He steps forward into the open space the fleeing crowd leaves behind him, and the air changes.
A beam that should have crushed two children against an overturned cart swings wide and drops harmlessly into the empty space beside them.
Shattered glass from the chandler's window fans outward and then simply stops, mid-arc, and drifts to the cobblestones slowly enough that the woman running beneath it clears the radius entirely.
Gasps ripple through what remains of the crowd near the square. A man freezes mid-stride, staring. A woman grabs her husband's arm, expression unreadable — not gratitude yet, not entirely, but something beginning to crack open in the direction of it.
Others stare with expressions closer to horror.
His hands tremble. The tremor starts in his fingers and travels up through the lines of his shoulders, visible even beneath the layered fabric of his coat. His breath comes measured and deliberate, the forced steadiness of someone rationing what they have left.
He cannot hold this much longer.
"We need another solution," I say, more to myself than to him.
A scream cuts through the chaos. "Rose!"
Vi.
I panic toward the sound of her voice. The crowd near the market street surges like a breaking wave, bodies pressing in from every direction as the second resonance shockwave rolls across the square. People shove forward blindly, no direction, only away, only movement for its own sake.
Someone stumbles and then another and a figure disappears beneath the crush that makes my stomach drop.
"Vi!"I scream.
I shove into the crowd without thinking. Then I see them
Brohm crouches low in the dirt between an overturned stall and the chandler's wall, one arm wrapped across Vi's shoulders, his broad back curved over her like a vault.
He braces against every shove and stumble that comes at them from the surging crowd, absorbing the impacts with the patient solidity of a man who has spent decades hauling grain and barrels and heavy things.
I drop to my knees beside them. "Vi, are you hurt?"
She looks up. Her copper braid has come half-loose, her jacket is torn at the shoulder, and soot streaks her cheek from a lantern that shattered too close. Her green eyes are sharp, fully present.
"I'm okay," she says, breathing hard. "A boy went down in front of me. I stopped to pull him up and lost my footing."
Brohm exhales, the breath shudders. "I thought I had lost you in it."
Vi turns to look at him. Something in her expression changes, the defensive edge she has carried for months softening in a single unguarded moment.
"You came back for me," she says.
"I never stopped looking." His voice is rough. "Vi. I am done. Done wasting time with arguments that don't matter. Done pretending I don't need you more than the brewery, more than being right, more than any of it."
"Brohm—"
"I chose pride. For months. It was the stupidest decision I have ever made, and I have made some genuinely terrible decisions."
She laughs, a broken, startled sound. Tears cut clean lines through the soot on her face. "You chose that place over our future."
"I chose stubbornness and called it the brewery." He cups her face in one broad hand, thumb tracing her cheekbone. "I'm choosing differently now."
"You should have said this months ago," she says.
"I know."
"You are the most aggravating person I know." She cusses as she grabs the front of his coat and holds on. "Good. Because I never stopped either."
