They returned to the inn by dawn.
No procession. No victory. Just quiet steps and the weight of everything unspoken still living between them. The mirror above the bar was gone—shattered in silence the moment they chose each other over fate.
Rheia brewed tea she didn't finish. Solene sat by the window, fingers tracing invisible flames against the glass. Neither of them spoke for the first hour.
Then Rheia said, "It's quieter now."
Solene nodded. "Inside, or out?"
Rheia smiled—barely. "Both."
Their bond was no longer volatile. It pulsed instead. Not a chain. Not a flame. A thread—willing, gentle, strong. Solene's possessiveness had softened into something still fierce, but no longer hungry. Rheia's fear now curled into curiosity.
They didn't define what they were.
They just lived it.
Sometimes Rheia would wake with a vision—half real, half echo—and Solene would steady her hands. Sometimes Solene's fire would spark from old wounds, and Rheia would trace spell-sigils across her shoulder to quiet the storm.
Love, they'd learned, wasn't in the fire or the mirror.
It was in staying.
And that meant everything.