POV: Luna

  Cain was asleep within moments of throwing himself onto the mattress. No fuss, no thoughts, no hesitation—just the dead fall of someone who had survived a feast, five insults, and a royal speech without openly committing a war crime.

  His face was half-buried in the pillow, his uniform still on, boots abandoned at the door in a zy trail of exhaustion. I could hear his breathing—slow, uneven, deep. The kind that didn’t come from peace, but from the body shutting down because it finally could.

  I remained seated by the desk that faced the window.

  The moonlight filtered through pale curtains, painting silver trails across the wooden floor. It was too quiet. Too still. These human buildings always smelled of varnish and dust and something artificial meant to mask it. I missed the scent of wild air, of moss and blood and true freedom.

  But I stayed.

  My eyes—glow faint, spirit-bound—never left Cain. Not because I worried he wouldn’t wake up.

  Because I had never seen a soul like his before.

  So small. So fractured. So furious. But it never begged.

  Even when it should have.

  Even when it was alone.

  Even when it buried its mother.

  I had watched him gather her body with hands too small to carry death. I had watched him light a fire without a single tear, his face pale and his lips cracked with fever. I had watched him speak no words over the pyre, only sit by it and keep watch until nothing but ash remained.

  That was when I knew I would never leave him.

  Not again.

  The wind shifted.

  My ears twitched, instinct surfacing as a familiar presence brushed against the wards of the dormitory.

  I stood slowly, moved to the window, and opened it with a soft flick of my hand. The moon greeted me. But it wasn’t the only visitor tonight.

  She stepped from the shadows like a memory I had buried too deep.

  Vera Ashthorn.

  Still tall. Still sharp. Still wrapped in that storm-colored aura of unrelenting magic.

  Her hair had more silver than I remembered, but her eyes were unchanged—piercing, old, the color of judgment. The st time I had seen her was over a hundred years ago, when I had told her I would never walk this world again.

  Yet here we were.

  The wind curled protectively around the window, forming a soundproof barrier that shimmered like gss. From the corner of the dorm hall, I sensed Selene’s quiet footsteps halt. Listening. But she would hear nothing. The wind would see to that.

  Vera tilted her head up, cloak stirring around her.

  “I didn’t believe it at first,” she said. “But now I see. It’s true. You’re really here.”

  “I am.”

  “In your form. In this pce. Bound.”

  I said nothing. Her voice still carried that clipped tone of command, as if every word was weighed before spoken. She’d once scolded kings into silence with it. I used to admire that.

  Used to.

  “Luna,” she breathed. “Why him?”

  I gnced back at the bed. Cain hadn’t moved.

  “Because he named me,” I said softly. “Because he saw me. Not as a tool. Not as a god. But as something his, even when he had nothing.”

  Vera’s jaw clenched. “You’re a High Spirit. A wind sovereign. You don’t belong here. You left. You forswore the material world.”

  “I did.”

  “Then why return?”

  I closed my eyes for a breath. Memories flickered like torn pages—his mother’s hands, trembling but kind… Cain’s first words to me, spoken not as summoning, but as greeting… the sound of his stomach rumbling during winter nights where he gave me the bigger share of boiled roots.

  I opened my eyes again.

  “I watched a child bury his world and choose not to break. I saw a soul stronger than any bloodline, than any prophecy. I returned… because he never begged me to.”

  Vera stared. Her face tightened. “This will not go unnoticed.”

  “I welcome notice.”

  “You are pying a dangerous game.”

  “No,” I said, letting the wind stir gently around my form, catching the light of the moon in my hair, in my skin. “I am the game. And I have chosen my piece.”

  Silence fell like snow.

  Then, her voice dropped lower. “You could have returned to the astral pne. To the Courts. Why stay bound to a halfbreed outcast no one wanted?”

  I didn’t smile. Spirits like me don’t smile. But there was a curl in my tone as I answered.

  “Because outcasts aren’t watched. And in the shadows… things grow.”

  She stepped back, her face unreadable now.

  “I cannot protect you from what comes,” she said finally.

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  Her cloak swirled with the night wind as she turned.

  And just before the shadows swallowed her again, she said without looking back, “He’s lucky, then. To have you.”

  I closed the window slowly.

  Behind me, Cain shifted slightly in his sleep, muttering something too low to catch. A dream, no doubt. Not a peaceful one.

  I moved back to my seat.

  Selene had already vanished down the corridor, frustrated perhaps that she could not eavesdrop. Good. Let her frustration fester.

  Outside, the city of Ethera slept.

  Inside, I watched over the boy who had unknowingly summoned a wind sovereign with a name spoken in innocence.

  And I would not let the world devour him.

  Not while I still remembered how to blow cities down.