“Why?”
“Because the bond will remain incomplete.” His voice drops slightly, quieter now, but no less certain. “And incomplete bonds do not… settle.”
I huff out a breath, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Right,” I mutter.
Nothing in this place is ever simple. Nothing inusis simple.
I let my hand fall, looking back at him properly. “And you’ve just—what?” I ask, a little harder now. “Accepted that?”
“Yes.”
That twists something in me worse than the answer itself. “Just like that?” I push. “You’re fine with that being your life?”
“I am not fine with it.” The correction is immediate but calm. “I am… prepared for it.”
That’s worse.
“Prepared?” I repeat.
“Yes.”
I stare at him because that word doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. “That’s not the same thing,” I say.
“I am aware.”
“Then why—”“Because it would be your choice,” he replies, cutting me off cleanly, which shuts me up. For a second at least. Because there it is again. That line he won’t cross. Even now. Even knowing what it costs him.
“If you leave,” he continues, quieter now, “it will be because you choose to. I will not bind you to this world through obligation. Or through me.”
Emotion flares in my chest.
Annoying.
Unfair.
Very frustratingly, perfectly him.
I shake my head slightly. “You’re impossible.”
“So you have said.”
“I mean it differently this time.”
“I am aware.”
That almost pulls a laugh out of me. Almost. Instead, I just look at him. Really look. At the control. The restraint. The way he’s here, holding all of this like it doesn’t weigh anything when I can feel exactly how much it does.
Ten years. Ten years of this. And he still says it like my choice matters more.
I meet his gaze again, steadily despite everything twisting under my ribs. Silence lingers again, but it’s heavier now. Not just with tension, but with consequences and possibility and everything sitting right here between us.
And for the first time, I don’t feel like running from it. I can’t. Won’t.
I just feel?—
“Right,” I say, more to myself than him.
Because now I know. And now I can’t pretend I don’t.
