LYSSARA
The night before the blood severance, I did not sleep, and it was not because I was afraid of what I had decided, and it was not because I doubted it, and it was not because the bond was pulling at me harder than usual, although it was. It was because I was twenty-two years old and I was about to permanently close the door on the thing the moon goddess had assigned me, and I wanted to spend one night feeling the full weight of that before I put it down forever. Not as mourning. Not as second thoughts but as honesty.
I stopped managing the bond. Deliberately, for the first time since I had learned to manage it in the Ironveil corridor when Kaelrith said my name and I kept walking and found an empty room and stood against the door in the dark until my hands stopped shaking. I remov
