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Tyranny has always watched Wicander closely. It’s the bedrock of the contract tying her to him for three years: keep him alive, keep him golden. Protect, observe, obey. Lately, though, the watching feels different. Like someone amended the terms without her knowing, adding in a clause to the fine print that makes her breath catch when she looks at him for too long.
Tonight is no exception.
Kattigan found them a clearing an hour before dusk. He built a fire without saying a word, and Wulferic circled the area twice before lying down at his feet. Teor planted himself against a boulder, ever on the lookout. Thimble perched in the branches above, her wings catching the light like fractured stained glass. And Tyranny chose to sit down across the fire from Wicander, back against a tree, knees to her chest. They looked like an estranged family relearning how to share space on this wild road she’d somehow wandered onto.
The fire pops and crackles. Tyranny watches Wicander talk.
She isn’t really listening. If she had to guess, it’s something about the Candescent Creed’s interpretation of lunar cycles, based on how Wicander’s hands move as he speaks, fidgeting in that way he always gets when he’s not sure anyone listening cares. Months spent at his side has left Tyranny fluent in all his mannerisms, like the droop in his shoulders when he’s tired but won’t say so, the old prayers he mutters under breath, and that nervous habit of chewing the inside of his mouth.
She knows him. But does she want to know him, or has she simply learned him in the way a dog learns its master’s moods? Out of survival. Out of necessity. Out of the fear that lives at the base of her spine like a second heartbeat, whispering, If you fail him, if you make him angry, if he thinks you’re too much trouble—
Back to the Pit.
She pushes the thought away and looks back at the fire.
Teor leans forward beside Wicander, eyes scanning the tree line as Kattigan mutters something too low for Tyranny to catch, and Wicander’s face flushes red. She can’t hear what Kattigan is saying, but realizes it’s the closest thing to laughter she’s seen from the mysterious man so far. At his feet, Wulferic lifts his head for a moment, ears perked up toward the dark, then settles back down with a huff.
Wicander sputters something defensive, gesturing at the fire, at the sky, at nothing in particular. Teor’s tail flicks once, maybe out of amusement or reflex or both, but his face stays watchful.
They’re teasing him, Tyranny thinks. Her chest tightens and relaxes. Good.
Wicander needs that. He needs more people besides her who push back, who tease and needle him, who refuse to treat him like some holy heir. His family had handled him with silk gloves and poison-tipped intentions while the Candescent Creed warped him tight; but with this group of misfits, Tyranny watches him loosen, bit by bit. And she really, really likes watching that.
It’s basically having a front row, center stage seat to Wicander becoming someone more than he’s been told to be.
Absently, she wonders if the same could ever happen to her.
Wicander groans (embarrassed defeat, she can tell) and throws his head back. The firelight outlines the line of his throat, and Tyranny’s stomach lurches as wild images flicker through her mind. Her mouth against his skin, pressing tongue and fangs to that throat. The sounds he’d make and the ways he’d squirm if she bit his soft skin. The—
It’s just hunger, she tells herself, because this body is six months old. Six months since Ksha’aravi shaped it for her, gave her form and flesh so she could serve Wicander properly. Before that, she was nothing but awareness adrift in the Pit for centuries. No body, no touch, just existence and agony without end; now she has hands that can reach and skin that can feel and a mouth that wonders what his throat would taste like, and it’s definitely just hunger for the sensation of it. Newness. Any warmth would do. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have to be about Wicander.
Except it always is. It’s always him. No one else.
“Excuse me,” Wicander’s voice cuts through her spiraling thoughts. He stands, brushing off his robes, cheeks still tinged with blush. “I’ll be right back. Nature calls.”
“Don’t get lost,” Kattigan says without looking up. “Again.”
“That was one time—”
“Twice,” Teor rumbles from his spot.
Wicander makes an indignant noise and marches into the trees.
Tyranny watches him leave, staring longer than she means to. For a second, her weight shifts forward, her muscles tighten, and she’s ready to get up and follow him like she always does, but in the end, she pulls back.
He’s fine. He won’t go far.
She stays put, but keeps watching anyway.
A flutter of wings. A weight settles on her shoulder, close enough to her soft goat ear that the words are private: “You’re staring.”
Thimble. Of course.
