“I know,” he said. Then he raised his voice—just enough to cut through the wind.
“I know I could die out here. I accepted that before I crossed the boundary.”
He took a step closer. His eyes locked on mine, fierce and steady and utterly unafraid.
“I don’t know why you’re my north star. I just know my whole world reordered itself the first time I saw you. I can’t not be here. I’m ready and willing to pay whatever this costs.”
Silence fell hard between us.
“Do you,” I whispered, “really understand what you’re risking?”
“My life,” he said. Calm. Certain. “And I’m still here.”
“Then why—”
“Because you’re worth it.”
The hum swelled. I felt it in my bones, in my blood, in every cell of my body screaming at me to close the distance between us.
I stepped back instead.
"You don't even know me."
"I know enough." He moved toward me, and I retreated again, maintaining the gap. "I know you train like you're preparing for war. I know you ask questions about survival that no normal student asks. I know you look north sometimes like you're listening for something no one else can hear."
My breath caught.
"And I know," he continued, "that whatever's pulling you up that mountain is the same thing that's been pulling me toward you since the day we met."
Silence. Just the wind and our breathing and the vast white emptiness stretching out in all directions.
"You can't feel that," I whispered. "You're not—"
I stopped myself. Almost said too much. Almost cracked open the door to a world he didn't know existed.
"I'm not what?" He was close now. Close enough that I could see the ice crystals caught in his eyelashes, the chapped red of his wind-burned cheeks. "Tell me, Lumi. Whatever it is you're hiding, whatever secret you think I can't handle—tell me."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because it would change everything!" The words tore out of me, raw and desperate. "Because once you know, you can't unknow it, and your whole life will be different, and I can't—I won't—be the reason you lose—"
My voice broke.
James reached for me.
I didn't pull away.
His hands closed around my arms, steadying me, anchoring me. The hum sang at the contact, warm and bright and overwhelming. I wanted to fall into him. Wanted to let him hold me up the way he had on the equipment shed steps.
But I couldn't. Not here. Not now. Not with the mountain waiting and the wolf howling in my visions and everything I'd worked for hanging by a thread.
"I'm scared," I admitted. The words came out cracked. "Not of the mountain. Not of dying. I'm scared of you."
"Of me?"
"Of what you make me feel." I looked up at him, and I let him see it—all of it. The fear, the longing, the desperate hope I'd been trying to bury since the moment we met. "I've been alone my whole life, James. I learned how to survive that. How to carry my own weight and not need anyone and keep moving no matter what. But you—"
