The day after the crash the fog around the sector felt less like weather and more like a shroud being slowly pulled tighter around the building.
Inside the triage ward the air was heavy and still. The sharp metallic tang of Isole Sylvaris's high-tier magic had faded swallowed up once again by the foundational smells of the place. Rust. Mildew. Slow decay.
Vane sat on his stool watching Senna sleep. In the dim grey light stripped of her usual ferocious energy the tragedy of her situation hit him harder than it ever had when they were shouting on the balcony.
She was so young.
He had always thought of her as ancient. She seemed like a relic from some bygone war seasoned and hardened by decades. But looking at her now... her face slack and pale against the dirty pillow... he realized with a jolt that she couldn't be more than twenty-three. She was barely older than the upperclassmen strutting around the main campus.
She wasn't an old soldier put out to pasture. She was a recent graduate. A prodigy whose star had risen violently and burned out almost instantly in that corridor.
She stirred. Her breath hitched in a painful wheeze before her eyes opened. They were cloudy for a moment before focusing on him with their usual unsettling sharpness.
"You are still here parasite," she rasped. Her voice was weaker than yesterday. It was thin as paper.
"Skipped classes," Vane said easily though his heart rate spiked the moment she woke up. "Kael is running endurance drills today. Figured sitting here watching you breathe was less painful."
"Liar." She tried to shift herself higher on the pillows and failed. A spasm of pain crossed her face as her non-existent strength betrayed her.
Vane was up instantly. He leaned over the cot sliding his arms behind her shoulders to support her weight adjusting the pillows with careful hands until she was settled.
When he pulled back she grabbed his wrist. Her grip was weak. It was bone pressing against skin but her intent was iron.
"Stop hovering," she said but she didn't let go. "And stop lying to me Vane. I don't have time for it anymore. That elf girl bought me two weeks maybe. Probably less. The clock is ticking louder than you are."
Her dark eyes bore into his stripping away the charm and the defenses and the Oakhaven hustle.
"Yesterday. On the roof. Before I went under. You felt it again didn't you? The resonance."
Vane went still. He could try to deflect but the look in her eyes stopped him. She was done playing games.
He slowly sat back down on the stool not pulling his wrist from her weak grasp.
"Yeah," Vane whispered. "I felt it. It was stronger than the first time. Clearer."
"But you stopped," Senna said. Her voice was sharp with accusation. "You grabbed a reflex. A shallow copy. But you didn't take the Authority. You didn't take the concept of the Wall."
She pulled at his wrist forcing him to look at her.
"We talked about this weeks ago Vane. You told me how your lockpick works. You told me it requires a bridge. Intimacy. Connection."
"I told you," Vane agreed his voice low.
"So why didn't you finish it?" she demanded her eyes burning. "I was helpless. I was convulsing in your arms. The physical contact was there. The intensity was there. You could have forced the full bridge open right then and stripped the Silver Fang out of me."
She looked at him with a mix of anger and genuine confusion.
"You call yourself a parasite. You say you want power more than anything. So why am I waking up with my soul still intact?"
Vane looked at the floor then back at her. The easy answer... that it didn't work that way... was a lie. In that moment of crisis on the roof the door had been unlocked. He could have kicked it open.
"Because the full bridge requires the act Senna," Vane said his voice rough. "Not just holding hands during a seizure. It requires the physical union. Sex."
He gestured helplessly at her frail wasted form.
"I wasn't going to do that to you. I wasn't going to facilitate a transaction like that while you were dying in the dirt."
Silence stretched in the small cold room. Vane waited for her to nod to acknowledge the basic decency of the decision.
Instead Senna leaned her head back against the mildewed pillows and stared up at the ceiling with a look of profound frustration.
"You are getting sentimental rat," she murmured. The accusation was sharp despite her weak voice. "A month ago you would have done it. You would have taken what you needed and walked away."
She looked back down at him her eyes hard.
"Don't go noble on me now Vane. I made a pact with a parasite because parasites survive. If you start catching feelings you are going to break when I do. And then my legacy dies with you."
Vane felt the sting of her words but he didn't flinch. He realized she was trying to push him back into the box she understood. The ruthless survivor. Because if he cared her death became a tragedy instead of a business deal and she couldn't handle being a tragedy.
"I am not going noble," Vane said his voice fierce. "I am just realizing that the power doesn't mean much if I don't know how to carry it."
He leaned closer squeezing her hand back careful not to crush her fragile bones.
"I want the power. I want the Silver Fang so badly my teeth ache. But I don't want it like that. I don't want to steal it from a corpse and I don't want to take it by assaulting a dying woman."
He met her gaze his own eyes burning.
"You broke me down and built me back up Senna. You taught me how to stand. If I take your life's work the cheap way I am spitting on everything you taught me in this room."
Senna stared at him. For the first time her cynical mask cracked completely. Her eyes shimmered just for a second before she angrily blinked the weakness away.
"You are an idiot," she whispered. Her voice trembled with a mix of fury and something else. "You are going to make a terrible wall if you are this easily compromised."
She pulled her hand away from his but only to rest it weakly on his knee.
"We don't have time for this sentimentality Vane. The crash took too much. If we are going to finish this pact... if you are going to be strong enough to hold what I have to give you without snapping in half... we need to work."
She tried to push herself up further her teeth gritted against the pain.
"Help me sit up. You need to learn the mental structuring of the Fang before my mind goes too. And when the end comes... when there are no more drills left..."
She looked at him her expression turning stark and absolute.
"We do it your way. The full bridge. You take it all. But not a second before."