“Fate is like water,” she says, bringing me back into focus, her voice steady despite the turmoil inside me. “It carves its path whether we want it to or not. But water can be redirected. It can be shaped. The future isn’t set in stone.”
I almost laugh at how naïve it sounds.
She wants to believe we have control. That what we saw—the throne, the loneliness, the emptiness—can be undone. That it’s not already burned into my bones, waiting for me like a slow, inevitable death.
I shake my head, staring at the starry, celestial waters swirling around us, frost curling across my skin.
“Some currents are too strong to be changed,” I say, and I expect her to hesitate. To waver in the face of what we both know is coming.
But she doesn’t.
“Not for me,” she says, and she lifts a hand, drawing her magic into an orb of water before us.
It’s shimmering, beautiful, and undeniablyhers. I’d want to see it—to feel it—even if she was hurling it at me like a tidal wave.
Because if she’s trying to hurt me, at least it means she’shere.
“Water is my element,” she continues, watching the water as her magic bends to her will. “And I won’t let this be your fate.I can’t. Not after seeing you like you were back then, and right now, and…”
She motions to the hollowed-out version of me sitting on the throne.
Something inside me fractures.
Because even after everything—after all the ways I’ve hurt her, after all the cruel things I’ve said to push her away—she cares.
“But why?” The words slip out before I can stop them, softer than I intended, and far too desperate. “After everything I’ve done to you—after all the ways I’ve hurt you—why would you still care?”
