Archive of Our Own

Usan might be the Fist of Shadows, the Eye of Twilight’s most trusted advisor, but he wasn’t always so loyal.

There was a time where he didn’t believe in this. In Shen, in Yevai, in Kusho. They saved him from himself, from the person he could have become, dragged him back from the edge and gave him a purpose, gave him mercy and kindness. It was more than he deserved. It is still more than he deserves.

He can admit that he can still feel the call though. The shadows pull on him, they’re in his head and his dreams and everywhere except his body. He doesn’t tell Shen these things. There’s no need. If it gets bad enough he’ll find out anyway.

Usan is a person of secrets. He is not a child anymore. He speaks less, listens more, he is always watching and waiting for something to happen. He is aware of the dangers of this world and his job to protect those he cares about most. If he dies for Shen, he will have died honorably. But sometimes he wonders where the spark went, he wonders when he changed into this person. He can’t remember if it was before or after he tried to leave, maybe he was like this all along. It doesn’t matter anyway, there is no going back to being innocent, now he has a task and he will fulfill it until his timely end.

It is a weakness to feel. He is not balanced like Shen is. That is the reason that Master Kusho thought to give the title to someone else, but the Fist does not need to be blind. Their job is to protect and advise. And there was no one else as good as him, he doesn’t know why his Master even thought there would be because he only took on Shen and Usan as students.

Master Kennen told him something important after the ceremony, “The Eye is like a blind man, he will be able to function well enough with a stick, but sometimes he will need help from someone who can see. That person is you, Usan.” Then he looked him straight in the eyes and he felt just a bit of his magic, like the pressure before rain. “I know what you see. Kusho does not want to see it. Shen will listen to his father, but I believe that he will listen to you.”

Shen does not listen. He is blind to everything that doesn’t involve the Kinkou. He is the perfect Eye. Usan cannot do what he is meant to. He cannot uphold the balance of the Eye and Fist, he cannot ruin Shen’s peace, so when he fights to defend Kinkou lands, he goes alone.

Unsurprisingly, it is Yevnai who finds out about his escapades. She is waiting outside the door of his room for him, “Shen was looking for you,” she says expectantly, like he owes her some sort of explanation.

He doesn’t care (before he would have done anything to please her) because he’s covered in blood and wounds, and he’s had enough of fighting for one day. But this is the Eye’s wife, so he will not be crass despite the ache in his bones, “I apologize Yevnai, I did not mean to keep the Eye waiting. Let him know that I will make sure to rectify anything that I’ve missed.” Then he bows to her like he would to anyone else and walks past her to enter his room.

She should have known better than to put her hands on him, to try and pull him back by force. Skin meets skin and he flinches hard as her hand grasps his elbow. He turns too quickly and his forearm smacks hers in a crack of metal. She pulls her arm away and he can’t see the damage, but she tries to talk to him despite the pain. “Usan please don’t do this, don’t act like we’re strangers.”

Cool light floods in from the windows, bathing Yevnai and the blue of her dress. She’s beautiful even as she looks at him with fear. They are strangers now, nothing more. He needs to get into his room before he does something stupid. “Goodnight Yevnai.” He shuts the door in her face.

It is only hours later when he’s finally done scrubbing the blood off his armor that he realizes that Yevnai wasn’t scared of him, she was scared for him. He doesn’t think about it as he lies down to sleep, he knows better.

Shen summons him the next day. They do not discuss where Usan has been, they do not discuss what Usan did to Yevnai. He wonders what she must have told him. He feels guilty as he looks across the desk at Shen, but he is the Eye and blind to all, of course he doesn’t notice.

Sometimes he wishes that no one had saved him. That no one cared, because then he could leave without feeling guilty about it. Because these days he feels like he’s missed something important and no one wants to tell him. It feels like Shen and Yevai float above it all and Usan is sinking somewhere beneath them, out of sight.

He does everything he’s told. He follows Shen on all his missions, he teaches, he heals, he advises, he does so much, but nothing gets rid of that endless feeling under his skin. He can’t tell if it’s boredom or the balance doing its job. Or perhaps it is his own fault, maybe if he adopts the balance like Shen does all of this will go away (something about that scares him).

When he was younger, he used to burn hot. He was impulsive and curious and brave. Now he is as cold as Shen is. He lost it, the shine he used to have. Somewhere between lectures and rules and training and expectations it had faded away. Sometimes when he looks at Yevnai he sees it, that is the only reason he can’t completely push her away.

