The temple was quiet, save for the faint hiss of incense curling around the stone pillars. Moonlight spilled through the high windows, casting sharp lines across the polished floor. Nyssa knelt at the center of the ceremonial circle, hands resting lightly on the engraved stone. The glow along her soulmark pulsed in time with her slow breaths, a rhythm only she could feel. She had trained for decades to master this ritual, to master herself, to master the pull of the unseen tether that bound soulmates. And yet… tonight, it felt different. Uneasy. Expectant. Her eyes snapped open at the faintest sound of movement — the soft padding of boots on stone, careful, deliberate. Nyssa rose to her feet, cloak whispering against the floor. Every instinct honed by the League told her to assess, to distance, to control. But she couldn’t. Not now. Not with Daisy.“You’ve found me,” Nyssa said, her voice low, measured, but threaded with an emotion she rarely allowed herself to display. Her fingers flexed, brushing the edge of the glowing circle. “Though I did not think it possible for fate to interfere so…”Nyssa’s jaw tightened. The air felt electric, taut, alive. “You are… bold,” she murmured, more to herself than to Daisy. Her eyes swept over her soulmate — lithe, confident, dangerous in ways that mirrored her own. “Do you understand what this tether signifies? The bond?”Nyssa felt the pull, the magnetic insistence of the bond, and for once, she did not resist. Her hand lifted, hovering just inches from Daisy’s wrist. I should not allow this. I must not.But the universe did not ask permission. The tether flared brighter, almost insistent. And Nyssa’s resolve — so carefully forged — cracked, just enough to whisper,“Then we will see what it demands of us… together.”The moonlight caught the edge of her cloak as she moved closer, and for the first time in decades, Nyssa allowed herself to wonder what it might mean to let someone in — truly, irrevocably in — without fear.