"Don't." Her voice is quiet but firm. "Don't offer to pay for it. We've had this conversation."
"Then let me find another way?—"
"There isn't another way." She sets the tongs down again, harder. "I've looked for three years. I've done the math every month. There isn't a legal path out of this that doesn't mean Finn goes without medicine or Papa loses the forge." She narrows her eyes at me. "Until something changes I'm stuck. And I need you to understand that before you ask me to stop."
The fire snaps between us. Outside, the night is quiet and cold.
"The taxes will drop further," I say. "I'm working on it."
"When?"
"I don't have a date yet."
She looks away. "Then I can't give you a date either."
I study her and take everything in — the set of her jaw, the steadiness of her eyes, the three years of survival running behind them. She's not being reckless. She's being honest about the reality.
“It’s too dangerous to continue. For you and for your family,” I insist.
19
EDRIA
"You're not listening to me," I say.
"I'm listening." Nyrius stands near the forge entrance with his arms crossed, which is his version of braced. "I disagree. Those aren't the same thing."
"Then hear this part." I set down the blade I've been pretending to work on. "I underestimated the buyers once. I won't do it again. I know the forest around Oxwood better than any patrol you've assigned, and I've been moving through it at night for three years."
"The threat has grown past what it was when you started."
"I know that."
"Then you know what you're walking into isn't the same arrangement anymore."
"I know." I face him fully. "And I'm still the best judge of what risks my family's survival requires. Not you."
His face carries that controlled expression, the one that means he's holding something back. "You can't know how a situation will go before it happens."
"Neither can you. You plan and you prepare and then you adapt when it goes sideways." I mirror his posture. "Which isexactly what I do, every time, because no one else was going to do it." I let him absorb that. "Until you've had to choose between a dangerous errand and watching your brother go without medicine for a month, you don't get to rank which risks are acceptable."
Something in his expression changes. Not softening — more like a wall that's been load-bearing for years developing its first crack.
"I know I can't make that comparison," he says quietly.
"Then stop trying to make my choices for me."
"I'm not trying to make your choices." He drops his arms. "I'm trying to—" He stops. Starts again. "I don't know how to watch someone I care about walk into situations that could kill them and do nothing."
The forge is very quiet.
I study my hands for a moment. The burn scars across my knuckles, the calluses at the base of each finger. Those decisions written directly onto my skin.
"I'm terrified," I say, and it comes out steadier than I expect. "Not of the smugglers. Of—" I stop. Try again. "I've been the one holding everything together for so long that I don't know how to let anyone else carry part of it. Because every time I have, it's gone wrong." I look up at him. "If I depend on you—emotionally, financially, any way—and something changes, my family pays for it. Not me. Them." My voice doesn't waver, but it wants to. "I can't afford to need someone."
He uncrosses his arms and takes two steps toward me.
"You're the most stubborn, most capable, most relentlessly determined person I've encountered in a hundred and thirty years," he says. "None of that means you're disposable. None of it means you have to do all of it alone." He stops so close, I can’t look at him without tipping my head back. "I'm not tellingyou you're weak. I'm telling you that watching you risk your life matters to me, because you matter to me."