Sometimes Shen seeks him out to spar or to talk. When he was younger, he would have done anything for that. Now it just feels numb. Before he was Shen’s best friend, his most trusted person. Yevnai was just a crush and a dream, a far away promise. Now she’s his wife and Usan is his Fist. He is something now, so why doesn’t he feel like it? He is no longer the poor servant boy Master Kusho took pity on, but as he watches Shen and Yevnai laugh among themselves in the gardens, he sure does feel like one.

It’s his own fault for falling for someone he would never be able to get. Shen and Yevnai were always meant to be, not Shen and Usan, never Shen and Usan. And to think that once he loved her too (sometimes he remembers the kiss they shared all that time ago and wonders, but he cannot bear the thought of having a crush on a man and his wife). It is idiotic at best and stupid at worst.

He came close to telling them once. Once when he drank way too much. He had ended up with his head resting on Shen’s thigh and Yevnai’s fingers carding through his hair and their voices ringing in the air above him like little bells, and he had fallen asleep in peace.

And when he woke up, Yevnai was brushing her hair at her vanity. She noticed him, half-awake and confused on the settee at the foot of her bed, Shen and Yevnai’s bed. She asked him how he was feeling, and they made quiet conversation until Shen returned. He watched the door open and Shen walked in, hair wet from a shower. All of Yevnai’s attention was gone from Usan in a moment.

He remembers the way he looked around the room, making sure that he had everything he came in with. He saw the unmade bed that Shen and Yevnai had slept in the night before. Usan had slept at the foot of it like a dog. He should have been angry, but there was something alluring at the thought of kneeling at their feet. There was something at the thought of his head in Shen’s or Yevnai’s lap, hands sinking into his hair.

“Usan, is there something wrong? Your face is awfully red. You’re not getting sick, are you?” Shen asked him.

He said that he was feeling fine and escaped the room. Shen approached him the next day to talk about something he said when he was drunk, to talk about his unusual closeness. He must have said something completely obvious if Shen noticed, so he denied and denied and denied until they never talked about it again. Usan keeps his distance, it’s the right thing to do (does he even know how to choose right from wrong?).

Slowly, the shadows talk to him more and more. He cannot escape them even when he sleeps. As the war rages on, their power is only fed and stabilized. The only way to diminish their presence is to get far away from the source, so he spends even more time outside the temple fighting. The other benefit is that he often returns so tired he cannot think about what’s been bothering him.

This time Yevnai is waiting in his room for him. She sits on his bed like it belongs to her. Usan ignores her, there is no stir of happiness that at least someone cares to check on him.

In the silence he can almost pretend like there is no one watching him. There are no dark eyes and manicured hands waiting for him. He should do something with his opportunity, something to fix what he broke all those years ago.

“Will you help me?” He asks her, a jar of salve in hand. “I can’t reach my back.”

“Come sit,” she says as her eyes take in his form. He wonders what she thinks of him, if he’s something more to her than the illusive and unstable Fist that everyone else thinks he is.

He has already stripped himself of the thick cloth he was wearing under his chest plate. Yevnai’s fingers are gentle as she rubs the salve onto his bruises. Usan sighs besides himself, it has been so long since anyone had touched him. His peace is interrupted as Yevnai pulls away from him, “It will not be me next time Usan, it will be Shen.”

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” he faces her, “The other temples need help.”

“And we need our Fist of Shadows.”

“It’s my duty to fight for the Kinkou.”

“We have reason to believe that’s not all you’re doing.” She closes the jar and presses it into his hands. “I don’t want to see you hurt, and Shen doesn’t either,” her eyes are brimming with tears as she looks at him, “Come back to us, Usan. No one wants to force you again.”

“Is that what you think this is about?” He fights to keep the snarl off of his face, but he can’t. He was never good at keeping calm and he didn’t know that this is what Yevnai thinks of him.

He doesn’t want to scream at her. He doesn’t want to scare her and upset her because he loved her once. He loved her, so he turns away to look at the moon instead of her face. “I would never turn my back on the Kinkou again. I am the Fist of Shadows now, I am here.”

“I can only hope to believe you,” she says softly, and then she gets up and Usan can feel her eyes on him and then she’s gone.

