But for the first time in years, when she looks in the mirror, she sees one person looking back.

Jade shrugged. “You have three months of runway, then. The algorithm doesn’t forgive mercy.”

You don’t owe anyone the horns.

By sixteen, she’d learned the math. A normal girl with her face—heart-shaped, big eyes, a mouth that pouted even when she was angry—could get a job at the apothecary. A tiefling with that same face got followed home. Got called a succubus in the same breath someone asked her to the harvest dance.

Aery—Erin—looked at her reflection in the black mirror of her phone. The horns weren’t prosthetics anymore. They were a brand asset. Her pain wasn’t pain. It was content . Her loneliness wasn’t loneliness. It was a story beat .