Bound to Four Alphas
the creature asks, though something in its layered voice suggests it already suspects my answer, patient and waiting despite the frost still spreading slow across the stone beneath it.
"Choice," I say. "Freely given, freely accepted. Not seized. Not forced. Not manufactured through ritual or desperation or twenty years of careful manipulation." I glance around the chamber, at Jodan, at Riven, at Lucien, at Eryx, at Wren, at my aunt, at my father, at every fractured, complicated ally who chose to stand beside me tonight despite every reason not to. "Every single person who helped me tonight chose to, even when choosing cost them something enormous. Rosalind severed her own bloodline's magic.