There is no good way out of this. He has two choices, either keep trying to escape the shadows and do his duty, or be a sitting duck. Maybe he can take it though, if they confine him to the temple maybe he can still fight it off, he has been doing it for years already, and although the shadow has been getting stronger, so has he. Shen could probably cleanse it from his soul, fix him. He tells himself the same thing he did before, if it gets bad enough he’ll find out anyway. There’s no need for Usan to make them worry.

A few nights later he leaves the temple again, and this time he uses his spirit energy to phase through the walls, he’s sure that no one notices that he’s gone.

He is distracted often and it shows. The shadow whispers to him while he trains. It tells him how much stronger his strikes will be, how it will make him fluid and graceful and dangerous. It tells him that he will finally be able to escape the balance, that no one will be able to stop him.

Usan knows that the shadow is not lying to him. Even after years of training, his spirit energy fights him when he does not focus correctly. He cannot guide it in the way he’s supposed to, not when his thoughts are plagued with the shadow and the choices he will have to make. When he touched the conduit he felt the connection, how easy it would be to wield the shadows. He has the pain they like to feed off of, and once they got a taste, they never left him alone since.

Meditation is the best way to hold them back, fortify the walls of his mind so nothing can get through. He knows the way that spirits can alter memories and control people, he is aware of the danger he is in by not telling anyone of his affliction, but still he keeps it to himself.

He doesn’t know what hurts more, the fact that Yevnai and Shen think he’s going to try and defect again, or that they never bothered to look any deeper than that. He can admit that part of the reason he distanced himself was because he was curious if they would care enough to approach him. But they don’t care about him, they care about the safety of the Kinkou, and he supposes that he doesn’t deserve it anyway. He can’t expect them to be selfish like him.

Two weeks after Yevnai talked to him, Shen creates a roster of teams to be sent out in case other temples are attacked. Despite it being Usan’s very task, his name is not on the list.

As the days go by he feels less present, so he fills his schedule even more than he did before. He tries to make himself so exhausted that he can’t even think in his sleep, he doesn’t succeed. More time in the temple means more time around Shen and Yevnai, but he avoids them because it hurts and hurts and hurts and hurts—

Sometimes when he looks in the mirror his eyes flash red and tattoos cover his body. He knows who it is. Zed is the name he was going to give himself once he left, and now even he judges him, even the twisted and evil form of himself looks on with disappointment. The shadow takes advantage of his pain. It tells him that if he gives in it won’t hurt anymore. If he gives in he will lose everything and gain nothing except for his own relief, he imagines the look on Shen’s face and starts skipping dinner.

He gets missive after missive asking him to Shen’s office, to drink, to parties, to tea. He replies saying that he has a class to teach or paperwork to do and then signs himself up for it to make his excuses true. Every day he rises from nightmares caused by the shadow. Zed taunts him and tells him that he’s weak, that he was wrong for staying all those years ago, that he could have saved so many if he’d chosen to leave. Every night he returns to his room and the shadow drags him back into its embrace.

He constantly gets into arguments with Zed over everything in his life. There is no one that knows how to break holes in his defense better. “Does nothing haunt you at all?” He spits as he’s cornered once again. “What makes you so much better than me? You are alone too.”

Zed laughs in his face. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m not being dragged around like a lovesick fool. I don’t need anyone. You are beyond dependent.”

“I’m not dependent on anyone.”

“You are, Usan.” His name sounds wrong coming out of that mouth. Zed’s voice is like smoke, curling around him in a nauseating way. “Look at how lost you are without them,” he lunges at him and Usan trips over his feet in surprise. He lands on the ground hard, and Zed doesn’t relent, pinning him to the floor. “If you take my power you will not have to rely on the scraps of attention they give you. You will need no spirit magic and no stability.”

“I may be weak, but even I am not selfish enough to betray the Kinkou just for myself. This life suits me fi—”

“But you want more than this,” Zed roars. Cold hands find their place around Usan’s throat and squeeze. “Submit and you will have everything.”

His grip on Usan’s throat is cold and absolute. “You can’t kill me, you won’t find another host in a thousand years.”

Zed squeezes harder, unmoved by the statement, “There will be thousands that are as pathetic as you.” They have been through this many times. Usan considers letting Zed choke him out, to see how far the shadows are truly willing to go. The choice to live slowly fades along with his vision, when another voice joins the choir.

“Usan! We need to talk!” Yevnai calls for him outside the door.

