Tiptoeing, she rounded the settee and?—
Next to the tray was a long, beribboned box made of stiffened parchment.
Her eyes darted between it and the tray, and her curiosity won out. Slipping the silk bow free, Lunara lifted the lid and gasped.
She didn’t know fabric could look as if someone had harnessed the night sky and then dipped it into the sea, just to leave the stars there. When she picked up a corner, the color shifted, glittering from azure to evergreen.
It was a wonder she had any more tears to shed.
With trembling hands, she lifted the dress and hugged it to herself, almost missing the small bundle of papers that fluttered to the ground.
Separate little notes, individually folded. Collecting each one, she laid them out on the table, terrified of what she would find and unable to decide how to open them.
Eventually, Lunara closed her eyes and pointed, picking that one up first. She barely choked back the laugh that threatened to burst free when she saw the contents.
Brand’s handwriting was terrible.
She could hardly make out what he’d written, only deciphering the message after a comical amount of squinting and head tilting.
That the summer sky and the evening forest
could meet beneath eyes of the sea.
Turns out, little moon, that you are my favorite color.
—B
“Oh, Brand,” she whispered, sending the note to the ether where it would always be safe.
The reminder of their sunset on the mountaintop, the first real time she’d spent with him, threatened to topple some of her rigid resolve.
The next was on strange parchment, and not from Brand. The words were sharp and tidy, in a hand she didn’t recognize, and the unsigned note stilled the blood in her veins.
The world went dark and swam beneath you, but you forgot to remember.
Ringing started in her ears, her breaths shallow. She tossed it away as if it had burned her. The Voice’s words, rephrased and written out before her. At the very least, it was an odd sort ofrelief. If someone else knew what it had said, then the Voice was real and not a figment of her addled mind.
Buthowthe mysterious sender knew… What they were implying… It was too much to try and figure out. Too much to try and decipher. She still didn’t understand the warning, and she was exhausted in ways she hadn’t known were possible.
Ignoring it was easy. Sort of.
The remaining note almost made her want to go back to the one before.
I know you are hurting, because I am in agony. I know you think your only choice is to disappear. I have realized, over and over, that I am unable to deny you anything. I can’t control you. I can’t hold tight when you beg me to let go. And I especially can’t withhold your freedom.
Even if it destroys us both.
Just know this:
There has been no greater honor in my life than loving you, Lunara. You will be the last I kiss. You will be the last I hold—one way or another. If both of those moments have already come to pass, I will still count myself the most blessed creature alive.
And when I exhale for that final, endless time…
No matter how far away from me you are…
Know the last breath I shared was yours as well, and that I rejoiced in the privilege.
I hope you will reconsider. I hope, with every fiber of my being, that I will come down from the mountaintop as Solyrian blesses the land and you will be there wrapped in a sea of stars. That I will once again know the simple bliss of your hand in mine.
