ripples behind. Every servant, every guard, every worn stone in the floor seemed to track him.
The lamps caught on his hair, turning its black into faint threads of ink and steel. His eyes were steady, unreadable, a winter sky reflected in a still lake. The muscles in his forearms flexed beneath fabric as he adjusted Lysenne's weight slightly, careful not to jar her.
That care stung.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was right.
And I remembered—
The first time he carried me.
Half-conscious, soaked and shivering after the Scarder Lake trial. My curse gnawing at my bones, vision blurring. He'd held me the same way—solid, practical, unhesitating. No hesitation in touching someone broken.
No shame in it, either.
Just motion.
Now he did the same for her.
For the girl whose legs I had broken.
Lysenne's face was flushed, but not with fever. The kind of red that comes from being seen in a way you were not prepared to be seen—held in the arms of the boy who wagered his life on your future.
Father rose slightly.
Then froze halfway up.
Malloren's fingers tightened at the far side of the table.
The hall did not breathe.
Kel reached Lysenne's chair.
Every step sounded like a soft echo against the stone, the subtle shift of his boots the only noise daring to exist.
He bent his knees and lowered himself, carefully aligning her with the seat. One of his hands slid to support her back, the other under her knees. Her hair brushed his sleeve; her breath caught—in small, sharp sound she tried to hide.
He did not flinch.
He did not make it tender.
He made it steady.
He made it safe.
He made it something I knew:
Kel, moving weight that isn't his, as if it always should have been.
My fingers, curled around my own cup, tightened until the ceramic pressed painfully into my skin.
I told myself it was because this gesture would look… odd, politically.
Because Viscount Malloren's daughter being carried by Duke Rosenfeld's heir into another house's hall meant something to anyone watching for alliances.
But somewhere deeper—
something else twisted.
Because of how natural it looked.
Because my body remembered the feel of being light in his arms, when I was certain nothing about me was light anymore.
Because he did not look at her with pity when he set her down.
He just made sure she was seated correctly.
Then let go.
Only then.
She adjusted her skirt, fingers shaking just a fraction. Her face was still flushed. She avoided everyone's gaze except his.
For a moment, their eyes met.
He said nothing.
Just gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
As if to say: You endured.
She dropped her gaze.
I realized my breath was shallow.
Clenched my jaw.
Reina moved slightly in the corner of my vision.
I didn't have to look to know her hand had drifted instinctively toward the spear that wasn't there.
Kel turned and walked toward his seat.
Nothing changed in his step.
No pride.
No awareness of how everyone watched.
As though carrying another person across a hall was as unremarkable as carrying a book.
I tightened my lips.
I shouldn't feel anything about this.
I chose to walk beside him. Not to ask where his hands should be.
But still—
the image burned.
His arms.
Her cheeks.
The quiet strength in that simple motion.
I swallowed.
Looked away.
Pretended to study my own untouched plate.
Reina's POV
The hall went quiet just before he appeared.
I felt it before I saw him.
The way conversations thinned.
The way tension shifted in the room, like wind pushing against the wrong side of a door.
When I lifted my eyes, he was already inside.
Kel.
Holding another girl.
I stiffened.
It was not jealousy. Jealousy requires expecting something. Wanting a claim. I have no claim. I never asked for one.
But I knew the weight he carried.
Not the physical one.
I knew what it meant to be chosen—not in words, but in action.
His coat fell open around his legs as he walked, revealing the clean, dark lines of his simple clothes. His hair fell forward slightly, covering one eye. His hands—
Those hands, calloused yet precise, held Lysenne Malloren as if she were something both heavy and fragile.
He moved like a wolf carrying a wounded cub.
Unbothered by watching eyes.
She was very aware of them.
Her face was red, like she'd breathed too much winter wind and didn't know where to put her gaze.
I watched her fingers.
They were gripping his sleeve.
Not hard.
Just enough to tell me she'd forgotten how it feels to rely on anyone else's strength.
I know the signs.
I saw them in myself.
In Sera.