He twists and kicks Zed off of him faster than he can think about. He’s frozen as his body shakes from adrenaline. Was he really going to let Zed kill him? Just like that?

“Usan, I know you’re in there. I haven’t seen you in so long. I’m sorry about last time, I promise I won’t bring it up again.” He hears a soft noise against the wood and the door groans inwards. “I know I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

Zed is still crouched on the floor across from him, arm wrapped around his waist like he can actually feel something. “She doesn’t mean it,” he says. Usan crawls over to him in silence, and this time it is Zed that is pinned against the dresser. In one swift motion he rips the helmet off his head and there is nothing but an empty suit, something pretending to be human, and then even that fades away as surely as it came. Was it that easy this entire time? No, the whispers of the shadows still remain even though Zed is gone.

Yevnai is still outside his door. “At least tell me to go.” He hears the pain in her voice.

He pulls the collar of his sleeping robes up his neck to cover any marks, and he rises from the ground slowly until his head stops spinning. Yevnai has terrible timing, but if she hadn’t interrupted whatever that was—

“What do you want?” That was too harsh, but Yevnai isn’t cowed in the slightest.

She pries the door open a couple inches more. “I just wanted to see if you were alright. You’ve been keeping busy.”

“I have been busy.” His mind feels blank as he looks at her, like there’s something missing that he can’t find.

The frustration on her face is satisfying in a twisted way. “The only reason you’ve got away with your behavior is because of how occupied Shen is.”

Another lecture is not what he wants to hear. Now that Zed is gone, maybe he can finally have a peaceful night, so he attempts to shut the door once again.

To his surprise Yevnai shoves herself in the way and keeps the gap from closing with her shoulder. “You don’t get to escape this Usan. You don’t get to hide and pretend that none of us care about you. I am here for you whether you like it or not,” she reaches for his shoulders and shakes him. Then her anger breaks. “Are you even listening to me?” She cries, “Are you even there?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and then his arms are around her and her arms around him. The pain in his neck and shoulders feels nonexistent as black locks mingle with white ones.

They reach an understanding after that. Shen truly is busy with the war. As more atrocities are committed, the spirit world rises in turmoil, and even when he can return to Thanjuul, he only does so to converse with Kennan and Kusho (Usan should be there too, but no one has time to track him down except for Yevnai).

He learns that Yevnai has been just as alone as he is. She is not trained in the way of the Kinkou, and although she is noble born and literate, there is only so much time one can spend in the library by themselves. Just like Usan, there is a layer of separation between her and the rest of the Kinkou. She is the Lady of the temple, meant to be served and respected. Before Shen got so busy, she would spend her time with him, and she would use her connections and charm to branch out their network further and further.

She spent her days watching time go by, but now she roams around the temple with Usan instead. It’s not good for him. He knows it when his eyes go soft and his lips tick up whenever he sees her face. He knows it when he sharpens his blades and she sits besides him, writing poetry. He loved her, and now he loves her again.

This is a third option he never considered. It hurts more, but the brightness in Yevnai’s eyes is worth it. He doesn’t tell her about how he feels or the shadow, spending less time avoiding her seems to appease her suspicions well enough.

Yevnai’s presence makes him more functional than he’s been in a long time. But after Shen returns for the first time in months, she splits her time between them, but it will never be enough for him, so he starts acting like a recluse again.

But this time it’s different. When he returns to his room after dinner he meditates first. Zed can no longer hurt him. Monsters don’t scare him. The only thing the shadows have left to use against him is his love for Shen and Yevnai, but he’s too lucid about them to self-destruct again. And he does have her sometimes at least. She notices the change, but he cannot tell her why, and he sees the way that it hurts her, but there is nothing he can do that won’t hurt her more.

Although his mind is stronger than before, his body starts to suffer the effects of corruption. He can no longer utilize spirit energy as the shadow fights with it over control of him. He starts meditating in closets and lounges to prevent episodes. He feels horrible all the time, and the only thing he can tell anyone is that he’s been feeling sick. He spends his time tracing inky black veins under his skin and believing that the end is near.

Other people begin to notice. He sees the looks, but he’s too tired to care. Every moment is spent fighting the shadow and he goes through the motions like it’s muscle memory. He hallucinates about the past. He sees things that shouldn’t: a younger Shen and Usan running through the temple’s halls; Master Kusho leaning against the wall as he teaches, looking on with approval; Yevnai and Usan in the gardens, laughing at something he can no longer remember.

