Fadel’s POV

Her quiet voice. The way the air had gone still when she said it, like the world itself had been listening.

I promise.

Fire roared in my head now, not heat but rage, violent and suffocating. My chest burned as if something had been torn out and set alight in its place.

No.

Winter would not choose death.

And if she had walked into the flames, then the world had driven her there.

And the world would burn for it.

I began to shake. Not from fear, not from rage, but from something ...