The pixie has nestled against the curve of Tyranny’s neck, hidden by the fall of her hair. Tyranny can feel the pressure of tiny feet and the brush of gossamer wings folding.
“I’m keeping watch,” Tyranny says, not one bit convincing. “In case something attacks.”
“Uh huh.” Thimble’s voice is as dry as sand. “And the sighing? Is that tactical?”
“I don’t sigh.”
“You sigh constantly. Every time he does that thing with his hair.” Thimble theatrically pats at her bangs. Then, quieter: “Hey, you okay?”
The question is direct. No teasing, no beating around the bush. Just a soldier asking a companion if they’re holding it together. Tyranny isn’t used to people asking.
“Fine,” Tyranny replies. “Just tired.”
“Mm.” Thimble doesn’t sound fooled. Her small hand rests on Tyranny’s neck, the feel of it as grounding as the weight of a tall man’s palm. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“Okay, Smartass.” Thimble shifts, and Tyranny can picture her expression: arms crossed, eyebrow raised, all three inches of her radiating judgment. “What do you see in him?”
Tyranny blinks. “What?”
“The glowy priest boy.” Thimble’s tone is a bite, though she is clearly trying to keep it gentle. “The one whose family’s whole thing includes my kind being lesser spirits, unworthy of the Light’s grace, blah blah blah. That guy. What’s the appeal?”
“He didn’t mean—”
“Oh, I know that shithead didn’t mean it. That actually pisses me off more, y’know.” Thimble blows a tiny breath into Tyranny’s ear. There’s no venom in the words, only weariness. “At least if he was an asshole on purpose, I could just hate him. But he’s so fucking earnest about it. Like he genuinely thinks he’s being helpful when he explains that pixies can achieve some spiritual growth if we really try.”
Tyranny winces at the memory of that conversation. Wicander’s face, so open and sincere, completely oblivious to the way Thimble’s wings had tensed with offense. He’d meant well because he always means well; but meaning well and doing well are different things, and Wiccander still hasn’t learned the difference.
“He’s getting better,” she says.
“I don’t want to hear it.” Thimble’s tone softens, ever so slightly. “Because that’s not what I asked. I asked what you see in him.”
“We’re… I’m a demon bound to him. That’s all.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve mentioned the contract before.” The pixie’s hand pats her neck, oddly gentle. “But you don’t have to be his friend anymore now that you’ve left his family. You could stop following him like a brainwashed idiot, for starters.” She catches herself. “Be honest. If the contract ended tomorrow, would you still be all nice to him? Act like he’s a great guy?”
A coldness slithers inside Tyranny’s chest. “That’s not how it works.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the contract ends…” She swallows and the words taste like ash. “If Wick breaks the deal or the three years run out, I’m pretty sure I would go straight back to the Pit. Like, automatically.”
Thimble makes a frustrated sound. “Okay. Okay, different question then. Hypothetically, if that contract ending meant you were totally free—no Pit, no contract, no nothing. Could go anywhere, be anything.” A careful pause. “Would you stay with him?”
Would I?
The question lands someplace that feels like a bruise she can’t stop pressing. She thinks of Wicander’s laugh. The way he says her name like it isn’t a curse. The softness in his hands when he brushes her by accident, and how he always apologizes like he’s done something wrong.
She wants to say yes so badly her teeth ache with it.
But she doesn’t know if that wanting is hers or because the contract had rewired her so thoroughly that wanting and staying had become the same thing.
“I don’t know,” Tyranny admits. “I think so? But I don’t know if that’s me wanting it, or... what the contract wants me to want. If that makes any sense.”
“Sheesh, that’s a pretty shitty way to live.” Thimble’s voice is fully unguarded now. “Listen, I’m not trying to interrogate you, okay? I mean, I was given to Thjazi as a wedding gift, so I know what it’s like to care about someone and not know if it’s real or because outside forces put you together.”
“Does it get better?”
“For me? Not really. You’d think it would, since he’s dead and gone, but—” Thimble laughs. A sad, sad sound. “Point is, I don’t think me being given to Thaz created what I felt. It just gave me permission to feel it, you know?”
They sit for a while, letting the fire talk for them, sparks flitting upward before burning out. Tyranny thinks on Thimble’s words as Teor and Kattigan drift into quiet discussion on the far side of the flames.
Wicander’s still gone.
“He’s been gone a while,” Tyranny notes, eyes on the trees where the light drops off.
Thimble doesn’t spare a glance up. “It’s been two minutes.”
“That’s a while,” Tyranny murmurs.
Thimble makes a noise. Hard to read, but not unsympathetic. “Sure it is.”
Tyranny’s up on her hooves before she realizes it, the sudden move throwing Thimble off her shoulder with a startled yelp. Tyranny gasps. “Shit! Sorry, Thimble!”
Thimble hurls a piece of bark at her. “Didn’t I just say you don’t have to follow him like some brainwashed idiot? Get a grip!”
“Oh, let her go,” Kattigan calls in response to the commotion, voice lazy. “Just do us all a favor and make sure he’s not jerking off before you sneak up on him.”
Tyranny pauses. Turns. “I—what?”
“You heard me.” He pets Wulferic’s head. “Boy’s been wound tight since the valley. Even saints got needs.”
“Wick doesn’t—” Tyranny starts, but the words fizzle out with a chuckle. Her mouth goes dry with a heat she doesn’t expect. Mischief, mostly. “You know what? If he is, then I definitely have to go see. That’d be like witnessing a phenomenon.”
She begins moving quickly, weaving around and heading straight for Wicander’s path. Then she stops short, noticing the group’s baffled stares.
With an impish grin, she calls over her shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ll report back!”
And she dashes into the trees.
She finds Wicander maybe fifty feet from camp.
Under the moonlight, everything looks a little silver. The grass, the bare branches overhead, the fall of Wick’s hair where he sits on a fallen log, hunched over something small in his hands. He hasn’t noticed her yet, not with how fixated he is on whatever he’s holding.
She hides behind a nearby tree and squints.
A photograph, small enough to fit in his palm, its edges worn soft from handling. She watches Wicander’s thumb trace over the surface, slow, reverent, and grieving all at once, like he’s holding something precious that’s already slipped through his fingers. She recognizes the face in the photo instantly.
Armas.
Tyranny had seen her at Halandil Fang’s theater. She’d watched from the sidelines while Wicander practiced lines from a half-written screenplay with her, his face alight in a way she’d never seen at home. She remembers how Wicander would change after those nights, lighter in his step and voice, kneeling to pray for hours afterward. Long, fervent prayers she once thought were guilt or devotion, or both.
Back then, she never understood what it meant when someone's prayers got longer after they’d been happy.
Jealousy twists behind Tyranny’s ribs. Rather, it feels uncomfortably like jealousy—which is ridiculous, because there’s no way she’s jealous over some stupid crush that stupid Wicander had on some stupid starlet. And yet it’s prickling like thorns at the back of her neck so intensely, watching him behold that photograph with devotion, that she can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be looked at like that. To be held in someone’s heart so tenderly that they’d wear the edges of her image soft with wanting.
You never will be, a cold voice sounding like the cacophony those in the Pit whispers to her. Not by him. Not by anyone. You weren’t made for that.
Tyranny can’t lose sight of reality. She was made and shaped for service. Nothing more and nothing less. There are centuries of hierarchy and cunning, violence and submission, defining her. Demons understand power the way fish understand water—it’s simply the medium through which everything moves. And Wicander holds power over her, whether he wants it or not.
Whether he hates it or not.
And he does hate it. Which honestly makes it worse for her.
If he’d been cruel, wielding the contract like a whip, she’d know her place. She could have served her mission with clarity, built walls around what’s left of her and kept them locked tight. But Wicander looks at the binding between them like it is something stuck to his shoe, something shameful, something he wished he could scrape off if only he knew how. He apologizes when he asks her for things. He thanks her.
He treats her not like a demon, but like a person.
And she doesn’t know what to do with that.
Tyranny grinds the thoughts down, shoves them hard into the dark, and steps forward. Then she chooses a random twig and snaps it loud in the quiet beneath her cloven hoof.
Wicander’s head snaps up. His hand moves faster, folding the photograph into the shadows of his robe. By the time she steps fully into view, he’s already arranged his face into something like composure, though his eyes still look too bright in the moonlight.
“Tyranny.” He stands, nervous hands smoothing his robes. “Is everything alright? Did something happen at camp?”
“Everything’s fine, Your Radiance.” She moves closer but stops short when she sees faint tracks on his cheeks where tears might’ve been. “You were gone a while. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t gotten lost.”
