I was not supposed to survive the river.
Everyone knew that. The women who wrapped my body in cheap linen knew it. The priest who wouldn't meet my eyes knew it. Even the river knew it—it pulled at me like hunger, like recognition, like I belonged to it more than I ever belonged to the land.
I had already drowned once before he touched me.
Death is not silence. Death is a waiting room. It smells like wet iron and forgotten prayers. I remember thinking, so this is what happens when no one comes for you.
Then a hand closed around my wrist.
Not gentle. Not cruel.
Certain.
The river screamed when he pulled me free.
I gasped like I had been denied air my entire life and only now realized it. My body convulsed against the stones, coughing up riverwater and something darker—fear, maybe, or the last of my obedience to a world that had already decided I was expendable.
When I finally lifted my head, he was kneeling beside me.
Everyone else would tell this part differently. They would say he was beautiful. Or terrifying. Or divine.
They would be wrong.
He looked inevitable.
Dark hair soaked and clinging to his face, eyes like stormglass—not stormy, not wild, but sharp with restraint. Power held back on purpose is always more frightening than power unleashed. His clothes were simple, travel-worn, but the air around him felt… heavier. As if the world leaned in when he breathed.
His right hand was still wrapped around my wrist.
I tried to pull away.
I couldn't.
Not because he held me tightly—he didn't—but because my body had already decided something my mind hadn't caught up to yet.
This hand will keep you alive.
I didn't hear the words. I knew them. They slid into my bones like memory.
"You're marked," he said quietly.
His voice did something violent to my pulse.
"I don't belong to anyone," I rasped.
A mistake. A challenge.
His gaze lifted fully to mine, and something ancient stirred behind it—something that had watched cities burn and lovers beg and gods fall silent.
"I know," he said. "That's why it worked."
He released my wrist.
The absence of his touch felt like being pushed back into the river.
I looked down and saw it then—the mark blooming along my skin, black and silver, shaped like a handprint pressed into flesh. Not bruised. Claimed. The symbol pulsed faintly, as if breathing with me.
"What did you do?" I whispered.
His jaw tightened—not guilt. Never guilt. Something closer to reverence.
"I answered," he said.
"To what?"
"To the thing that has been calling my name since the world learned how to end itself."
I should have run.
Every story says this is the moment the girl runs.
Instead, I said, "You pulled me from death."
"Yes."
"And marked me."
"Yes."
"And now?"
He stood, offering me his right hand.
The same hand.
"The world will come for you," he said. "Because of what you can command through me."
A chill moved through my blood. "Command?"
"You are not my shield," he continued softly. "I am yours."
That should have terrified me.
It didn't.
It felt like truth sliding into place.
"What happens if I refuse?" I asked.
His expression darkened—not anger, not threat. Loss.
"Then nothing protects you," he said. "Not me. Not fate. Not even death."
The river surged behind us, impatient.
I took his hand.
The mark burned.
And somewhere, far away, the world noticed.