In every child forced to stand alone too early.
He lowered her into the chair.
Back aligned. Legs properly supported. Hands steady—not trembling despite the long hours he'd just spent working her nerves and bones into some kind of living state again.
He did it right.
Of course he did.
Kel doesn't do less than "right" once he chooses a direction.
My jaw shifted, almost imperceptibly.
My fingers brushed the underside of the table, where callouses from spearwork met the rough wood.
Images slid across my mind unbidden.
Kel, standing in snow, arrow drawn, laughing like some half-mad hunter while monsters fell.
Kel, shivering and blood-drained, holding his ground in front of barabarians who measured worth by scars.
Kel, colder than anyone else at the banquet, eyes like shadowed steel.
Now—
Kel, carrying a broken girl as if she were no more burden than his own coat.
As if he'd carry anyone he'd decided was worth carrying.
I told myself:
This is good.
If Lysenne stands, rumors will spread.
Rosenfeld's heir healed the girl of House Malloren.
Vanhart's isolation weakens.
Our side gains weight.
This is strategy.
I serve his path.
I follow because I chose to.
I do not get to choose what is convenient to witness.
Still—
When he leaned in, just a fraction, to make sure her skirt didn't catch the chair edge, when she tried to shrink into herself and failed...
something heated in my chest.
Not anger.
Not resentment.
A tight, sharp awareness.
That I—
with all my training, my spear, my vow to walk behind him—
could not do what he just did.
I can protect.
I can fight.
I can kill what threatens him.
But I cannot, with my own hands, give someone back the ability to stand.
Power, I thought then, is not only what breaks.
It is what mends.
Father used to say—
"Follow those whose backs do not bend when they see the broken."
I didn't understand fully.
Until now.
Kel took his seat.
He looked… tired. Just at the edges. Eyes a little heavier. Shoulders holding a strain he refused to display.
But he didn't sag.
He didn't lean.
He just sat.
And the hall rearranged itself around his presence.
Like gravity.
Like orbit.
I caught Sera's profile.
Her mouth had tightened.
Her gaze was fixed on her plate, though her eyes saw nothing on it.
She remembered, too.
She remembered his arms—
before Lysenne did.
A pang pulled at something in me.
Not quite sympathy.
Not quite rivalry.
Something more complicated.
We both owed him.
We both followed him.
The difference was simple:
She ran once, to protect a house.
I never had the luxury to run.
Now—
another girl had become the focus of his wager.
His life, bound to her legs.
I exhaled slowly.
Chest easing.
Of course he would.
Kel does not divide his path by who was there first.
He divides it by who he can still save.
The servants moved again, hesitant at first, then resuming their duties, though their eyes kept sneaking back to the end of the table where Malloren's daughter sat—
legs warmed by blood for the first time in years.
I rolled my shoulders under my cloak, loosening the tension.
This was not a battlefield I could join.
This was his.
His hands.
His life.
His oath.
All I could do was keep the outer perimeter clear.
Like always.
I lifted my cup.
Took a sip.
It tasted of weak tea and iron.
Across the table, Kel glanced up for the briefest moment.
Our eyes met.
No words.
No signals.
Just understanding.
You saw?
Yes.
Will you say anything?
No.
He looked away.
I let breath leave my chest like a quiet promise.
You keep gambling your life inside halls.
I'll make sure no one crashes through the doors while you work.
If one day he chose to carry someone else again—
I would still be there.
Not watching for who he held.
Watching for who might try to pull him down while his hands were occupied.
That—
I could do.
Jealousy?
No.
That is for people with the luxury to stand still.
I am spear.
I am shadow to his movement.
Lysenne is weight he chooses to lift.
Sera is past he chose to bet on.
I am—
the weapon that moves when he decides which direction needs blood.
Yet, when I closed my eyes that night, I saw his back as he walked into the hall—
Lysenne in his arms.
And I thought, fleetingly, treacherously:
If he stumbles carrying them…
Will I be strong enough to catch all three?
The thought did not leave.
Not even when dreams came.