Her jaw tightened slightly, the line of it sharp in the gray morning light.
Whatever waited for her in Valeria, she would face it. Alone.
Because that was the only way forward she had allowed herself to accept.
Even if something deep beneath that decision, quiet, unspoken, buried beneath layers of survival and steel, questioned what that would cost her in the end. The bond whispered it back to her faintly, a distant echo of Thessian's restrained presence returning up the stairs: not an ending, but a thread that refused to snap.
