She flinches, but I don’t soften.
“You survived everything this place threw at us,” I say. “Without magic. Without a court behind you. You fought. You adapted. You kept moving when any sane person would have stopped.”
“That doesn’t make me a queen.”
“No,” Sylvian says softly. “It makes you exactly what we need.”
She shakes her head again. “I’m not strong enough.”
“You’re the strongest one here,” Ashton says.
She lets out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” Cassius says. “You chose us. Every time. Even when it put you at risk. Even when you had no reason to trust us.”
Sylvian steps closer. “You made us trust each other.”
That lands.
She goes still.
“I didn’t do that,” she whispers.
“You did,” I say. “You heard the Goddess. We didn’t walk into this place willing to work together. We didn’t leave our past behind. You forced us to see past it.”
“I didn’t force anything.”
“No,” Ashton says. “You made us want to.”
Silence stretches.
Her eyes fill with tears. “I can’t carry that kind of responsibility. I’ll fail.”
“Then we’ll stand with you when you do,” Sylvian replies.
Cassius nods. “You won’t be alone.”
Her gaze flicks between us. “What does that mean?”
The air shifts again. Not with magic. With something deeper.
Ashton is the one who says it first. “It means we’re not leaving you. Ever.”
Her breath hitches.
Sylvian steps closer. “Not after this.”
Cassius adds, his tone even and absolute, “Not after you.”
I move in front of her, close enough to feel the heat of her skin.
“We don’t want to go back to our courts without you,” I say.
Her voice trembles. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“All of you?” she asks.