I haven’t liked tight spaces. Not in a long time.Not since…I don’t want to think about that now.
At first, I’m feeling my way through, fingers trailing along the rough wall, counting each shift in the stone, each narrow stretch beneath my palm. Then I call my fire. A flame blooms in my hand, controlled and bright, carving out just enough space from the dark to breathe. The torchlight dances along the narrow passage, shadows writhing with every step, and I keep going.
Faster now. Not in a panic, but close. Because I know what’s waiting at the end of it.Alette.
The thought lands heavier than it should, settling somewhere deep in my chest and dragging everything else down with it. I don’t like being away from her. The space feels wrong without her in it, like something important has been pulled out and left everything hollow behind.
And that’s a problem.
Because when this is over, if we survive this, she gets to choose. She could walk away from all of this. From us. From me. She could decide where she goes. Who she goes to.
My grip tightens slightly, the flame in my hand flaring with it. That choice won’t be me. It shouldn’t be me. If she has any sense at all, she’ll pick one of them. Someone easier. Someone better. Someone who knows how to be something other than this. Someone who wasn’t raised to be a weapon, who doesn’t still feel the ghost of chains when the dark presses too close.
Hell, I wouldn’t choose me.
My jaw clenches as something painful lodges deep in my gut, unfamiliar enough to unsettle me. No one has ever chosen me. Not my father. Not my brother. Not my court. I was useful. Necessary. Something to be pointed at a problem until it burned.
Never chosen.
So why would this be any different? Why wouldshebe different?
The tunnel stretches on, but I barely feel it anymore. My body moves on instinct while my mind drifts somewhere worse, somewhere heavier. By the time the tunnel starts to open up a little, I’m already braced for something I can’t name.
I push through the last stretch and drop back into the small chamber.
They’re where I left them. Slumped against the walls. Breathing and alive.
I just crouch there, the flame in my hand casting uneven light across all of them, over the blood and the exhaustion and the simple fact that they’re still here. My gaze moves from one to the next.
Sylvian. Ashton. Cassius. The three men I was supposed to hate. The three men I thought I did hate.
I remember the sound of the blades cutting into them when we were being tortured by the cyclops. The way their bodiesjerked. The way the blood ran. The way they cried out. I remember the moment it hit me, sharp and immediate.Not them. Anyone else. Not them.
My throat tightens unexpectedly.I had almost lost them.
And the thought of it now sits wrong. Deep and ugly and impossible to ignore. I drag a hand down my face, rough, like I can scrub the feeling out of me, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
Because it’s real. I don’t just tolerate them anymore. I don’t just fight beside them because I have to. I care if they live. I care if they die.
Gods.
I actuallylikethem.
The realization lands like a blow, and I don’t sit with it long. I can’t. Because then I see her. Alette is still awake. She’s curled in on herself, arms wrapped tight like she’s holding something together that’s already starting to come apart. Her eyes are open, fixed on nothing, too full of thoughts she shouldn’t have to carry.
A sudden ache pulls deep inside me. I move toward her before I can stop myself. Not thinking. Just drawn to her. Because staying away from her suddenly feels worse than anything waiting for me in the dark.
She looks up as I get close, her expression guarded, searching.
“You shouldn’t be awake,” I mutter, dropping down beside her.
“You were gone,” she says quietly.
A painful tension gathers inside me once more.
“I checked,” I say. “It’s clear. For now.”
She nods, but her gaze doesn’t leave mine. She’s waiting. For something. I don’t know what. I don’t know how to give it to her.
