“I decided you had potential. That you might become what the prophecy required. I didn’t—” I stop, forcing myself to be honest even though every word feels like cutting myself open. “I didn’t plan it all out from the beginning. I just… watched. And when opportunities arose, I took them.”
“Opportunities.” The word comes out flat. Dead.
“To shape circumstances. To encourage certain outcomes.” I can hear how hollow it sounds even as I say it. “I didn’t orchestrate your life, Hannah. I just… nudged it. When I could. When the chance presented itself.”
“Younudgedit.” She stares at me, and I watch the horror deepen in her eyes as she processes what I’m telling her. “You watched a child grow up for sixteen years, and whenever you saw a chance to make her life harder, to isolate her, to break her down—youtookit. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“That’s not—”
“That’s exactly what you’re telling me.” Her voice is rising now, cracking with fury. “You didn’t have some master plan. You just saw opportunities to hurt me and you seized them. The chaos-beasts that kept attacking our walls—did you send them?”
“Not all of them. But some—”
“The plague that killed a dozen people, including our healer?”
I can’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t cause the plague. But I may have… ensured it reached Ironhold.”
“The border raids? The bandits?”
“Some of them were already going to happen. I just—”
“Made sure they happened tous.” She’s shaking now, her whole body trembling with rage. “Made sure they happened tome. Sixteen years of watching and waiting andnudging, and you want me to believe you didn’t plan this?”
“I didn’t plan to—” I stop. Swallow. Force myself to meet her eyes. “The fever. The one that kept you home the day your parents died.”
The silence stretches between us, terrible and absolute.
“That wasn’t an opportunity,” I admit, and the words taste like poison. “That was… deliberate. I needed you alive. I needed you to survive what was coming, and the only way to ensure that was to keep you home.”
“You poisoned me.” Her voice is dead. Flat. “You poisoned me so I’d survive. So I’d be alone. So I’d have no one left to protect me and nothing left to hope for.”
“I saved your life—”
“Youdestroyedmy life!” The words explode out of her, raw and anguished. “You took everything from me! My parents, my village, myfuture—and then you had the audacity to stand in that arena and let me think I had achoice?”
“You did have a choice—”
“I had the choice YOU gave me!” She’s screaming now, tears streaming down her face, and the bond is flooding with so much pain I can barely stand. The stone beneath my feet cracks—my magic bleeding out, reacting to the devastation I’m feeling through our connection. “You spent sixteen years making sure I’d have nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to, and then you put a sword in my hand and told me I couldfightfor my freedom? That wasn’t a choice, Karax. That was a trap. And I walked right into it.”
I reach for her—instinct, need, the desperate urge to comfort—but she flinches back like I’m made of fire.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice is cold now. Controlled. The tears are still falling, but she’s locked them away somewhere, buried the grief beneath ice. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
“Hannah, please—”
“I need to think.” She’s backing away, putting more distance between us with every step. “I need—I can’t be here right now. I can’t look at you without seeing—”
She breaks off. Shakes her head. Turns and walks toward the door.
“Hannah.” Her name tears out of me like a plea. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not enough. I know nothing I say can fix this. But I need you to understand—I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expectyou. The prophecy required an omega, and I spent sixteen years watching and waiting and taking opportunities when they arose, and I never—I never expected to feel anything. I never expected you to be more than a means to an end.”
She stops at the door. Doesn’t turn around.
“That’s supposed to make it better?” Her voice is quiet. Devastated. “That you did all of this—destroyed my entire life, murdered my hope, broke me down piece by piece—withouteven caring who I was? That you would have done it to anyone who fit the prophecy’s requirements?”
I don’t have an answer. Because she’s right.
“You’re telling me I was just… convenient.” She laughs, and the sound is hollow. “The right bloodline in the right place at the right time. And you watched me suffer for sixteen years without feeling anything at all.”
