“From what?”
“Becoming the reason I forget who I am.”
The silence after that wasn’t empty. It was heavy with all the things neither of us would name.
I stepped back first. The air cooled instantly, the frost reclaiming the space between us. She turned away, back toward the endless stretch of snow below.
“Why does it bother you so much?” she asked. “That I won’t stay out of your wars?”
“Because you don’t belong in them.”
“Tell me why you protect me when you should punish me instead.”
Her voice was steady. It shouldn’t have been. I’d seen battlefields crumble for less than the weight of that question.
I looked past her, to the aurora twisting like veins of light through the night. It shouldn’t have been crimson. It shouldn’t have existed here at all. The world itself was starting to break its own rules, and somehow, she stood at the center of it.
“I can’t,” I said finally.
“Or you won’t.”
“Both.”
She sighed, a soft, tired sound. “Then stop pretending it’s only my defiance you can’t stand.”
Her words hit clean through the armor I hadn’t realized I still wore. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. She didn’t know. She couldn’t.
I turned away, gripping the stone railing hard enough to make it crack beneath my palm. The heat under my glove flared again, licking through the leather, eager. I wanted—no, needed—to leave.
Gritting my teeth, I said, “Go inside. You’ll freeze.”
She laughed once. “That’s your line, isn’t it? Order and obedience. Cold and distance.”
I should’ve walked away. But I’d already failed that test once tonight.
“I mean it, Katria.”
She met my eyes, and the aurora caught there too—red fire flickering in gray storm. “You always do.”
She didn’t move when I told her to go.Neither did I.
The wind had stilled. Even the snow seemed to hesitate between falling and flight. The crimson aurora arced above us, rippling like breath trapped inside glass.
Then Katria turned back to the railing, fingers brushing frost until it melted under her skin. “Do you ever tire of it?” she asked softly. “Being the one who feels nothing?”
“I feel,” I said.
“Then prove it.”
She faced me fully, and for one impossible heartbeat the world narrowed to the space between us.
Her hair had loosened in the wind, strands catching the red light. A faint smudge of ash streaked her jaw where a wraith’s shard had grazed her. I should have noticed the imperfection first, but all I saw was how alive she looked against a kingdom built to freeze everything it touched.
I took one step forward.
“You shouldn’t test me,” I said quietly.
“Why not?”
