“Charity,” he says, voice cracking on my name. “I don’t want to run. I want to stay. But the world is bigger than us, and it’s already trying to twist what we have into something ugly.”
“Then let them try.” My voice is shaking but steady. “We can’t control all of them. But we can controlus.”
He looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen before—hope and fear warring in his chest.
“I’m scared,” he whispers.
“So am I.”
And then—
The air in the hotel room changes—pressure dipping, the temperature shifting in a way that feels almost intentional.
And then the scent arrives.
Roses. And something like distant salt spray.
Thelamp flickers.
Draco goes still.
A shimmer gathers near the foot of the second bed, bending the light, pulling it into the shape of a woman—half shadow, half starlight, fully impossible.
Fortuna.
Draco drops to one knee before I can even breathe. A reflex older than any building in this city. I don’t kneel—mostly because my body refuses to move at all.
Her smile is warm, amused, knowing.
“Rise, gladiator,” she says, her voice stretching across centuries. “The wheel turned for you long before today. Even the small one felt its shift—his thread was fraying, so I tightened it. He will return to you soon.”
Draco rises slowly, reverently. My heart stutters.
Fortuna steps closer—though “steps” isn’t the right word. It’s more like the room rearranges itself around her presence.
Her gaze lands on Draco first.
“You fear being owned,” she says. “Because the last time you gave your heart, it was forged into a weapon used against you.”
His breath shudders out of him.
Then her eyes turn to me.
“And you fear disappearing. You were raised inside a story that demanded your silence. You think loving boldly will cost you yourself.”
Tears burn instantly behind my eyes.
She takes us both in—hands linked, worlds different, trembling with truths we’ve both been too afraid to speak.
“Your wounds are not each other’s burden,” Fortuna says softly. “They are each other’s map.”
Something in my chest cracks open. Draco’s shoulders drop as if the weight on them shifts.
The light around her flickers, grows softer, like sunset caught in glass.
She looks at each of us one more time, gaze sharp and kind in the same breath.
She speaks the words that change everything:
