The bag hit the floor, and the sound rang louder in my chest than it should have.

Halven was alive. The last promise I had made to myself before I ran from everything had been to see him safe again, and somehow that vow had held.

Relief should have been simple, but it came tangled with grief. He was back, yes, but nothing could give us back what we had lost before Nythral. He and I shared the same fractures, the same scars carved by tragedies no one else in this tower could understand. My quadmates were dear to me, but none of them knew what it meant to claw your way into survival, to stagger into this valley and find sanctuary only after the world had already taken too much. Halven did. And now he was safe, steadier than I had ever dared to hope.

So why did I still feel the urge to run?

Because of the man kneeling in front of me.

The foyer stood hollow around me, emptied of the others. Their footsteps and voices had faded into stairwells and night air, leaving only stone and silence between Orivian and me. The air seemed to hold its breath, lamplight flickering across the arches, stretching shadows long against the floor.

Orivian knelt in the center of it all, metal-winged and unmovable, his eyes burning as though I were the only thing left in the world. That vow he had spoken moments ago still echoed against the stone, reverberating through the hollows of me where I had fought so hard to keep him out.

My bag lay between us like a discarded truth, the last tether to the road I had planned for myself.

His impossible eyes waited for me to say what came next.

Could I trust his words?

I had a fated bond with him, something that rarely happened. Wouldn’t that mean we couldn’t lie to each other? He had never lied to me before.

The thought trembled through me, frightening and thrilling all at once. If he meant it—if his vow was real—then maybe I did not have to keep running. What if I could stop carrying a bag ready for flight and instead let myself believe in a future here?

My mother was here. My quadmates, my friends. Halven, safe again. Maybe I did not have to trade all of that away. Maybe happiness was not somewhere down the road, always out of reach, but here, in the man kneeling before me.

Orivian’s eyes burned with a fire that was not only promise but desire, the kind that left no room for doubt about how badly he wanted me. The lamplight caught on the metallic sheen of his wings before they folded tight, as though even the magic in him bent toward my answer. His presence pressed close despite the distance, a gravity I could not escape, and in that pull a dangerous thought sparked: perhaps I did not want to escape.

Hope flickered to life, small and stubborn, and heat rose with it, winding through me like a flame too long starved of air.

“You need to get off your knees,” I told him, my mouth curling despite the storm in me. “And start proving that vow.”

Metal feathers shimmered briefly, and his wings disappeared into himself as if the magic itself obeyed my command. He rose in a single fluid motion, taller than me, overwhelming me, and before I could take another breath his arms closed around me.

“I know I’ve told you I would never let you go,” his voice rumbled against my mouth as he pulled me in, “but tonight I want you to feel the same. To know you will never want to let me go.”

Then his lips crashed into mine, and the ache of the last months broke apart in the hunger of that kiss. I clutched at the front of his armor plates, desperate, greedy, letting the dam inside me split wide open. His mouth claimed mine, heat and salt and hunger all at once, and I gave it back with teeth and tongue until breathing itself felt optional.