He doesn’t know if he wants to die. It might be better than living like this, the thing is that he doesn’t need the shadow trying to reanimate his body and use him for its own means. It shouldn’t be a problem though, he’ll have a funeral like every other warrior, his body will be burnt and ashes scattered.

One day, the meditation isn’t quite enough to hold the shadows back. He doesn’t make it to the lesson he’s supposed to be teaching, instead he ducks into an empty room as the shadows drag him down to the floor. He tries his best to use his spirit energy to repel the darkness, but the little he has left twists out his grasp. It’s disgusting as it curls around him in a twisted embrace. After the shadow consumes him there will be nothing left of Usan, only Zed will remain. There’s no way he can fight it off anymore, he’s lucky that he even survived this long to begin with. When the shadow began feasting on his body after it couldn’t break his mind, his slow demise began.

Tendrils of shadow wrap around his chest and neck, they slip over his hands like gloves. They slide up his neck and pour into his mouth and nose. He’s a dead man. At least he can’t hear the whispers anymore, even the shadow has given up trying to convince him. He doesn’t spend his time thinking about what he can’t have. There’s only one last thing to do: destroy his energy core, collapsing the pathways that spirit energy and shadows use alike. The shadow has already weakened his body to take control of him, if his core is shattered then there will be very little for Zed to capitalize on. He won’t be a threat.

There is only a dull rock left in his chest where there used to be a bright star. Still, he squeezes until he feels a crack. The shadow’s silence turns into a scream as it also feels what he’s doing, but it cannot stop him, it’s too late. It swallows his head and casts him into darkness, but it doesn’t matter because he takes a hammer to his core and it explodes into brilliant blue shards among the wisps of smoke. Then his tether to the spirit world is broken, and he is truly blind.

Ionian myths about death trace back to Kindred: the spirit of the Lamb and the Wolf. It is what he expects to see as the world remains dark around him, and he imagines the Wolf’s gnashing teeth and the Lamb’s gentle step, guiding him to a land without shadows. Instead he sees a wave of blue, like a ripple through the sea.

That’s wrong.

He isn’t supposed to be able to see anything because his core is fractured. And then he feels the pulse again, and something is pushing his core back together. Something has cradled every single piece he threw away and is dragging them back into place.

All of a sudden, the shadow is pushed off of him by force. It screams again, but it isn’t at him. It begs and howls at someone else, someone who has no mercy for it. The veil is ripped off of him and he feels again. There’s only one person who could do this. He coughs and collapses forward as blood spews from his mouth, strong hands catch him and he finally surrenders to the darkness.

He floats for a while in the darkness. It should hurt. He knows that what he did should have damaged his body severely. Shen is near. Usan feels his energy but nothing else. He considers trying to ground himself, but the thought is fleeting enough that it slips out of his grasp.

When he finally does wake up, Shen is still there. He’s in a bed in their healing rooms. As far as he can sense, there is no one else around.

“How are you feeling?” Shen asks him.

“Fine.” It’s surprisingly true, aside from an ache in his chest that probably has something to do with shattering his energy core. He sits up without much difficulty, and finally faces Shen. He looks tired and worried, more than usual, probably because of Usan.

“I’m glad.” After a couple of seconds, Usan can’t look the relief on his face, but at the same time he’s realizing that he missed him far more than he thought he did.

“How long was I out?”

“Just a day.”

“Shouldn’t it hurt more then?”

“Your core wasn’t broken for very long, so the effects are not severe. There is still some internal damage though.”

“That’s good.”

“I would prefer it if you weren’t wounded at all.”

That’s…something that he didn’t expect Shen to say. “I wasn’t exactly thinking about the after.” He puts his head in his hands.

There is silence for a moment, and he can imagine Shen’s slightly raised eyebrows as he looks at him like a puzzle he can’t solve. “The corruption ran deep. I understand what you were trying to do. I do not agree with your method.”

“You’re going to argue with me over this right now?”

“Were you trying to die?” Shen fires back. The words burrow into his mind.

“I thought I had more time than that. The shadow made the decision.” His control slips as his tone sounds more like a cry.

“Usan you—”

“I was still planning what I would do. It’s not like I was just waiting for this to happen. And I know—”

There’s a hand on his shoulder. “Yevnai told me about the fighting and everything. I’m the one who forced you to stay even closer to the source,” he swallows, “I thought that you were simply having second thoughts about the past. My decision was hasty and based on an assumption. I do not blame you for not approaching me after that. I am sorry.”

