The rejection stings more than it should. Three weeks of growing closeness, of her softening toward me, of something building between us that I’ve never felt before—and now this. Whatever’s bothering her, she’s not ready to share it.
I should respect that. Should give her the space she’s clearly asking for.
“Position one,” I say instead, and we begin.
The session is brutal.
She fights like she’s trying to exorcise something, throwing herself at me with an intensity I haven’t seen since her first week. I match her energy, pushing her harder than I have in days, and by the end we’re both breathing hard—me from exertion, her from exhaustion.
“Better,” I tell her as she bends over, hands on her knees. “Your speed is improving.”
“Thanks.” The word is clipped. Dismissive.
I catch her wrist before she can walk away. “Hannah. Whatever’s bothering you—”
“Nothing’s bothering me.” She tugs against my grip, but I don’t release her. “Let go.”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing is—” She stops, her jaw tightening. Through the bond, I feel a flash of something that might be anger or might be fear. “I found your scrying room.”
The words hit like a blade to the chest.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Seven centuries of careful control, and one sentence from this woman has reduced me to something raw and exposed.
She found it. She knows.
“I see.” I release her wrist slowly, carefully, though every instinct screams at me to hold on tighter. “And what did you find there?”
“Crystals. Hundreds of them. All showing Ironhold.” Her gray eyes are hard as flint—but underneath the hardness, I can see the pain. The betrayal. The dawning horror that’s been building since she walked into that room. “You told me you’d been watching for months. You didn’t mention you’ve been watching since I was achild.”
I should have expected this. Should have locked that room more securely, or destroyed the crystals, or—
No.I should have told her. Should have trusted her with the truth before she had to discover it herself, broken and scattered across a floor of shattered stone.
“I can explain—”
“Can you?” She steps back, putting distance between us, and the loss of her proximity feels like a physical wound. “Can you explain why you have crystals showing me at eight years old? At ten? At twelve? Can you explain why you were watching my parents’ forge before I was even old enough to hold a sword?”
“Hannah—”
“Did you know?” Her voice cracks, and I see tears gathering in her eyes. The sight of them—of her pain, her grief, her fury—tears something loose in my chest. “Did you know they were going to die? Did youwatchthem die?”
“No.” The word comes out too fast, too defensive. “I didn’t watch them die. I wasn’t watching that day.”
It’s not a lie. I wasn’t watching when the bandits attacked. I was in Stone Court, attending to business that seemed important at the time.
But it’s not the whole truth either.
“But you were watching the day before. And the day after.” She wraps her arms around herself like she’s trying to hold herself together—and the sight of her, so small and wounded andbroken, makes me want to destroy something. Preferably myself. “You’ve been watching my whole life, Karax. Sixteen years of it, captured in crystal. Why?”
I don’t have an answer that will satisfy her. The truth is too complicated, too damning—sixteen years of observation, of watching for opportunities, of nudging circumstances when I could.
She’s asking me to justify the unjustifiable.
“I was looking for you,” I say finally. “For someone like you. The prophecy requires specific bonds, Hannah. Specific omegas. I searched for decades before I found potential candidates.”
“Candidates?” She laughs, and the sound is bitter, broken—nothing like the warm sounds I’ve grown to treasure over the past weeks. “I waseight. A child playing in the mud. And you decided then that I might be useful?”