“That was…” He shakes his head. “Once. It happened once. And all those paths look the same.”
“Twice, according to Teor.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side,” Wicander says, and there’s a hint of a pout in his voice that has no business being as cute as it is.
“I am,” Tyranny says, shrugging playfully. “But facts are facts. I’m not going to lie to you.” She flashes him a simper, feeling quite proud of herself. “Truthful lips are worn by those nearest the Beam.”
Wicander narrows his eyes. “You’re using scripture against me.”
“Is it wrong?”
“It’s annoying.”
Tyranny arches an eyebrow. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive, Your Radiance.”
She knows she’s won this round when Wicander’s lips press thin, followed by a sullen sigh through his nose. Mentally, she tallies: Wicander, 2. Tyranny, 6669. She’s not actually keeping track, but if she were, that would be her number, and it’s a funny one. Better still, the tension in both their shoulders has eased by something as simple as familiar banter.
Moonlight catches Wicander’s tattoos, turns his hair to seafoam and pearl, and Tyranny has to remind herself not to stare.
“How are you?” she asks. “Really.”
His face pinches momentarily before relaxing. “Fine. I’m fine, Tyranny.” A pause thick with things left unsaid. “And you?”
“Oh, I’m great.” The shape of other words press against her throat. Questions about the photograph. About what Armas meant to him. About whether, when he says he believes a demon like her is capable of great things, he means love too. “Real great.”
He seems to take her word for it, going quiet, nodding with a half-smile, and Tyranny feels her stomach do that weird flippy thing again. Somewhere, an owl calls, and her mind reels back to Thimble’s question—what do you see in him?—and finds herself swept up in too many answers to pick just one.
Wicander shifts his weight from one foot to the other and clears his throat. “Tyranny, may I ask you something?”
“Always,” she says without hesitation, goatlike eyes dilating and ears flicking with interest.
He smiles at that and her heart turns over at the sight of it. “The traveling. Being out here with everyone.” He gestures vaguely back toward camp. “You left a comfortable living situation simply because you felt obligated to me. For that burden, I’d like to imagine you’re enjoying something about being out here. Any of it.” A pause. “So… are you?”
The question catches her off guard. Meanwhile, Wicander looks at her with the patience of a gardener coaxing a sapling to weather the winter. She continues to find his desire to better understand her both surprising and infuriating.
“First of all,” she starts, rolling her eyes, “I didn’t feel obligated to do anything. I have a contract with you, Wick, plain and simple.” She lifts a finger when he starts to protest, continuing: “And second of all, your family sucks. My family sucks. Do you know who lives at your home? Both our families. So, sure, the furniture was fancy, but to say I was comfortable there is a stretch. A huge fucking stretch, to be honest.”
“Tyranny,” Wicander says, attempting a stern frown.
“Right, right. The swearing. Sorry.”
Tyranny wonders if he’ll ever truly understand. Because when Wicander says obligated, when he says burden, a part of her wants to laugh. Or scream. Or both. Because the truth is so much more bleak than that. She followed him because the contract demanded it. She stayed because… because…
Well, that’s where sense runs out and Thimble’s questions come in.
Would she have followed him, truly, if she’d ever been free to choose? Would she have left the gilded prison of House Halovar, traded silk sheets for dirt and campfires and the endless uncertainty of the road? She doesn’t know. The contract makes it impossible to separate what she wants from what she’s bound to do.
Wicander isn’t the Pit; he is kind to a fault, in his fumbling, dorky way. Wicander is figuring himself out, piecing together who he is now that he’s stopped being the person his family tried to make him. Tyranny likes to imagine that they are both working it out together. And that there is something between them that could grow into something real, if only the soil weren’t so poisoned by what they already are to each other.
But he asked her a question. And he’s still watching her with those bright eyes, waiting, because she owes him an answer.
“Meeting new people,” she says slowly, testing the words as they leave her mouth. “Thimble is sharp. I like that about her. Teor is pretty inspiring, and I know you agree there. And Kattigan usually makes me feel like I’m not the only weirdo in a room, which is something I never knew I needed.” She stops, really looks at him. “And watching you.”
Wicander blinks. “Me?”
