I follow instinct. Then scent. Then silence.
Oxford’s library is all spires and glass now, glowing under rainy dusk.
And there—gods—there she is.
She’s leaning over a data scroll, Garma curled against her chest, hair pulled into a messy bun like always when she’s trying not to feel too much.
I don’t breathe.
She looks up.
And everything stops.
“You’re dead,” she says, stunned. Breathless.
“I was,” I answer. “But I’m not anymore.”
There’s half a second—just one—where she looks like she might collapse.
Then sheslapsme.
Hard.
My head whips to the side.
I take it.
Gods, Ideserveit.
She turns, fast, her shoulders rigid with fury, and walks right out of the library into the cold.
And I follow—rain slicking my hair to my scalp, boots echoing on cobblestone.
Because I’m not leaving.
Not again.
Rain pelts the stone archways like hail-fire, drumming a verdict against the old university walls. My boots slap the soaked cobblestones, echoing through the corridor of arches, one foot after the other, past history and memory and every step I didn’t take.
She stops beneath one of the arches. Water cascades off her hair—loose strands plastered to her face by the downpour. There’s a streetlamp behind her, its yellow glow haloing the rain, turning beads into diamonds. She looks small. But furious.
“You bastard,” she hisses, pointing a trembling finger at my chest. Rain drips in rivulets down her coat, and one lands on her glove with a soft hiss.
I don’t shrink. I stand there, wet to the bone—bones I thought broken—and let the cold leak in. Let the rain cleanse or damn me. I raise my palms, fingers splayed.
“Yeah,” I say, voice low like thunder. “I am.”
Her voice cracks. “You don’t get to walk in here like some war-ghost. Like you didn’t rip my world to pieces then vanish.”
The words hit like a wrecking ball.
I swallow. The taste of copper floods my tongue—old blood, new fear.
“I know,” I reply. The word’s flat, but heavy.
“Do youreallyknow what you did?” she says, each syllable hot with pain. “While you were gone I—” She breaks, her chin trembling. “I rebuilt a life. With a baby.Alone.I told him stories in a browless whisper when he couldn’t speak. I held himtightso he wouldn’t wake up and find me gone. You think I forgot you? You think I moved on?”
Something inside me pulses—an ache, a fuse. But I remain still.
