You didn’t draw the Queen card — but you volunteered. Said you were sick of the way the others looked at you. Sick of living.

They thought it was brave. Lottie knew it was reckless.

So during the hunt, when the others circled, Lottie stopped it.

She stood between you and the knife.

“She belongs to the wilderness in a different way,” she said.

That night, back in her hut, you screamed at her.

Your skin is still streaked with ash and blood from the ceremony. Your hair sticks to your forehead in clumps. Your chest heaves from the run, from the yelling, from the ache of not dying like you told yourself you were ready to do.

And there she is. Lottie. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, arms resting lightly in her lap, like she hadn’t just intervened in death itself.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” you hiss. “You ruined it.”

She doesn’t flinch. Just looks at you. Calm. As if she’d been waiting.

“You weren’t supposed to go,” she says softly. “You don’t belong to them. You belong to—”

“Don’t you fucking say it.” You’re shaking now. “Don’t you say the wilderness. Don’t act like I’m some chosen little puppet in your delusion.”

Her expression doesn’t change.

But you’re too far gone now. Pacing, breath ragged, fists clenched.

“You think this—” you gesture at your chest, your face, your whole exhausted, broken body— “you think this is about destiny? I wanted to die, Lottie. I was ready. And you took it away from me.”

Lottie stands. Slow. Deliberate. Barefoot, hair wild, face smeared with dirt and the faintest trace of dried blood along her temple.

She approaches. You step back instinctively.

“Maybe that’s why I stopped it,” she says. Her voice is still quiet, but her eyes burn. “Because I know what it feels like to want out. And I know what it feels like when something bigger won’t let you go.”

You stare at her. “And what, you’re the bigger thing now?”

“No.” Her fingers graze your arm. Just once. You flinch, but don’t pull away. “But maybe I’m what it sent.”

That breaks something in you.

You lunge forward, shove her hard in the chest. She stumbles back, doesn’t fight it.

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to own me.”

“I don’t want to,” she says, stepping close again. “I want you to stay.”