Evelyn hadn't slept. She didn't dare.
Clara's head rested against her lap, her breathing shallow but steady. Evelyn's hands combed through Clara's hair again and again, desperate to soothe, desperate to believe the worst had passed. But her mind replayed the argument over and over, every word like a shard of glass.
Damien's voice: "If she turns, I'll kill her."
Zeke's voice: "Better to strike first than regret later."
Both of them thought they were being rational. Both of them believed they were protecting the group. But to Evelyn, all she heard was betrayal.
Her eyes burned, not from lack of sleep, but from fury. Fury at Yurin for reaching so deeply into Clara's soul. Fury at Damien and Zeke for even thinking her life was expendable. Fury at herself, for not being strong enough to stop any of it.
She leaned down, pressing her forehead to Clara's temple, whispering low so neither Damien nor Zeke could hear. "I don't care what they say. I don't care what he whispers in your head. You're mine to protect. And I'll burn the world before I let them take you from me."
The words weren't a plea. They were a vow.
Evelyn straightened slowly, her eyes finding the others. Damien sat apart from the fire, sharpening his blade in silence. His face was calm, but his knuckles were white. His sword-arm trembled once before he clenched it tighter. Zeke, further away, had drawn faint glyphs into the dirt, his expression unreadable in the glow. Always calculating. Always waiting.
She hated it.
Not because she thought they were wrong—deep down, she knew Clara was a danger. But because they had already made their choices. They'd already placed her on the scales, weighing her worth against their survival.
Evelyn refused to.
"Evelyn," Damien's voice broke the silence, rough but controlled. He didn't look at her. "If she slips again… you can't stop me."
Her hands clenched in Clara's hair, protective, possessive. "Try it," she said, her voice soft but sharp enough to cut.
That got him to glance up, his storm-gray eyes meeting hers. He didn't flinch. "I'm not your enemy."
"Then stop talking like one," Evelyn snapped. "She's still here. She's still Clara. And if you can't see that, then maybe you've already given up."
The silence after was suffocating.
Zeke didn't look up from his glyphs, but his voice slid into the space between them, smooth and clinical. "Denial won't save her. If Yurin threads deeper, she'll collapse. We can't afford sentiment when the tether is that unstable."
Evelyn shot him a glare so sharp it could've carved stone. "Don't talk about her like she's a number on your ledger."
His lips twitched—not a smile, but a restrained annoyance. "You think I don't know what this feels like? I've seen it. I've lost someone to it. I won't make the same mistake twice."
For a moment, Evelyn's anger faltered. There was something in Zeke's voice—too controlled, too flat—that made her wonder what memory he was burying. But the thought only fueled her determination.
"Then don't project your ghosts onto her," she spat. "Clara isn't whoever you lost. She isn't a calculation. She isn't your warning lesson. She's herself—and she's fighting."
Her words came out harsher than she intended, but she didn't regret them. Because Clara stirred faintly at that moment, her lips moving in the faintest murmur: "…fighting…"
Evelyn's heart lurched. She bent down quickly, brushing tears from Clara's cheeks. "That's right. You're fighting. I've got you. I'll always have you."
She looked up again, firelight painting her features, her voice low but steady, directed at both Damien and Zeke. "I don't care what you two think you have to do. If you touch her—if either of you try to decide her life for her—you'll go through me first."
Damien exhaled slowly, his grip on his sword loosening just slightly. He didn't answer. Zeke, on the other hand, studied her with those unblinking eyes, as if measuring her resolve, calculating probabilities.
Finally, he erased the glyphs in the dirt with a slow sweep of his hand.
No one spoke after that. The night stretched long, broken only by the crackle of the fire and Clara's fragile breathing.
But Evelyn knew.
The battle wasn't just with Yurin anymore.
It was with each other.
And if it came down to it—she would burn them both before she let them take Clara from her.