The man who haunted my dreams... never meant to haunt me at all.
For one treacherous heartbeat, I wonder who he might have been if he's trusted me enough to let me choose.
***
As the last of Micah’s warmth leaves his body, the weight of him becomes too much. My strength burns out, and my grip falters. I slump back onto the frozen moss, his head slipping from my lap.
Just as I’m falling—something catches me.
My chest splits open, like something clawing its way free. The world doesn’t just go dark; it shatters like fireflies in the night.
Visions flood through my broken mind.
Snow. A jagged cliff edge. The wind howling with the voices of a thousand angry ghosts. A woman stands at the precipice—dark hair whipping in the storm, eyes fixed on the abyss below.
My heartbeat slows. I’m not watching her.I am her.
Naya Rhavari.
A man appears behind me, wearing a storm-gray cloak heavy with the scent of cinnamon. No white fur. No antlers. Just a tall, broad-shouldered man with eyes like the first winter.
Caelen.
“Stay close, Naya,” he murmurs, his large hands finding mine. “The Gods are stirring tonight. Something big is coming.”
My heart knows him. It has always known him. It has beaten for him in every lifetime, under every name.
“I’m not afraid,” I whisper, leaning into his strength, “Not with you.”
Another blinding flash of light.
Hands clasped beneath a moon so large it swallows the stars. Birch trees rising like cathedral columns around us. Snowdrops tucked in my hair.
A bonding ceremony.
Ancient words tumble from my lips—a language I shouldn’t understand, but one my soul speaks fluently. My eyes snap to the tattoo on my ankle—the script. This is where it‘s from.
“Naya. My soulbond.My Saelûn.” His voice wraps around me, a vow that echoes through the centuries. He slips the pale, iridescent moonstone—the one Toffee presented me with in the bath—over my ring finger.
The memory shifts. The air turns fragile, heavy with the scent of fresh water and cedar.
Another man steps from the shadows. He is identical to Caelen, but his eyes are burning with a quiet, hollow grief.
Therin.
Caelen’s twin.
The man who saved me the day I fell from the ladder in the Great Archive. I remember the scent of old parchment. I was reaching for a scroll of the first Ages when the rung snapped. I had braced for the stone floor, but it was Therin who caught me.It was his arms that shook as he held me, his heart hammering against mine.
“I have you, Naya,” he had whispered into my hair. “I will always catch you.”
He was my first friend. My first protector. Long before Caelen ever walked into the flickering light of that library. Therin had been the one guarding my shadows.
“Why not me, Naya?” Therin’s voice cracks, pulling me out of the memory. “He went off to be a warrior. I was the one who stayed just to chase you through the halls of the Archive. You were all that mattered.”
My heart cracks. I wanted to love him—I did love him—but my soul never danced with his. Not like it did the day Caelen stepped into the Archive.
I stumble back toward the cliff edge, the stone crumbling beneath my heels. I wanted to choose them both... but the bond only chose one.
