Page 25 of Lost in Fire

“Whatever happens,”he’d said,“remember that you’re mine. That I’m yours. That nothing they do to us can change that.”

I keep walking. Taking steadying breaths. Composing myself.

Ten paces. Nine.

What will he see when this door opens? The woman who’d trailed her fingers through his hair while planning our impossible future? The lover who’d whispered promises about a life we’d never have? The girl who’d laughed at his terrible jokes and stolen his shirts because they smelled like him?

Or will he recognize the monster I’ve had to become—the one who debates purification protocols over morning coffee, who signs orders for families to be banished from our clan structure, who wears the face of everything that’s wrong with the Syndicate?

Eight paces.

I keep walking.

He’ll hate you.

The voice in my head speaks in my grandmother’s crisp tones, all aristocratic disappointment and cold logic.

He’ll hate what you’ve chosen to become. The compromises you’ve made. The blood on your hands.

Seven paces.

But beneath the self-loathing, hope moves in my chest. He came. Against every protocol, every survival instinct he must be feeling, he’d received my message and walked voluntarily into the heart of enemy territory. Risked everything on the word of someone he believed dead.

For Ember. For the daughter he’s never met.

But maybe for me too.

Six paces. Five.

The mask remains firmly in place, silver features settled over my own as I check the laces behind my head. The transformation is complete. Whatever remains of Vanya Arrowvane disappearsbehind expressionless metal, leaving only what I’ve become. The untouchable. The feared.

My heart pounds against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. In all the years I’ve worn this mask, faced down the most dangerous people in our world, I’ve never felt this exposed. This terrified.

Because this isn’t just any interrogation. This is Hargen—the man who taught me that love could be gentle, that strength didn’t require cruelty, that someone could see all my sharp edges and choose to hold me, anyway.

Four paces.

Through our bond, I sense his turmoil, tension coiled tight as a spring. Alertness that comes from walking into a trap with eyes wide open. The disciplined calm of a man who’s survived by controlling every variable he can and accepting those he can’t.

But underneath it all, I feel something else. Something that makes my breath catch.

Longing. Deep and desperate and carefully buried, but still there after all these years. Still burning like an ember in the ashes of everything we lost.

He knows he’s balanced on a knife’s edge between salvation and destruction. He has no idea who holds the blade.

Three paces.

What if revealing yourself shatters him?

The thought makes my steps falter.

What if the years of believing you dead have armored him against hope?

What if learning the truth—about who I’ve become, what I’ve done in Ember’s name—breaks something in him that can never be repaired?

I can feel his emotions: steady, controlled, grimly determined. He’s prepared for interrogation, for mind games, for torture. He’s not prepared for facing the woman who haunts his dreams.

The woman who never stopped loving him, even when it would have been easier to let go.

---