She laughs, soft and sleepy against my chest. Doesn't even open her eyes, just nuzzles closer like a cat seeking warmth. "Since when do I need your permission, Legion?"
Since always. She knows it. I know it. The dirt knows it. The ghosts in this silo know it. The scars on my knuckles spelling my sister's name know it.
We all know it.
"I mean it," I say, voice harder now. "You should marry him. White House Marcus with his clean hands and Georgetown degree."
Now she looks up, those blue eyes narrowing, sleep vanishing like mist under a harsh sun. "What are you talking about?"
I sit up, dislodging her from my chest, reaching for my jeans crumpled on the floor. My shirt. My boots. All the armor I dropped when she rode in on her hundred-thousand-dollar horse, hair wild, eyes wilder. "You need to get back before they miss you. Before someone comes looking."
"Legion—" My name on her lips still sounds like prayer, even after everything.
"They're gonna notice." I pull my shirt over my head, covering the ink, the scars, the places her fingers just touched. "The Little Ashby Princess can't disappear at her own engagement party. Not with half the state's political machine watching."
She sits up, blanket clutched to her chest like virtue she abandoned hours ago. "Don't call me that."
I don't answer. Just finish lacing my boots with quick, efficient movements. Stand up. Offer her my hand. "You need to go."
For a second, she doesn't move. Just stares at me, something breaking behind those eyes—oceans freezing over in real time. Then she takes my hand, lets me pull her to her feet, our bodies close enough that I can feel her heart hammering against mine.
She dresses silently, efficiently. No more words between us. Just the sound of fabric against skin. The rustle of her fixing her hair, erasing the evidence of my fingers tangled in golden strands.
The heartbreak isn't that she's leaving. It's that she believes me when I push her away - as if there was ever a universe where I didn't want her to stay, as if I could ever mean the words that cut between us like barbed wire.
I knew this day was coming. Even before prison swallowed three years of my life. Even before I let her go the first time.Some things are written in blood, not ink. Some fates are carved in bone before you're born.
"That worlds will shake if they should truly touch," I say, quoting the poem she tattooed on her ribs.
She finishes straightening her dress, smoothing expensive fabric over hips I just held, then steps close. Places her hands on my face, thumbs brushing over stubble. Kisses me once, soft and final, tasting of goodbye and broken promises.
"It has only ever been you," she whispers against my mouth, breath mingling with mine one last time.
Then she's gone, stepping out of the silo into the moonlight, whistling for her horse with two fingers between perfect lips. I watch through the doorway as she mounts up, bareback and barefoot, and rides away across the silver-washed prairie.
Back to her mansion.
Her fiancé.
Her life.
Her destiny that never included a man named Legion.
I stand in the empty silo, fairy lights might as well be prison bars. The ghost of her perfume lingers, mixing with dust and memory.
This is the end. I swear it.
It's over.
I just needed to see her one last time.
And now I'll set her free.
