The words didn’t echo. They didn’t need to. They hung in the air like iron chains, dragging every breath in my lungs down with them.
No one moved. Not Mira, not Kelvin, not even the dying coils scattered across the field. It was as if the battlefield itself had been forced to kneel.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I muttered. My voice cracked, but it wasn’t fear. It was anger—raw, sharp, impossible to swallow. “I don’t need you. I don’t want you.”
The woman’s eyes never left mine. No anger. No disappointment. Just certainty, the kind that gnawed at me because I couldn’t break it.
Mira’s nails dug into my wrist again. “Rael,” she hissed under her breath, her voice trembling with fury, “don’t let them write your fate for you.”
But Kelvin… Kelvin was different. His sword arm shook, though his b
