Her expression shifted. “About the hill?”
“About you.”
She raised an eyebrow, and for a moment the city quieted around us.
“You were not nervous,” she said gently. “You were very… composed.”
“I have spent a great deal of my life appearing composed,” I replied. “It was once considered a survival skill.”
Her thumb brushed the back of my hand. “And now?”
“Now,” I said, watching the light catch in her hair, “I’m attempting something more honest.”
This—this right here—was what I had not understood when I was younger. Strength was not in domination. It was not in the hoarding of gold or territory or obedience.
It was in this.
Standing on ancient stone in a city I had once only read about, hand in hand with the woman who had made me braver than any battle.
I had once believed I was incomplete because I did not hunger the way my father had. Because I did not burn indiscriminately.
Now I knew better.
I burned precisely.
I burned for her.
The late sun painted the buildings gold as we continued down the hill, the pub just out of sight around the bend. I felt the weight of what waited there—carefully arranged, deeply considered—and my pulse misbehaved again.
I wasn’t afraid of rejection.
I was afraid I would not express it well enough.That the celebration would be too small. Or too large. That it would miss the exact shape of her.
I had once been told that I was not formidable enough.
But I had watched Artemis Ripley stand in rooms that tried to diminish her and take up space anyway. I had watched her claim her title. Her work. Her voice.
I drew a steady breath as we reached the door. Gripping the handle, I realized my hand was, in fact, shaking.
This, it seemed, was what courage actually required.
Warm light spilled through the pub windows exactly the way it had the first time.
The chalkboard sign leaned against the stone wall at the same crooked angle, announcing dinner specials in handwriting that suggested confidence rather than accuracy. The windows glowed amber against the cooling blue of evening. The low ceiling inside waited like a test of height and humility.
I stopped just short of the door.
Artemis squeezed my hand. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The assessing.” She tipped her head toward the sign. “It’s a pub. Not a battlefield.”
“I’ve learned that pubs are more dangerous,” I said.
I pushed the door open.
Warmth hit first. Dense and alive. The smell of yeast and roasted meat and old wood soaked through with decades of humanity. The fireplace crackled along the far wall in thesame uneven rhythm. The bar gleamed with polish and use. The low ceiling forced me to bow slightly on instinct.
