Chapter Text
The silence after his words was total, the kind that swallowed even the crickets.
Lucy Gray’s hands tightened around her guitar, her eyes burning like twin embers across the fire. Sejanus exhaled shakily, the sound half relief, half grief, as though he’d been holding his breath for months. And Coryo—Coryo felt the last thread of his old life snap inside him, clean and final.
They would run. Not because it was safe. Not because it was wise. But because staying meant surrender, it meant returning to chains and scalpels and the Capitol’s endless hunger. Out there in the dark, beyond Twelve, beyond the reach of Gaul’s shadow, lay something else. Not freedom, not quite. But the chance to carve one from nothing.
The fire spat, a log collapsing into ash. Sparks spiralled up into the canopy and disappeared into the night sky. Coryo’s gaze followed them, his jaw clenched, his tail curled tight around his boots. He didn’t know where the path ahead would take them—into obscurity, into ruin, into legend. But for the first time, he would not walk it alone.
“We run,” he said again, steadier this time, his voice like a vow.