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I am here, little hunter, he says into my mind.

I close my eyes. I know.

She will not touch you again.

You can’t promise that.

His arms tighten. Then I will kill whatever makes me a liar.

A shaky breath leaves me. That should sound monstrous.

It does.

It also sounds like the only shelter I have left.

I press my face harder against him as tears soak into his shirt. My body shakes once, then again, and I let it because the woman who saved me used me, the witch who protected me caged me, and the man I feared most is the one holding me while the whole architecture of my life begins to collapse.

Valentin’s mouth lowers to my hair. Little hunter. Be done with this. I cannot bear to see you cry.

The name, his words, they all break something else open. I clutch him harder, fear battling shock and horror and winning.

We’re all running out of time too.

I don’t send the thought but I feel it. And because the bond is open, he feels enough. His hand stills against my spine. Eira.

No. If he says my name like that, I might lose the nerve.

But the decision has already sharpened inside me.

Selphine warned us to stop digging because she knows what sits beneath the last layer. That the truth will change everything, and my silence is the final lock she still controls.

Enough.

I’ve hidden behind Eira Cross for six years. Fought, lied, survived, and called it freedom. But freedom that depends on another woman owning my voice is another kind of cage.

Valentin holds me in the wreckage of his war room while the Heartshard Glass pulses, his mark darkens, Rowan’s temporary potion burns cold under my tongue, and Selphine’s warning crawls around the room like smoke.

We are running out of time.

And I’m done letting witches, fathers, monsters and fear decide when I am allowed to speak my own name.

I lift my head from Valentin’s chest.

His eyes meet mine. I see the question there before he asks it, feel the tremor in the bond, the old rage, the new fear, the thing neither of us has dared name because names have become dangerous between us.

My throat aches. The gag waits. The truth waits harder. ‘Valentin,’ I whisper.

His hands tighten on me.

And for the first time since I became Eira Cross, I’m at the crossroads he predicted, knowing I need to choose the hunter.

Or the woman buried underneath.

21

VALENTIN

Eira sleeps because I make her sleep.