“That reminder…?”
I smile against her skin, my hand splaying possessively over her stomach. “It’s ongoing, princess. Get some sleep. You’ll need your strength.”
29
ELOWEN
Morning arrives quietly in the small crossroads village. The first light slips through the thin curtains of the inn room in pale streaks of gold, soft enough that it does not wake Threxian beside me. The world outside the window is still half asleep, the distant sounds of carts and voices only beginning to stir along the road beyond the square.
For several long moments I am watching him.
Threxian sleeps with the stillness of something ancient rather than human, one arm draped loosely across the space where I had been lying moments earlier. The sharp tension that usually lives in the lines of his face has softened in sleep, leaving behind a quiet expression that almost makes him look younger than the centuries he carries.
Love. The word still feels new when I think it, yet the lifeline between us approves with quiet certainty every time the thought appears.
Carefully, I shift fully from the bed so I do not wake him. The floorboards creak faintly beneath my bare feet as I move toward the window and push the curtain aside just enough to look outside.
Morning mist lingers along the edges of the village road. Farmers are already moving through the square, their voices low and ordinary as they carry baskets toward the market stalls beginning to open for the day.
Normal life. The sight of it still feels strange after everything that happened in Briarthorn. For a moment guilt tries to stir again, the familiar ache that has lived inside my chest since the night the village burned.
But something is different now.
The guilt no longer crushes the air from my lungs the way it once did. It simply exists. Like a scar.
I dress quietly and slip out of the room, intending only to buy breakfast before Threxian wakes.
The morning air is cool when I step outside. The village smells of fresh bread and damp earth, the scents carried through the narrow street by a gentle breeze.
No one here knows who we are. To them we are simply travelers passing through. This fills me with freedom rather than fear.
I wander slowly through the small marketplace until I find a baker setting loaves on a wooden table outside his shop. A few coins secure warm bread and a small bundle of fruit, which I tuck carefully into a cloth before turning back toward the road that leads to the inn.
Halfway there I stop. The bond shifts. Not violently. Not with the explosive surge of power I once feared. Instead it moves like a quiet current beneath the surface of water, steady and controlled.
I close my eyes. For days I believed the demonfire answered only fear. That every flame had been born from panic I could not contain.
But standing here in the cool morning air, I realize something I had not fully allowed myself to see before.
Fear was only part of it. The fire answered something else too. Something older. Something I spent years pretending did not exist inside me. Anger.
The realization settles slowly into place. All those years in Briarthorn. All the whispered accusations. All the wandering hands and cruel laughter and quiet humiliation I endured because it was easier to remain silent than to fight.
I swallowed every one of those moments. Every insult. Every violation. Every time someone treated me like something small and powerless. The anger never disappeared. It simply waited. And when the bond opened the door between my emotions and power, that buried fury finally found a way to breathe.
The fire was not only panic. It was release. The thought does not frighten me the way it once would have. Instead it feels… clarifying.
I open my eyes and step away from the road toward the edge of the nearby field where tall grass sways gently in the wind. For several seconds I simply stand there, breathing slowly.
Then I raise my hand. The bond responds immediately. A small thread of warmth gathers beneath my palm, curling gently like a living ember waiting for instruction.
I do not panic. I do not suppress it. Instead I allow the feeling to exist. The anger. The strength. The part of me that survived years of silence without breaking.
“I am not fragile,” I whisper quietly.
The flame appears. A small, controlled spark blossoms in the center of my palm, glowing softly against the pale light of morning. It does not surge. It does not spread. It waits.
I study the tiny flame with quiet fascination as it dances gently above my skin. This is what the bond was always capable of. Not destruction. Choice.
