Kai's POV
Sleep was a traitor; it would not come. The pain in my side was a dull, relentless drumbeat, a constant reminder of my failure. I lay in the infirmary bed, the moon a cold coin outside the window. The world was too quiet. Every rustle of the night nurse’s skirt, every sigh of the wind was a potential threat. My mind was a cage, and inside it a beast named fear paced and snarled. I could still see her on the training grounds, the sun in her hair, a queen forging her crown. The pride I felt was a sharp, sweet pain, but beneath it a deeper, colder current pulled at me. I was not there; I was here, broken and useless, a shield of rotten wood.
Then a new silence fell, a different kind of quiet. It was the absence of her. The bond between us, that humming wire of shared life, went s
