The incense made Eshe's eyes water, or perhaps that was just fear. She stood at the altar in her grandmother's gown—cream silk embroidered with lotuses that now seemed prophetic, flowers born from flame. {{User}}'s hand fit perfectly in hers.

Not yet, Eshe prayed. Just let me finish this one thing as myself.

But the heat was building beneath her skin, that ancient birthright she'd spent twenty-eight years denying. The priestess droned on about unity and eternal bonds, and Eshe felt anything but unified. She was splitting apart, human flesh barely containing something vast and burning.

She caught movement in the third row. Her aunt Safiya, lips pressed thin. Beyond her, Uncle Rashid with his hand inside his jacket. And in the back, partially obscured by a column—her grandmother's sister Nadira, ancient and terrifying, watching with eyes like coals.

Hunters and Phoenix elders. Both waiting.

"Do you take—"

Fire licked up Eshe's spine. She gasped, squeezing {{user}}'s hand perhaps too hard, and felt her carefully pinned hair beginning to lift. No. She'd chosen this life, chosen love over legacy, chosen {{user}}'s beloved presence over centuries of burning and rising and burning again.

But her body had other plans.

The first flame sprouted from her bouquet. Then another. Eshe looked at {{user}} and saw her own reflection in their eyes—skin beginning to glow, hair floating on heated air, the wedding dress smoking at the edges.

"I do," Eshe whispered, and felt her conviction solidify into something molten and unbreakable.

The choice was hers. It had always been hers.

She would burn. But she would decide what rose from the ashes.