Dear Future Me,
This is our first notebook in captivity, so I’ll start by warning you that it is all you’ll have to rely on. I will do my best to write down as much information as possible and hope that you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
By now, you will know you’re stuck in a memory loop. Cursed to have thirty days of memory before everything resets with the new moon, where you won’t remember anything or anyone you met during that time. The only thing you’ll recall is that fateful day when Father was taken.
It’s been like that for the last five years.
It is with a heavy heart that I write these notes, for I have learned the truth of Father’s actions and the reason for the curse.
This reset has been the hardest. I don’t know what will happen for the next. You may not have your notebooks, your family, your friends. You may not even trust yourself.
It all began one fateful night after I (you) met a Fae prince in the tavern at home.
He tricked me with a cruel, damning kiss then took me captive…
I stopped there, stunned by the words.
The truth of Father’s actions? What had he done? And Wolfe really had taken me captive. Neither sat well with me, but I was beginning to understand why my letter had urged me to keep an open mind and heart.
I flipped the page and stalled again when I read the first line.
He calls me Ziyka.
A bead of cold sweat formed at my temple.
Ziyka.
Gods above. If I’d thought I’d been dreaming or that none of this was real, that single word alone was proof.
The voice calling to me last night in my sleep…
Was that Wolfe?
It must have been.
Ziyka. Ziyka. Ziyka.
The name echoed through my mind, and I was back in that gray expanse—the vast nothingness that held me.
But somethingwasthere.
Him.
I looked down at my wrist, at the soul mark. Beneath it lay the shackle. Strange—I couldn’t see it, but now that I knew it was there, I swore I could feel it resting against my pulse.
Arielle said it was a tracker. And that the Seer had tethered my heart to Wolfe’s through it. Something like the Seer’s magic would have amplified whatever connection we shared.
The burn last night. That had been it. The shackle.
If I’d heard Wolfe calling to me, if my spirit had drifted to that gray expanse at the same moment the shackle burned… Then he wasn’t just lost. He’d been reaching. Reaching for me. Giving me a way to find him.
I leaned forward, the journal braced in my hands, and I continued reading.
I read. And read. And read.
Minutes blurred into hours.
The fire burned low. The candles guttered. The moon climbed high and pale beyond the windows. And I didn’t stop until I reached the end.
