His expression softens. "They're still part of my story. But my story is changing, just like the scars did. Nothing is going to ever give me back what I lost. It hollowed part of me out. Left a void inside me I wasn’t sure I’d ever fill. But… then you happened.”

I smile. “I happened, huh?”

“Nessa Thorne. A force of fucking nature,” Raith says with a soft smile. “I tried not to fall for you, and your stubborn ass wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“I’m not sorry,” I say, planting a playful kiss on his neck. “Not even slightly.”

He considers this, his thumb tracing idle patterns on my shoulder. "Neither am I.”

The words feel significant, weighted with meaning beyond face value. I lean into him, drawing comfort from his solid presence, from the steady beat of his heart against my cheek.

His fingers trail through my wet hair, combing it away from my face with a tenderness that makes my chest ache. "When I saw into your memories," he says softly, "I felt something else. Something beneath the guilt and fear."

I tense slightly. "What?"

"Relief," he says, his voice careful. "Not at what happened—never that—but at finally having a reason to leave. To escape a life that felt too small for you."

The observation strikes so close to a truth I've never admitted, even to myself, that I feel exposed all over again. "How could you possibly⁠—"

"Because I felt the same way," he interrupts gently. "When my world burned down around me, there was grief, rage, horror... but underneath it all, a terrible freedom. The freedom to become someone else. Someone new. To break away from the path set for me."

I swallow hard, remembering what I've glimpsed of his past—the child destined to rule some distant land, the burning castle, the screams of his family.

"I wish there had been another way to make my own path,” I say.

"I know," he says, pressing his lips to my forehead. “But sometimes the universe gives us what we need in the cruelest ways possible."

We fall silent, the only sound the gentle lapping of water against the pool's edge. I think about his words, about the terrible truth in them. Perhaps we are both born of catastrophe, forged in tides and flames we never wanted but learned to harness nonetheless.

"I need you to know something," he says after a long silence, his voice low and serious.

I pull back slightly to look at him. "What?"

His hand cradles my face, thumb brushing my lower lip. "This wasn't just about wanting you. The sex, I mean. It's more than that. It has been for a while."

My heart clenches. It's not a declaration of love, not exactly, but coming from Raith—guarded, cautious Raith—it's monumental.

"For me too," I admit softly.