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Oberon’s words start flooding my mind again. “You’re the last of them.” My body tenses in response to the thought, knowing that so many were captured alongside me, and none of them survived. The weight I thought I started letting go of presses down on me again. His words still echo, “Freedom isn’t always that cut and dry.”

I didn’t realize it then, but he wasn’t talking about me. He was talking about himself. Even without the chains and the magic, he is still a prisoner of his circumstances. His freedom, something I was jealous of, still cuts him as deeply as the literal prison that held me.

“It’s a matter of knowing which cage you can live with.” Cryptic, so beautifully cryptic. But now I finally understand what he was trying to tell me. I will always live in a cage of my own making. Whether it’s the small, quiet life I dream of or the fight that I might need, at the end of the day, which choice can I live with?

Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know who I am anymore. I haven’t been anything in so long. I haven’t had the chance to make my own choices in so long. How am I supposed to make this one when I have no idea who I am?

What can I live with? I ask myself again. Maybe I don’t know who I am, but I have the opportunity to choose who I want to be.

Exhaustion edges its way in from the emotional heaviness of the day, but the words keep coming. Less of the screaming and beating beast they were earlier, and more of a soft whisper, floating on a breeze across my mind, “I brought you here to save you, Lyra. . . . I wasn’t ready to let you go. . . .What’s still worth fighting for? . . . I want you to fight for yourself. For your future. . . .For luck. . . . Every. Single. Night. . . .”

Heat rises in my core and spreads across my flesh, making the cool breeze a little less biting. My fingers tighten around the pendant as sleep finally claims me, the stars watching over me as I drift off, still uncertain but no longer afraid.

I wake with a start just as the sun begins peeking over the horizon.

I guess my nightmares didn’t get the memo that I’m free now, I muse, rolling my eyes. The sunrise takes my breath away. Its beauty is almost an insult compared to the broken world beneath it.

I sit up lazily, stretching with a long yawn before brushing the grass and dirt from my clothes.

The pendant from the night before is still gripped tightly in my hand. Slowly, I tuck it back into my pocket.

I stand torn. The path back to the cabin lies just in front of me, but behind me . . . stretches the rest of the world, so close I can almost touch it, yet so distant.

A world I don't know if I belong to anymore.

The cage you can live with . . . the choice you can live with. The thought repeats over and over in my mind.

I take a deep breath and step toward the path to the cabin. I should feel fear or panic, but I don’t. I’ve made my choice, it is my choice, there’s comfort in that.

The path winds endlessly ahead. I walk carefully, avoiding loose stones and gnarled roots, focusing on every step to ensure I don't get lost. A soft chuckle slips from my lips at the thought.

I feel almost at peace, for a short time. But that peace fades when the cabin comes into view. Anxiety reclaims my calm, tightening its grip with each step.

I force the feeling down, whispering to myself that this is what I want. Yet, the closer I get, the heavier my feet become.

I stop just before the clearing, before I will be visible from the cabin.

Last chance.

What if no one is there?

The thought stirs panic in my chest.

What if they already came, saw I wasn’t there, and left?

What if I am too late and the choice has already been made for me, again?

I’m not sure why it matters, but the thought feeds into my panic.

I feel the pendant in my pocket begin to vibrate, resonating with the hum of my own magic. I don’t question it. It feels natural, like it has always been part of me.

I pull it out and clasp it tightly in my fist, letting some of the weight lift. The warmth of the pendant grounds me, giving me just enough strength to take that first step into the clearing to cross the unprotected distance from the forest’s edge to the cabin.

My body trembles with every step toward the cabin’s door. My hand grips the handle. Every instinct screams at me to turn back, to run into the unknown rather than face what lies behind that door.

I force myself to push forward anyway. The door swings open with a force I didn’t anticipate. I freeze in the doorway, staring into what was once my prison.

Oberon and Ash sit at the small table inside. Their faces reveal nothing, no hint of what they might be feeling or were discussing before I interrupted.