Kael's POV
I woke at two in the morning for no justifiable reason. This was unusual. I slept with the efficiency I applied to everything else, in all the hours allocated and at the depth required.
I did not wake in the middle of the night without cause because my body understood that it needed enough sleep hours in order to run an exact pace. Two in the morning with no gate alert, no bond signal from the Phoenix, no council emergency flagged in the monitoring system.
No cause. Except for the memory of the column.
I lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and the column was there in exactly the way it had been in the dungeon, specific and immediate. The way things were immediate when they had happened recently enough that the body hadn't finished processing them.
His forehead against mine afterward. The breath adjustment. My hand still on his jaw because moving it had not been the thing I had wanted to do.
The kiss. Fucks sake the kiss.
