Lira finished the last of the bread like she hadn't eaten in days.
She probably hadn't.
No fire in her hands yet. But the embers were there — hunger, rage, and something sharp behind the eyes. I'd seen that look before. In the mirror. In the trenches. In the eyes of kids who'd been carved into weapons before they ever had the chance to be children.
The silence between us wasn't empty. It was dense. Full of things neither of us wanted to name.
"You always walk around handing out scraps to alley girls?" she asked.
There was no flirt in it. Just a sharpened edge.
I let the corner of my mouth twitch upward. "Only the ones fate plans to use like kindling."
She scoffed. "Fate doesn't know me."
"No," I said. "But I do."
Her chewing slowed.
I'd pushed too far. Too soon.
But this wasn't the battlefield. This was something older. Something more delicate. Like defusing a bomb while it was still ticking under your hands.
I leaned back against the cold stone, careful to leave space between us. She was like an animal that'd been cornered too many times. You didn't reach for that. You waited for it to stop baring its teeth.
"You said your name's Veyr," she muttered eventually. "That supposed to mean something?"
"No," I said. "But one day, it will."
That earned me a sideways glance. Not quite hostile. Not quite trusting either.
Progress.
I didn't need her to like me. I just needed her first.
Before he got to her. Before she became his torchbearer. His martyr.
Before she died screaming his name while her skin peeled away under my fire.
The memory slammed into me. Her scream. Her eyes. That awful silence after.
I swallowed it down.
I hadn't come back to relive the past.
I'd come to erase it.
"I've got a place," I said, after the silence stretched too long. "It's dry. Safer than this alley."
Lira snorted. "You offering me a bed too?"
Her voice was sharp. The kind that didn't wound unless you already had the scar.
"I'm offering you a door that closes and a meal that isn't stolen," I said. "That's all."
She didn't move. But I saw her body shift. The weight of exhaustion pressing down on her like an old coat.
"Why?" she whispered.
There it was. The soft part. The question no one ever answered right.
I didn't lie.
"Because I've been where you are," I said. "And I know how fast you stop being a person when no one sees you anymore."
The war made liars out of everyone. But in this moment, I didn't need to lie. I just needed to remember.
I stood, slow and careful, like I was standing in front of a trigger-happy sentry.
"I'll be at the north well," I said. "Sunrise."
She didn't answer.
But she didn't spit at me either.
I turned.
Walked slow. Each step a test of nerves. Don't look back. Don't force it.
The girl who would become the Flame Maiden sat alone under the forgotten statue of a dead god.
Waiting for someone.
And for the first time, it wouldn't be him.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
My body remembered the front. Every creak in the boards was a snapped twig behind enemy lines. Every gust of wind was the breath before an ambush.
The bed was too soft.
The air too still.
And the quiet — the quiet was unbearable.
You didn't get quiet in war. Not unless something horrible was about to happen.
So I lay there, staring at the ceiling, fingers twitching over scars that weren't on this body. Not yet. But I remembered where they should be.
I counted every breath.
Every hour.
Waiting for dawn like it owed me something.
When it finally came, I was already dressed.
The innkeeper gave me a look when I passed. The kind that said you don't belong here.
He wasn't wrong.
I belonged in the mud. In the blood. In the fire.
Not in clean shirts and warm bread.
I reached the north well just as the sun crested over the crooked rooftops.
She was there.
Lira.
Arms crossed. Sleepless eyes. Same clothes, same defiance. But she'd come.
Which meant something had shifted.
I didn't smile. I didn't say anything.
I just nodded, and we walked.
Not together.
Not yet.
But side by side.
A soldier.
And a spark.
And somewhere down the road — if I played it right — not even the Hero would be able to put out the fire I was about to light.