The words hung between us, heavy with all the things I couldn’t say, all the truths still locked inside me, waiting for their turn to be carved into stone.
Aleks didn’t reply. Didn’t look at me. The blindfolded woman glided around us with ghostlike movements, bending gracefully to pick up the daggers we’d used. She inspected them, as well as the things we’d carved, for several moments. Then she turned back to us.
Her eyes were still hidden. Her mouth remained perfectly emotionless. Yet I could sense the expectation in her tilted head, her patient stillness.
She said,Nothing breaks, nor binds, so completely as the truth.
I leaned against the wall, unsure of how to reply.
Aleks paced the room, studying my carved words, occasionally trailing his fingers along them.
It could have been minutes that passed. Hours. An entire day. I don’t know how long it took before I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. I turned to the woman, desperate for guidance, for some sign of what came next.
She only repeated,Nothing breaks, nor binds, so completely as the truth.
The only response I felt this time wasanger. Anger at her, at this place, at the way things were and how impossible everything seemed. I sank back against the wall and closed my eyes tightly, my entire body trembling.
But anger soon brought clarity with it, as if that fury had burned a path through my fear and uncertainty to reveal the revelation I’d been hoping for.
Nothing breaks, nor binds, so completely as the truth.
Broken or bound.Maybethiswas the true test—how would Aleks and I leave this place? We had walked side by side into the darkness, over and over, but could we walk in the light together,too? Even when that light revealed ugly things? Frightening things?
So many things were trying to break us.
The last words Aleks had carved flared like a warning sign on the wall across from me, making my heart race.
I have to leave her.
“Nova.”
I flinched at his voice, afraid of what he was going to say next. It was the Hollow Grove all over again—I was in the middle of a nightmare, and I knew it, but I still didn’t want to move into whatever future awaited me; there was something oddly comforting about familiar terrors.
But I hadn’t stayed in that forest.
And I couldn’t stay in this chamber, either.
So I pushed away from the wall and met Aleks in the center of the room. My heart pounded. My palms were slick with sweat. The whispers rose eagerly with my footsteps, as if in anticipation, while a hundred painful truths burned brighter and brighter on the walls all around us.
Aleks ignored all the noise and all the flashing, fiery words as I approached him. His gaze fixed on mine, unwavering as he said, “There’s one more truth you should know before we leave this place.”
I held my breath.
“I love you,” he said.
The suffocating pressure in the air seemed to lessen—enough that faint threads of golden light soon lifted from his arms. My shadows rose in answer, thin ribbons that intertwined with his magic.
He watched them dance together for a moment before settling his gaze back on mine. “I love you,” he repeated. “No matter how the light and shadows shift.”
I reached my hand toward his. He took it without hesitation, his warm grasp closing over the dried blood covering my palm.
“I love you, too,” I replied, my voice soft yet certain, the declaration somehow not swallowed up even as the ghostly voices continued to storm around us. It was not a revelation, but it still felt like a confession as much as anything I’d said thus far—the deepest, most desperate truth I was clinging to. I’m not sure if I actually said it out loud, if the words were swept away by the whispers, or if they appeared on the walls as bright and bold as all our other confessions…
I didn’t care.
I didn’t need to carve this truth into stone. Because it was already carved into my very being, deeper than any blade could cut.
I loved him, and I wouldn’t let him go.
