Alora lowered the parchment slowly. The words hummed against her skin, as if the ink itself were warning caution. She folded it without comment, tucking the message inside her cloak. The air grew thinner.
Caelum watched her closely, sensing the shift. “What did she say?”
“Enough,” Alora said. She forced her voice steady. “We need to be careful. There are eyes here.”
This was it then, she would finally get answers.
A flicker of hope stirred in her chest, fragile as a flame, but a pit also dropped in her stomach. She’d wanted the truth, fought for it, but now it loomed like a storm at her door.
And Alora wasn’t sure if she was ready for it.
“Thank you,” she sighed. “For coming for me. For giving me the courage to … find my way.”
Caelum nodded. Then he stepped back into the evening and said, “Rest. I’ll keep watch.” He turned to go, then murmured, “You’re not alone anymore.”
That’s true.
She wasn’t alone. Because as much as she had tried to ignore the presence in her soul, she couldn’t anymore. She was bound to Rune, no matter how far she ran.
Once Caelum disappeared into the woods, Alora shut the door and let herself sag against it. For a heartbeat, the quiet pressed around her like a question she didn’t know how to answer.
What came after this?
After the truth, after the curse, after everything shattered or mended or both?
She crossed to the copper tub behind the folding screen and began to fill it, steam curling in soft ribbons as the water warmed. She peeled off her travel-stained clothes and sank into the hot water with a low exhale. The grime lifted easily. The unease did not.
She scrubbed her skin with a bar of soap made from tallow and briar rose oil distilled from her garden, flecked with crushed pink petals. The water turned as murky as her thoughts. She could run. Caelum and Theia would follow her into whatever exile she chose. She had wanted that freedom once. But she wasn’t sure what she wanted now.
When the water cooled, she stepped out, toweling herself dry before slipping into an old dress from her wardrobe anda soft leather bodice worn smooth with age. Her fingers were threading the last of the laces, when her pack gave a sudden rustle.
Nexus slid out with a disgruntled grunt, wings fluttering as he stretched and meowed like he hadn’t been smuggled halfway across the realm in a sack.
“You menace,” she laughed, scooping him up. “When did you stowaway in there?”
Nexus licked her thumb and purred smugly.
After lighting a single candle, she opened the window above her headboard and plopped onto her bed with the purring kitten, the wind gently tousling the curtains. She had missed the sky. Missed the sun. But her gaze returned to the shadows flickering on her ceiling.
“I thought I would feel free,” Alora whispered.
Nexus curled beside her head on the pillow, purring.
She lifted her hands toward the ceiling, observing the divine markings faintly glowing like paths of moonlight on her skin. Her finger looked naked without her ring.
“So why do I feel… hollow?”
Alora turned her gaze to the evening sky, listening to the trees in the wind. She could still feel him. Rune. Distant, furious, wounded. She had left him behind. She had chosen to leave.
And yet…
“I hate him,” she whispered.
The wind stirred the candlelight.
“I hate that he lied. I hate that he kept secrets. I hate that he thinks he can own me.”
A shadow flickered across the ceiling.
