Damien had never planned to love her.
Love was inefficient. Dangerous. A liability that could shatter everything he'd built.
He sat beside Felicity on the cold stone floor of his quarters, knees drawn up, shoulder just barely brushing hers, every point of contact burning through his scales like wildfire.
The world outside his door was still rot and commerce and quiet cruelty, but here, in this stolen pocket of time, something fragile and fierce had taken root, strangling his carefully constructed defenses.
She told him stories in the mornings, voice still rough with sleep, hair tumbling over her shoulders in waves he ached to touch.
Small ones that carved canyons into his chest.
About kittens with broken paws she'd splinted. About people she'd helped who never knew her name, but whose lives she'd changed forever. About a place by the sea where the waves had kissed the shore and for exactly one moment, nothing had tried to kill her.
He listened like it was oxygen. Like each word was a map to salvation.
His scales shifted imperceptibly closer to her warmth each day.
He had stopped preparing the solar panels for trade, fingers instead tracing her smile in his mind when he should be counting inventory.
Instead, he planned routes through territories no sane beastman would cross. Exit strategies that would leave bodies in their wake. What it would cost to burn the warehouse to the ground and salt the earth where it stood.
"You don't have to do that," Felicity said softly when she caught him marking escape paths on stolen maps, her fingers brushing his wrist in a touch that stopped his heart.
"I know," Damien replied, voice raw with the weight of what remained unsaid: that he would tear apart anyone who threatened the light in her eyes.
That was the problem that consumed him like venom.
Far away, the Snow team found the truth, claws bloodied and eyes murderous.
They found Rose's testimony, torn from screaming lips. They found the trader's trail, marked in broken bodies. They found the name of the place where light didn't travel and hope went to die.
Victor stood very still when Voss finished speaking, the air around him crystallizing with killing frost.
Then he nodded once, a death sentence.
"Good," Victor said, voice like a glacier cracking. "Now we know where to go."
They didn't argue. Not Finch, arms spread for war. Not Giddy, knuckles white around his daggers. Not Rose, injured and shaking with rage, teeth bared in promise. Felicity had been their friend.
She had been kind when the world had only shown them teeth.
They would burn the world for less.
In ash-shadowed stone, Felicity leaned against Damien's side, her laughter quiet and unguarded as he told her about the first city that had turned him away. His tail curled protectively around her waist, each scale singing with her nearness.
For a moment, they were young, untouched by the cruelty.
For a moment, the future hadn't arrived yet, and he could pretend her fingers tracing patterns on his arm meant forever.
And somewhere between collapsing water and rising fire, everyone who had touched her fate learned the same terrible truth.
You do not take gentle things that have learned to love monsters. You do not cage light that has learned to burn. And if you try, heaven will become hell. The ashlands did not welcome travelers.
They stretched outward in cracked sheets of blackened earth, forests reduced to skeletal ribs, the sky permanently bruised as if it had learned to expect fire. Whatever had burned this place had done so with intent. Nothing grew without permission.
Snow Team moved through it like a scar reopening. They didn't rush. Victor led from the front, steps even, gaze fixed on the horizon. He had not spoken Felicity's name since Tidehaven. No one needed him to.
It lived in the space between them now, heavy as gravity. Voss walked beside him, mind running ahead of the path, splitting probabilities into neat, lethal columns. He tracked trader routes, ash displacement, disturbed dead. Every calculation ended the same way. They were close.
Rose rode in silence, injury bound tight but not forgotten. Her vines no longer reached outward.
They curled inward instead, coiled and angry. She had not forgiven herself, and no one asked her to.
Luna clutched Frost's hand. "Is she scared?" Luna asked softly.
Victor answered without hesitation. "No."
It wasn't optimism.
It was faith.
The warehouse did not announce itself. It crouched low against the land, half-buried in ash, steel ribs exposed like a carcass picked clean. No banners. No lights. No guards on the walls.
Damien had noticed the change in the air hours before. The suppression field pulsed differently now, uneven, like a failing heartbeat. Traders were nervous. Movements faster. Voices sharper.
Something was coming. Felicity sensed it too. Not through magic. Through instinct. She sat beside Damien as she always did in the evenings, close but not touching, their shoulders nearly brushing. The silence between them had softened over days into something companionable.
"They're looking for me," she said quietly.
Damien's jaw tightened. "I know."
He had burned his exit plans already. Maps reduced to ash. Solar panels dismantled and hidden, no longer currency but bait. He had chosen his side the moment he'd allowed her to stay the night.
"You could leave," Felicity added. "Before"
"No," he said immediately.
She smiled at that. Small. Fond. Too young for this world.
The mark of his scent lingered faintly at her throat, not possession but shelter. It had been enough to keep the worst of the traders away. Not enough to stop what was coming. The Overseer's voice crackled through the compound. "All assets secured," she announced calmly. "Lockdown in effect." Felicity closed her eyes.
"Damien," she said, and for the first time, she reached out and took his hand. He stilled. Just that. Just fingers lacing, tentative and real. "We'll be okay," she told him.
He believed her. That terrified him more than anything.
Snow Team crested the final ridge at dusk.
Below them, the warehouse lay exposed, a dark tumor against the land.
Voss stopped walking.
"That's it," he said. Victor nodded once. The ground beneath them trembled. Not with zombies this time.
With certainty. Far below, Damien lifted his head sharply as the air changed, pressure rolling through the ashlands like an incoming storm. Felicity felt it then, a pull so deep it almost hurt.
Home.
Not a place.
People. Victor stepped forward, fire and ice folding inward, space tightening around him like the world itself was bracing.
"No one," he said softly, "touches her again."
And somewhere in the warehouse where light didn't travel, every lock began to fail at once.