The thing about learning to close a door is you become very aware of what's on the other side of it.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room with the mind-link walled and my thoughts louder than they'd been in days. No Riven bleeding through. No accidental awareness of where he was or what he was feeling. Just me and the heat humming low in my chest and the growing realization that walling the link hadn't actually solved anything.
Because the heat didn't care about doors.
It started sometime around sunset. Not the full wave — God, I wasn't ready for that yet — but the warning tremors. The kind that said soon in a voice I couldn't ignore.
I pressed my thumb into my index finger. Notch. Notch. Notch.
