The second morning came like a curse.
Not with clarity. Not with peace.
Only with the bone-deep, shattering realization that the bond—the living, breathing tether between them—was silent.
It wasn't numb. It wasn't dulled. It wasn't aching.
It was gone.
Malvor hissed as he shifted, blood flooding painfully back into his legs in sharp, merciless pins and needles. The price of two nights spent on cold, unforgiving stone outside her door.
He winced, dragging himself upright. His back ached. His joints throbbed. His magic twitched uselessly at the edges of his mind like a wounded animal.
But she had not come out. Not once. Not even to breathe where he could hear it.
And he—He could not sit there forever.
Not if he wanted to be strong enough to face her. If she ever let him. If she ever wanted him to.
For the first time since she'd been dropped, broken and bleeding, onto his doorstep—he stood.
Slowly. Carefully.
Like the hallway itself was holy ground and he was unworthy to tread on it.
He did not look back. He did not breathe too hard. He did not let his body betray the way it wanted to collapse back against that door and never leave.
Instead, he moved. One step. Then another.
Down the corridor. Toward the kitchen.
Where life—where she—used to linger.
The kitchen felt obscene.
Ordinary. Mortal.
He stepped inside and the room recoiled from him—or maybe he recoiled from it.
Either way, the air seemed too thin here. Too bright.
His hands shook as he reached for the chipped mug she always used. The one she stubbornly refused to fix. "Character," she'd called it, half-smiling, cradling it like it was precious.
He did not touch his own mug. Could not. It felt wrong.
He stared at hers. Just stared. For a long, endless moment where the world could have ended and he wouldn't have noticed.
Then, moving like a man walking underwater, he made the coffee the way she liked it.
Half coffee. Half cream. A sinful swirl of dark chocolate. A dash of cinnamon.
Sweet enough to make mortals weep.
The smell filled the kitchen, rich and familiar—and it turned his stomach.
Still, he poured two mugs. Still, he cradled hers carefully between trembling fingers.
It wasn't about the taste. It was about hope. About memory. About the desperate illusion that he could lure her back with the simple, stupid rituals of before.
He carried it down the hall, every step a silent prayer that scraped his ribs raw.
He set the mug just outside her door, careful not to spill a drop. Steam curled upward, vanishing into the empty air.
He knelt once more, hand flat on the stone beside it.
"Please," he whispered to the wood. To the gods. To the absence that gnawed at his mind like rot. "Please just open the door."
Then he stood. And backed away.
Not crowding. Not forcing. Not daring to hope.
Just waiting. Always waiting.
The library mocked him when he entered.
Stories lined the walls—tales of chaos, adventure, trickery—all things that used to make him grin like a devil and spark fire in his blood.
Now the words tasted like ash.
He tried to read. The pages blurred. The letters dissolved.
His eyes drifted again—and again—to the doorway.
The one that led back to her.
His coffee sat untouched on the table beside him, cooling to bitterness.
He could not taste it. Could not taste anything.
Everything in the house—the walls, the air, even his own body—felt muted.
Dead.
Like magic was still there but colorless. Like breathing without lungs. Like moving without muscles.
He watched the door.
And waited.
And hated himself more with every heartbeat that passed in silence.
He tried to play music.
The piano keys felt foreign under his fingertips. Cold. Unforgiving.
He played three notes.
They echoed too long. Too hollow. Too wrong.
He slammed the lid shut so hard the sound cracked through the house like a thunderclap.
Still no door opened. Still no bond answered.
He went to the garden.
Stood under the illusionary moons. Remembered the first time she kissed him.
Remembered the soft, breathless way she had whispered his name into the night air, like it was a wish she wasn't sure she deserved.
He stood there until his heart began to gallop, until his vision blurred with rage—not at her. At himself.
He turned away.
Room after room blurred together.
The parlor. The music room. The sunroom.
He conjured puzzles, drinks, distractions.
None of them worked.
His magic snapped and flared and ripped through the house, rearranging walls, dragging furniture, creating windows—
so that no matter where he sat, he could see the door.
The door that stayed closed.
The door that might as well have been the gateway to hell.
The bond, once humming and sparking at the back of his mind, was a grave.
Silent. Cold. Gone.
Eventually, he gave up pretending.
He simply sat.
In the closest chair he could conjure. Mug cold in his hands. Eyes locked on the door.
He did not eat. Did not move. Did not breathe without thinking of her.
Her laugh. Her sigh. Her glare when he was being insufferable. Her warmth pressed against him.
Gone.
All of it, gone.
He had lost her.
Not in the grand, tragic way he'd always imagined—with swords drawn, with gods roaring, with magic bleeding into the soil.
No.
He had lost her in the quiet. In the spaces between words. In the ache of a bond that would not answer.
Malvor bowed his head into his hands and shook—not from rage, but from emptiness.
He had fought wars against greater powers. Brought kings to their knees. Outlived civilizations.
But nothing—nothing—had ever broken him like this.
He deserved it. He deserved every agonizing second.
But gods—he still begged for one more chance.
Even if she never spoke to him again. Even if she hated him for the rest of eternity.
He would sit there. Forever.
Because the alternative—the silence where she used to be—
was worse.