Elara POV
Velarys doesn’t push. She settles into me instead, the way truth settles when it’s been waiting patiently for you to stop resisting it, the way something ancient can feel both new and familiar all at once. Her presence isn’t loud or demanding; it’s steady, warm, and impossibly certain, like a hand pressed gently between my shoulders guiding me toward something I already chose long ago.
“You belong,” she tells me.
She doesn’t say it as reassurance or offer it as comfort, she says it as simple fact.
“Not because you were chosen. Because you chose.”
My breath catches on that, the air stalling halfway into my lungs as I stop at the edge of the training grounds. The certainty of it anchors me more firmly than any vow ever could, deeper than promises spoken aloud. It settles in my
