I reach back, finding his hand. Pulling his arm around my waist. He goes rigid, then slowly relaxes. His warmth settles against my back.
The bond I never chose sits deep in my chest. A bond I wish I didn’t feel. A connection that should have been beautiful but was stolen from me.
Darian Luthar just knelt at my feet and confessed his sins.
And I stopped them from killing him.
I press my palm over my heart and try to name what I feel.
I can’t.
Chapter 2
Aspen
The frost spreads without permission.
I watch it creep across the ground beneath my boots—delicate crystalline patterns that shouldn’t exist in pre-dawn warmth. My water rune pulses cold against my upper arm, responding to emotions I don’t want to think about.
Fury. Guilt. A protective instinct so sharp it borders on violence.
I haven’t slept.
Every time I close my eyes, I see Darian kneeling in our firelight. See my blade pressed to his throat—close enough to feel his pulse against the steel. Close enough to end him.
Close enough that Kaia stopped me.
That’s what I can’t process. She looked at the man who never saw her at all—only what she could do, never who she was—who dissected her wonder and called it research, who decided what she was worth and handed it to Thorne—and saiddon’t kill him.
Ice veins outward from where I stand, climbing the tree trunk beside me. I don’t bother stopping it.
“You’re going to freeze the whole camp if you keep that up.”
I don’t turn. Torric’s heat signature washes over me before he settles against the opposite tree, radiating warmth that makes steam curl between us.
“Let me,” I say quietly.
“Can’t.” His voice carries an edge I recognize—the same barely restrained violence I’m fighting. “Apparently we’re not allowed to solve problems by burning them anymore.”
“Or freezing them.”
“Shame.”
I feel his fury mirroring mine. The fire rune on his chest pulses hot enough I can sense it from here. We’re both wound tight, magic leaking in ways we haven’t lost control of since we were children.
Since Father branded us and told us it was for our own good.
“Kieran’s calling a meeting,” Torric says. “Dawn. Everyone.”
“To decide what?”
“What to do with him.” His jaw tightens. “Like there’s anything to decide.”
I breathe out slowly, trying to rein in the cold. Failing.
“If she asks us to let him live—” Torric starts.
“Then we let him live.”
