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Old enough to be groomed. Young enough to still believe his father would always be there.

He remembered the cold shock of it.

The press of eyes on him in the first council meeting.

He remembered Logan pulling him aside after and whispering,“They’re already looking to you. Don’t give them a reason to doubt.”

And he hadn’t.

Not once.

Not until her.

He paused beside the old spellstone marker, fingers brushing the jagged runes that marked the last boundary his father had reinforced. The stone felt colder now. Like it knew its strength was slipping.

Jace clenched his jaw.

He couldn’t afford distractions. Not with the wards thinning. Not with Ezra circling like a wolf with blood on the wind.

AndLyra, bright, wild, chaos in bloom, she was theworstkind of distraction.

Because she made him want things. Soft things. Hopeful things.

The kind of dreams that didn’t come with war or weighted silence or the constant fear of failing everyone who looked to him like he carried the sky on his shoulders.

And stars help him, he wanted her anyway.

His wolf wanted her—no,claimedher. Had from the first moment her scent hit the air and lit up something ancient in his blood.

But he’d fought it. Was still fighting it. Because loving her felt like standing too close to the edge of a cliff in a storm.

One step too far, and it wouldn’t be just him who fell.

It would be her.

He sank to the ground beside the ward line, elbows resting on his knees, breath fogging in the crisp air.

“You didn’t get to run,” he muttered. “So why the hell do I still want to?”

The trees didn’t answer. But the wind shifted.

And he thought of Lyra’s voice the last time she spoke to him, brittle and furious and heartbroken all at once.

“If you keep standing there holding back, you’re going to lose me.”

And that… that scared him more than the wards ever could. Because he didn’t want to lose her. He never had.

He just didn’t know how to keep her without breaking the rest of himself wide open.

A low growl rumbled in his chest. His wolf was done pacing. It was waiting. Waiting for him to stop being a coward. Waiting for him to stop letting ghosts dictate his damn future.

He looked out over the valley, where the glow of the town shimmered faintly under twilight. Festival lanterns bobbed in the wind.

Somewhere out there, she was hurting. And it was his fault.

He stood slowly, brushing his hands off on his jeans.

He couldn’t fix what his father broke.