He didn’t pick me because I’m special or because he wanted to keep me.
He chose me because he thinks I can save his people.
The EMT part of me—the part that runs toward danger when everyone else runs away, the part of me that promised to save lives—understands that kind of decision with brutal clarity.
Risk everything to save someone.
Risk yourself to save many.
That logic? That I get.
It sits heavy and familiar in my chest.
But is it wrong that it still makes me sad?
That some small, selfish part of me wishes he wanted me just for me?
I swallow hard, hands curling in the fabric of the dress.
Because whatever else this is, whatever mess of magic and fire and fate I’ve fallen into—I know I can’t be responsible for a world dying.
If binding myself to Thorne can stop that—if standing beside him can keep his people alive, keep The Ember Vein burning—then I will do it.
Not because I was kidnapped.
Not because I was told.
But because this is who I am.
I’m not a hero.
I’ve never wanted to be one.
Heroes are statues and stories and people who don’t flinch.
I save people. Or I get hurt trying.
That’s the job. That’s the calling.
That’s the thing that crawled into my bones long before I ever put on an EMT uniform.
You see someone bleeding out, someone trapped, someone afraid—and you move.
You don’t stop to calculate the cost to yourself.
You just go.
Standing here, wrapped in white and starlight, knowing what comes next, I feel that same familiar tightening in my chest. The moment right before the leap.
I only hope I’m strong enough to withstand what I’m bound to feel after Thorne is finished touching me.
Because he will.
According to Masha, that’s how mates are claimed in Nightfall.
First comes the ceremony. We’ll stand beneath the open sky, before the Great Flame—the massive hearth at the heart of Ashfell that has burned since before Thorne was born. Before his people. Before the Fates themselves, if Masha is to be believed.
We’ll speak vows. Bindings. Promises that sound older than language and heavier than marriage ever did back home.