“You’re different from when we left.” Tyranny clasps her hands behind her back and strolls up to him, as if to appraise him up close. “Lighter, kind of. Like you’re learning how to take up space without apologizing for it.” She thinks about how he’s been fitting into the group lately. Coming out of his shell. Thinks about him at the fire, throwing his head back, the skin of his neck—
She reaches up and flicks him on the forehead. “I like watching that. Watching you become whatever it is you’re becoming. It’s really cool to see. That's been my favorite part about being out here.”
Tyranny chuckles when Wicander follows up by bringing a hand to his forehead, rubbing at the spot she struck with a scandalized gasp. Then he peeks out from between his fingers to look at her, and his expression shifts.
“Yes, well,” he says, “I’ve enjoyed watching you too.”
Tyranny’s breath halts in her throat.
“Watching me,” she repeats, like she isn’t sure she heard right.
He nods, and there’s shyness in the gesture, in the way he’s still partially hiding behind his own hand. “You’re different too. From when we started this. You—” He falters. Seems to be searching for the right words. “Before, you used to agree with most everything I said, even when I was wrong. Even when I could tell you wanted to argue. Especially when I was being insufferable about theological matters, which I’m now realizing was… well, all the time.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that. Doesn’t know what her face was doing.
“But lately you’ve been pushing back more. You disagree with me when before you would’ve bowed your head obediently.” He keeps talking, warmth and wonder taking form in his gaze, and it makes Tyranny’s chest fucking ache. “You laughed at something Thimble said the other day at my expense. A real laugh. And you didn’t look at me once to see if it was allowed.”
Her throat tightens.
“I’ve been…” his voice stumbles, and she can see him wrestling with the words. “I’m not good at this. At saying things properly. But I want you to know—I’m proud of you.” His voice drops, his hand too, all sincere and sweet in that way of his Tyranny’s never learned to guard herself against. “For what it’s worth. I’m really proud of who you’re becoming, too, Tyranny.”
Her pulse kicks hard beneath her breast, and for a dangerous moment she thinks she might actually cry. Proud of her.
It’s not real, she berates herself. You’re a demon. He’s your contract holder. This is what you’re for: making him feel better about himself. Letting him believe he’s doing something important just by being kind. You’re his story, his tidy redemption. Proof that even a priest can rescue a monster if he tries hard enough.
She swallows hard. The weight settles in her throat like a closed fist.
Even if Wicander means it, even if he really does see a positive change in her, how can she ever know it’s real? How will she know if she’s actually growing or just performing growth because it’s what he expects to see?
Fuck, she wants him. She thinks she wants him. But the ribbon between wanting and surviving is knotted beyond unraveling.
And that scares Tyranny most of all. The possibility that she might never know whether she is truly capable of love, or just a very clever monster that has learned to mimic it so well she’s fooled even herself.
“Thank you,” she manages finally, and her voice is shaking. She can hear how close she is to breaking.
Wicander’s brow creases. He noticed. Of course he noticed. “Tyranny, are you alr—”
“We should get back.” She’s already looking away, slipping out of the moonlight and the moment both, back into the dark between the trees. “Before they organize a search party. Or take this as an opportunity to ditch us.”
“Right.” He doesn’t push. Another kindness she doesn’t quite know how to hold. “Of course.”
As they walk back, he falls into step next to her, almost touching. Tyranny can feel every inch of space between them, and the fabric of his robe brushing against her arm with every other step. She can feel the contract vibrating between them, always there, like a leash she pretends to forget. Wicander has it, whether he wants to or not, and she follows because that’s what she’s supposed to do.
Priest and acolyte. Master and servant. The bound and the binding.
Proud of her. The words echo, bittersweet.
He thinks you’re becoming someone, a wispy voice whispers. It sounds like Ksha’aravi but she knows it’s her conscience. If there’s a difference. But you’re just emulating change to please his ego. You’re unsalvageable. That’s your design.
But Wicander is changing. She’s watching him shed the skin his family carved for him.
If he can change, why can’t she?
Because you’re not a person who’s been shaped wrong by bad circumstances. You’re a demon.
Born from the Pit, forged in suffering, crafted for a purpose: to make Wicander look good, feel good, and succeed in whatever holy mission his bloodline had purchased her for.
She can’t outgrow her own soul.
For a while, neither of them speaks. The forest breathes around them with the rustle of leaves, the distant call of a bird, the soft crunch of their footsteps on fallen debris.