“You are?” He rubs his eyes and looks up. The lights seem too bright, Shen’s face is too flushed.

“I truly am. Something like this should have never happened in this temple. I, especially, should have been more aware.” Shen gets off of the chair he’s sitting on and joins Usan on his bed, wrapping an arm around him.

He cannot help it as he’s pulled in by Shen’s warmth. It is too easy to bury his face in his chest, and if Shen is uncomfortable with the contact, he doesn’t say anything. “I only tried to shatter my core so the shadows couldn’t get to it.”

“I felt them eating you alive Usan,” Shen talks into his hair, “It will never happen again.”

“Okay,” he whispers, and he has the deepest yearning to say the words that have been imprinted on his heart, but now is not the time. They stay like that for so long that it is all he remembers when he wakes up the next day.

Shen and Yevnai orbit around him for the next couple of days while his room is cleansed of the shadows that reside in it. She understands what happened somewhat, in a way that someone not tethered to the spirit world can understand. She came to him crying, asking him why he would hide it from her, from Shen. She told him how useless she was for not seeing it. Usan told her in the best way that he could, but only Shen could calm the hysteria completely. He stared at them in envy and hurt as they talked to each other in low tones. It was then that he decided that he had to tell them. If he didn’t then all of this would be for waste, he couldn’t return to the way he was living before.

It is the day before he’s supposed to return to his room. Shen is sitting beside him, their shoulders touching. He is focused on the paperwork in his hands as Yevnai studies a contract, using Usan’s legs to prop herself up. The only person not doing anything is Usan, his own contract sits in his lap unread as he thinks about what he should say to them.

He feels too hot, every point of contact between the two people who care the most about him in this world burns. He leans his head onto Shen’s shoulder, feeling miserable. This shouldn’t be this hard, he’s been thinking about it for months (about what he could never have).

“What’s wrong?” Shen asks him, and that catches Yevnai’s attention as well.

“I love you guys.” He feels like crying.

“Oh Usan, we love you too,” Yevnai replies, but he can hear that she doesn't get it.

“Not like that,” he says, “More than that, more than I ever should.” Because when they’re beside him he can glimpse an eternity like this. He doesn’t cry, he just feels like the shadow is ripping apart his chest again. “That’s why I never told you about the shadow, it’s the reason why I was corrupted in the first place.”

He can feel the looks they give each other over his head. There is silence for a long time as all of them process this revelation. “That— That makes things make more sense,” Shen clears his throat.

“For how long?” Yevnai is running her thumb across the ridges of his knee absently.

“Years.” He thinks that he did love them all along, even when he thought that he didn’t.

“Years,” her voice wavers, “I didn’t know.”

“I made sure you didn’t. It couldn’t be more shameful,” he can’t sit here and do this. He can’t take how slow their responses are to how fast his mind is going. He can’t take the warmth of their bodies, and he almost wishes that he was numb with the shadows again because he doesn’t want to feel this. He doesn’t want to break apart.

“We’ll figure it out,” Shen has taken a hold of his shoulders, “You need to heal first, the rest will come later.” He can feel the ache in his core now. He must have channeled his spirit energy in his desperation, which is why Shen looks so concerned.

“Usan I— We’ll be here with you, okay?” She still looks shocked, but there’s a familiar determination in her eyes.

“Okay.” He’s never truly wanted to be alone.

Months later, all of them are lying in bed together. After the first time, it has become something routine. Usan is in his usual place between Shen and Yevnai when he’s disturbed by the movement of the man beside him. “What are you doing Shen?” He grumbles into Yevnai’s hair.

“If you roll over, you’ll see.”

“What?” He doesn’t roll over.

“You’re doing it now?” Yevnai sits up slightly so she can see over Usan.

“Now is as good of a time as any.” Shen’s chest presses into his back, and then Usan’s wrist is in Shen’s hand.

“We got rings for you, as a symbol of our bond,” Yevnai explains. “One from each of us.”

The world seems to slow around him for once in his life. “Will you put them on me?”

Yevnai slides a gold ring onto his left hand, and Shen slides a silver one onto his right.

“Now you’re ours,” Shen wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him in even more.

“Do you like them?” Yevnai asks.

Usan can only nod, his thoughts filled with everything he thought he couldn’t have.