Ferrula blinked. Just once.
He didn’t stop. “It wasn’t about weakness. It wasn’t about trying to save a damsel or whatever you think I see when I look at you. It wasyou.I would’ve done the same for Naia if someone tried to gut her in front of me. Or Riven. Or anyone in this squad.”
His voice dropped quieter. “But it wasyou.So I moved.”
Ferrula stared at him, the lines around her mouth tight. Her fists clenched at her sides.
Jax looked at her with nothing but sincerity. “I swear, I will never dishonor you like that again. You have my word. I may not always understand Dirian pride… but I understandyours.”
Ferrula didn’t speak.
But she turned her back slowly, and though her jaw was still tight?—
She didn’t draw her blade.
Ferrula stood still for a long beat, the firelight from the central brazier casting deep shadows over her face. Her posture remained rigid, but something behind her eyes had shifted—just slightly.
Then, slowly, she turned—not to Jax, but to Naia.
“Naia,” she said, her voice quieter, but still edged. “I need to ask you something. And I want the truth.”
Naia didn’t flinch. She nodded, braiding forgotten in her lap as she looked up calmly. “Always.”
Ferrula studied her, arms still crossed, chin lifted. “When Jax says he’d do the same for you… for your family, do you believe him?”
Naia didn’t even blink. “Absolutely.”
Ferrula’s brows knit together, not in disbelief, but in contemplation.
Naia continued, her voice even, but filled with something steadier than certainty—understanding. “That’s who he is. Jax would throw himself into fire if it meant someone he loved made it out alive.”
Jax shifted uncomfortably near his cot, shooting Naia a wary look. “You trying to make me sound reckless?”
“Youarereckless,” she replied without missing a beat. “Especially when it comes to people you care about.”
Then her gaze returned to Ferrula, gentler now. “If he’s claimed you, Ferrula, when you mean something to him, you have to accept that… flaw.”
Jax groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. “Now it’s a flaw.”
Naia smirked, eyes sparkling. “Abeautifulflaw.”
Ferrula looked between them, her jaw still set, but the tension in her shoulders began to ease. The rigid fury bled into something quieter… something almost like peace.
She didn’t smile. Not quite.
But her arms lowered.
And for Ferrula, that was as close to forgiveness as anyone got.
Ferrula took a deep breath, the kind that sounded like it scraped past years of pride and walls she’d built too high to scale. She turned fully toward Jax, her expression unreadable, but her voice carried the weight of something hard-won.
“I am coming to understand the differences between Grenthian and Dirian men,” she said carefully, as if she’d practiced the words in her head a dozen times. “You are… unaccustomed to our customs.”
Jax blinked, caught somewhere between caution and hope.
Ferrula lifted her chin. “I will allow this one error in judgment.”
Jax exhaled with visible relief, a crooked grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Then I promise to make it up to you. Later.”