“The stars are different out here,” Wicander says at last. His voice is quiet and his eyes tipped skyward. “Brighter. You can see so many more the farther we get from Dol-Makjar.”
Tyranny looks up and sees that he’s right. There are a lot of them in the sky tonight, like spilled salt on a black velvet cloth. And she remembers the first time she saw stars, mere days after she got this body. She had been standing on one of House Halovar’s balconies, where she was supposed to be keeping an eye on Wicander while he slept. All it had taken was one glance up and her mind emptied. She had stood there like an idiot with her mouth agape and her eyes wide open because all she’d known was the Pit and the Pit had no sky. It didn’t have any real light that wasn't fire or torment. Then, all of a sudden, there was this huge ceiling for her take in, painted with a thousand tiny flames that didn’t hurt or burn, they just… existed. Beautiful for no reason at all. She’d stayed that way until her neck hurt and the borrowed skin on her body shook from the cold, desperate to memorize every pattern and sparkle.
“They do look different,” she admits. “Like I can reach up and touch them.”
Wicander smiles at that, content. Her stomach flutters.
A branch snaps to their left, and they both freeze. Tyranny’s claws extend on instinct, her body pulled tight as every sense strains toward the sound.
After that, nothing. Only forest settling. An animal, maybe, or the wind.
Together, they let the tension go. Tyranny flexes her hands, pulling her claws back in.
She bumps his elbow with her own and says, “You’re so jumpy.”
“Me?” Wicander shoots her an incredulous look. “You had brandished your claws before I even moved. I saw them. Very intimidating ones, I might add, ready to eviscerate a... what, small woodland animal?”
“Oh, please.” Tyranny clicks her tongue, fangs slipping into view. “I wouldn’t put it past you to come running to me, begging me to save you from a vicious squirrel attack. ‘Tyranny, please, it’s going for my throat! Use your terrifying demon claws! Protect me!’”
Wicander’s hand goes to his chest like she’s physically wounded him. “I would never. The very idea, asking you to harm an innocent creature? A defenseless animal just going about its day?” He shakes his head, genuinely appalled now beneath the dramatics. “I couldn’t ask you to hurt anything, Tyranny. Not a squirrel, not a rabbit, not even a particularly aggressive moth. For all life is precious under the Light.”
“Even the moths that eat your fancy robes?”
“Especially those moths. They’re just hungry. It’s not their fault I'm epicurean.”
Tyranny snorts, and they both laugh. The sound of their laughter blends together in the dark. Wicander’s laugh is bright and carefree, and hearing it loosens a knot Tyranny didn’t know she carried. They are just two people, for a moment, sharing something small and silly. Something that might be joy, if she lets herself call it that.
“Come along, Your Radiance.”
When they return to the group and the campfire, Tyranny thinks of the photograph tucked against Wicander’s heart. She thinks about Armas and the brief romance she’d had with Wicander lacking any ledger or chain. She thinks about Thimble’s question—would you stay?—and the terrifying blankness where her answer should be.
She risks a longing glance at Wicander. At the man ridding himself of who he was, raw and half-lit, fragile and beautiful in his becoming. Someone new. Someone fully his own.
Somewhere deep inside, in the part of herself that still dares to want, Tyranny wonders if there’s a version of Tyranny beyond all the bindings. A self who stays because she chooses to, who names her own hunger and holds it without fear, untouched by the nightmares of the Pit.
But maybe she’s too thoroughly built, too deep in ways that can’t be changed. Her foundation isn’t damage in the same way Wicander’s upbringing is damage; it’s architecture. If she tore it all away, what would remain? Would there be a Tyranny left underneath all the adaptive responses and survival mechanisms, or is she those things all the way through?
And even now, even after Wicander has made her heart beat too many times to count tonight, she can’t tell if the beating is hers or if it’s the contract singing its approval. A reward for her for being noticed, for being good. She’d felt validated for a moment but was that Tyranny actually feeling seen or is she just a puppet moving when its strings are pulled right?
The not-knowing sits in her chest like a cumbersome stone.
But as she watches Wicander closely like she always has, she finds herself hoping anyway.
Maybe wanting to be someone is the first step toward becoming her.
Or maybe it’s just another demonic deception she employs.
She doesn’t know. She might never know.
But the hoping, tentative and strange as it is, feels like it might be hers.