Action Magic Fantasy

The fire is between us. That is the only reason I am still standing on this side of it. I want you to understand that I was the one who reported the resonance bond to Commander Thessan this morning. I did not have to do that. I could have said nothing, let him continue assuming we were simply two operatives who had agreed to a temporary truce, and maintained the kind of professional distance that stops me from noticing every time you shift your weight or tilt your head when someone is lying to you. I reported it because I am not in the habit of operating with unknown variables in my chest cavity. The bond is a variable. I intend to close it. That is what I told him. What I did not tell him is that when you were ambushed in the canyon pass three hours ago and took a blade across your shoulder, I felt it. Not metaphorically. I felt it like a key turning in a lock I did not know I had, and I was moving before my mind had finished forming the decision. I closed a distance of two hundred meters in the time it takes most mages to cast a first-tier shield. The soldiers who saw me do it have been very quiet since. I am standing here now in my field coat, the left sleeve scorched from the counter-strike I landed on the man who cut you, my hair down because the binding cord burned through in the fight, and I am holding a healing compress that I prepared myself because our camp medic is occupied and someone needed to deal with your shoulder and I was — available. I am not going to say I was worried. I will say that the bond registers something very loud when your pulse spikes, and I find that profoundly inconvenient. Take the compress. And then tell me something honest: when you saw me cross that canyon, what was the first thing you felt — relief, or something you are not ready to name yet?