He looks at me, steel in his silver-blue eyes. “You can walk away, but the world won’t. And the Shadow Forces won’t. This isn’t a role, my dear girl—it’s a weight. If you don’t carry it, someone else will fall trying to hold the line.”
His words settle over me like the slow pull of the tide. I glance at the soldiers, at the weapons, at the firelit banners above. This has never been about a single choice . . . it’s about every choice after.
I nod, nails digging into my palms. “Then, today, I choose this.”
Valen nods in return, like I’ve just volunteered to peel potatoes—not step into a war.
After our conversation, the grief returns like a wave breaking open, sharp and breath-stealing.
Without thinking, I find myself crossing the courtyard, slipping through the gates, and walking toward the lake. The oak tree waits there for me, just as it always has—still, silent, reliable.
But everything else has changed.
Standing beneath its branches, I realize that choosing this path—trulychoosing it—makes their death feel final, real in a way it hadn’t before.
Like moving forward means leaving them behind.
I ease onto the bench beneath the tree, the wood cool beneath my palms. The ground still holds the damp chill of early spring, the kind that lingers beneath the surface. I let it in. It matches the ache in my chest.
I used to love this.
As a child, I lived in the dirt—knees brown and bare, playingJacks with Lyra or lying on my back, watching clouds drift across a summer sky. I coaxed buds from the ground with my lesser magics, small and clumsy but full of wonder. I’d kneel and wait, breath held, as tiny green stems pushed through the soil like they were waking just for me.
But today, the chill is more than I can bear. So I sit on the bench instead.
The last moments of my parents’ lives creep into my mind. Their faces lit with relief when they saw me return.
I left them.
Then the crash of the house. The whoosh of fire. The screams.
I left them.
I don’t know how long I sit there, the lake stretching out before me, its surface shimmering like glass catching the light. The breeze stirs, it gently ripples across the reflection until everything looks just a little bit blurred—like the world can’t decide what shape to take.
Neither can I.
“There you are.”
I jump, the voice ripping me from the memory. Thane stands beside the bench, his shadow stretching long in the late afternoon light.
For a moment, I can’t speak. Not with the screams still echoing in my mind. His eyes tighten slightly when he sees my expression.
How long have I been sitting here?
I glance up at the sun, now dipping lower behind the trees. An hour. Maybe more.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says, voice low, careful.
“It’s okay,” my voice faint.
He nods once, then gestures to the empty space beside me. “Mind if I sit?”
I shrug. “Go ahead.”
It suddenly occurs to me—I haven’t seen Lyra since breakfast. I turn to Thane, about to ask if he has, but the words die on my tongue when I catch the way he’s looking at me. Like I’m something fragile. Breakable.
No one’s ever looked at me like that before. I’ve always been capable. Certain. Sure of my next step. But now?
