Kael's hand tightened on her shoulder.
Not a grab. Not a command. Just pressure — steady and deliberate, the kind that said I am here without saying stop. She felt it travel down through her chest and settle somewhere near the burn, and for three full seconds she stood at the boundary between moving forward and staying where she was.
Then she looked back at him.
His expression was unreadable in the way it got when he was working very hard to keep it that way. Four hundred years of practice and it still showed at the edges — a tightness around his jaw, something behind his eyes that wasn't quite controlled.
"Let me get it," he said quietly.
"It's addressed to me."
"I know."
"Then let me get it."
A beat. His hand didn't move. She held his gaze and didn't look away, and after a moment
