She nodded. “I didn’t mean to. It just… happens. When I really need to move fast, or when someone’s—when someone’s there .” She said the last two words carefully, as if they were fragile. “Most people, when they feel it, they scream. They think I’m putting things inside their heads.”
Lian looked up. Her eyes were very old and very young at the same time. “No,” she agreed. “You didn’t.”
Kael shifted, and the old floorboard groaned. Lian’s eyes snapped open—clear, dark, and utterly alert. She didn’t sit up, but her body tensed like a wire. True Bond -Ch.1 Part 5- -Cloudlet-
When the vision faded, Kael found that his face was wet. Not with rain.
The chase had been brutal. Two blocks through the flooded undercity, then a frantic climb up a rusted fire escape as the Enforcers’ mag-lamps swept the alleys below. Lian had moved like water—silent, swift—but Kael had stumbled on a loose grate, his bad leg giving way. He had braced for the impact of cold stone, but instead, her hand had caught his wrist. She nodded
Kael stared at her open palm. At the soft, luminous thing hovering just above her skin. Every instinct he had—every lesson from the Academy, every scar from the field—screamed at him to refuse. To keep his distance. To treat her as a source, an asset, a problem to be solved.
He saw a small girl in a white room, hands pressed against a glass wall. He saw a woman with kind eyes— mother? handler? —singing a lullaby as the girl’s small body convulsed with pain. He saw years of running, hiding, forgetting. And beneath all of it, a single, unbreakable truth: I don’t want to be alone anymore. When I really need to move fast, or
“You felt that,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question.