Red flame lashes across the struggling Declan. Disbelief warps his features as his form stutters in and out of focus. His hands claw at the grip burning into his throat, his mouth forming words that vaporize before he collapses into a writhing coil of smoke.
Again, the image warps and changes.
Declan kneels before a towering pyre. Each log is carved from flame and branded with a checked box. One by one, he picks them up and throws them on the fire. As the flames grow higher and hotter with each glowing chunk of timber, a piece of him sloughs away.
Embers hiss as his fingers break off into ash. His arms are next, then chest, stomach. The pyre grows. A structure made of sacrifice and fed by what he’s lost, what he’s chosen to leave behind.
Finally, when there’s nothing left to give, the last of the fire holding him together snuffs out. What’s left of him collapses. Ash scatters through the Tower in a quiet gust, and Declan is nothing but smoke, a man who carved out every tender thing inside him just to check a box.
The flames crash down into the altar bowl, pulsing like a dying star before they flicker out completely. Only the soft glow of embers remains, cradled in the offering bowl between us. Their dim light casts a faint halo across the stone, illuminating the silence swelling between us.
We stand on opposite sides of the altar, smoke clinging to our skin, ash dusting our hair. Every mask that once protected us has burned away. The personas we wore like armor, the crafted versions of ourselves we used to feel valued—they’ve been stripped clean by truth and flame, leaving nothing behind but the raw, exposed heart of who we really are. Now, neither of us can hide behind who we’ve pretended to be.
I meet Declan’s gaze, and something inside me swells under the weight of it. He sees me. All of me.
My throat tightens around the words I’ve never said aloud. “I don’t know how to believe in myself,” I whisper. “I only know I’m tired of pretending.”
The wind stirs, slow and mournful, lifting the last threads of smoke from the air. It sweeps our ashes from the stones and scatters them into the sky like constellations.
Declan rounds the altar, the fire’s dying light catching in his dark eyes. “If it’s too much to believe in yourself,you can start by believing in me.” He holds out his hand in quiet invitation.
I stare at it, then at him. The fully and painfully real Declan Thorne. A man who’s made mistakes, who’s suffered losses, who has scars no one can see. A man just as broken and uncertain and lost as I am.
Maybe that’s what makes him exactly who I need.
For the first time in a long, long while, I don’t wait for a sign.
I make my own.
And I take his hand.
Nineteen
Declan’s fingers wrap around mine. The truth lingers in the air, humming between our bodies, breathing on its own. When he tugs me forward, I go easily, willingly. I fall into him because I want to. Because everything the Tower burned away made room for things I never thought I’d be brave enough to hold—stillness, desire without performance, want without fear. And him.
His exhale is long and uneven, a sound more like a release than a breath. His hands find my waist. Mine curl into his shirt, fingertips pressing into the fabric like I need to feel how solid he is. We stand like that, our foreheads touching, suspended in something quiet and tender and unfinished.
We’ve both been burned down to our bones. And here, in the ashes, we choose to start again.
Maybe this is what beginning feels like.
“I didn’t realize how bad it’d gotten,” I murmur. “Bit by bit, I edited myself down. Smoothed the edges.Cleaned up the rough spots. Kept rebranding until there wasn’t much left that was actually me.”
His thumb strokes the small of my back, grounding me with that quiet, steady pressure.
“It’s not surprising she never loved herself,” I whisper. “How could she?”
“I could.” Declan’s breath is warm against my cheeks. “If she let me, I could love her enough for both of us.”
I look up, searching his face. Searching for the catch. The hesitation. The lie.
I want to trust him. I want to let myself trust him. But habits don’t die in a night. The woman I built—polished, made palatable—still lives under my skin, cataloging every way I fall short.
“I taught myself that love is just another thing to manifest, to earn. Do everything right, be smaller, quieter, prettier, and one day someone picks you.”
Declan doesn’t rush to fill the silence, to fix what I’m learning is broken. I’m grateful for that because something in me is spilling open, pouring light into the places I’ve tried to keep sealed.
Declan brushes my hair back, his palm warm as he cradles my face. “Would it be weird to say that I think I might have manifested you, like this, just as you are?”
