The kiss almost happened on the sixth day.
Almost.
We were in the territory garden at dawn — our morning ritual now, established without discussion, simply a thing that happened because it had happened the day before and the day before that and neither of us had suggested stopping. Kael's hand around my wrist. My palm flat against the earth. The power moving through its paces like something that had been waiting its whole life for exactly this kind of attention.
It was getting stronger.
Not gradually — in surges. Each session pushed it further than the last, opened new channels, lit up new frequencies. Yesterday I had felt a hawk landing in a tree at the northern ward line from two hundred feet away. This morning I had felt Drest beginning the patrol rotation before he'd taken three st
