Daemon’s hand tightened around mine.
I squeezed back.
For the first time in my entire life, the future belonged to us.
Not to kings who saw me as a weapon. Not to prophecy that demanded my power. Not even to the Devourer who’d tried to claim my magic for the Void.
To us. To the choices we would make. The world we would build. The joy we would leave.
It was terrifying, but it was ours.
I lifted my face to the sunlight and let myself believe, just for this one perfect moment, that we might actually survive what came next.
That survival might finally, finally mean something more than simply refusing to die.
That we could take all this broken, bleeding wreckage, and forge from it something worth protecting.
Something worth living for.
I knew the future might be full of impossible choices.
And I didn’t run.
The End
