The enforcers didn't bother with stealth.
Three figures dropped from the sky onto the slope below the watchtower, silver robes snapping in the wind. Their masks were blank, featureless. Heaven didn't give its hounds faces.
Li Jin counted breaths. One. Two. Three.
"Stay behind me," he said.
Lian Yue didn't move. The bond between them thrummed under her skin, hot and insistent.
"If they touch me, they touch you," she said quietly. "Remember?"
He didn't answer. He just stepped in front of her anyway.
The first enforcer moved. No warning, no declaration. A blade of condensed light shot forward, silent and fast.
Li Jin rolled. The bolt carved a trench through the stone where he'd been standing. Heat licked his back.
"Charming," he muttered, coming up on one knee. He threw the dagger.
It should have missed. It didn't.
The dagger veered mid-air, pulled by something he couldn't see, and struck the enforcer's mask with a crack. The mask shattered. The enforcer staggered.
Lian Yue's eyes widened. "You redirected it."
"I directed," Li Jin corrected, already moving. "You did the rest."
He understood it now. The bond wasn't just pain and proximity. It was flow. He could see the qi in the air, the threads of energy the enforcer was using to move, to strike. It was like reading a battlefield—gaps, angles, openings.
He wasn't channeling power. He was guiding hers.
Lian Yue caught on faster than he expected. She didn't try to fight like a Celestial Princess. She fought like someone who'd been caged too long. Her hands moved, and the air around her knotted.
A whip of starlight lashed out, not from her, but from the space three feet to Kaelen's left—where he'd stepped.
It caught the second enforcer across the chest and sent him skidding back.
"For once," she said, voice tight, "being reckless works."
"Don't get used to it," he said, grinning despite himself.
The third enforcer was smarter. He ignored Li Jin and went straight for the source. He blurred forward, hand outstretched to seize Lian Yue's throat.
Mistake.
The moment his fingers brushed her sleeve, the bond snapped taut.
Li Jin hit the ground hard, gasping, but his vision cleared instantly. He saw the enforcer's qi core, a tight, ordered knot of Heavenly energy. And he saw the flaw.
"Now," he said.
Lian Yue didn't hesitate. She drove her palm forward, and the starlight whip condensed into a single point, striking the flaw.
The enforcer dropped without a sound.
Silence.
The other two hesitated. Heaven's hounds were trained to follow orders, not adapt. Adaptability was a mortal sin.
Li Jin took the chance. He grabbed Lian Yue's wrist and pulled her toward the staircase.
"Run. They'll call reinforcements."
They made it three steps before the tower shuddered.
A fourth presence landed on the roof above them. Heavier. Older. The air turned cold.
"Celestial Princess Lian Yue," a voice said, filtered through a mask older than most kingdoms. "Surrender. This mortal cannot save you."
Li Jin looked up. His jaw tightened.
Above them, a crack split the stone ceiling. Light poured through.
Lian Yue stepped forward, pulling free of his grip.
"He doesn't need to save me," she said, voice clear for the first time since she'd fallen. "I'm done being saved."
The bond flared, white-hot.
And for the first time, she didn't try to hold it back