A ghost of a smile tugs at his mouth. “And you looked like something celestial in that dress. Hair unpinned, lashes catching moonlight, cheeks warm from the champagne. I remember thinking how simple it would be to lean in and kiss you just once. How the stars would be our only witnesses if I . . .”
He doesn’t finish the thought, but the shape of it lodges between us like an unfinished sentence we’ve both carried for years.
“But I couldn’t bear the thought of it being anything less than real,” he says. “Wouldn’t risk you waking up and wondering if it had only been the champagne, or midnight bending truth until the impossible seemed within reach.” His fingers twitch faintly where they rest against my knee. “So I whispered that if I kissed you, I wanted it to matter. And the way you looked at me, Aria—it was as if you already knew what I wasn’t saying. Like maybe you were holding back too.”
He draws a shaky breath. “The broken dome above us turned into a cathedral, and we were both confessing things too big for words. Even without the kiss, only lying there with constellations mirrored in your eyes, I knew whatever was taking root between us would either become my salvation, or the sweetest kind of devastation.”
“So you waited.” My pulse quickens as another memory claws its way to the surface. This one is sharper and more painful. The rooftop a week later. “Until that night.”
Pain ghosts across his features. “You were crying about your father’s latest ‘lesson.’ I wanted to kill him for hurting you. But all I could do was hold you while your body trembled in my arms. Andthen you looked up at me, your lashes wet with tears, and something shifted. We both felt it.”
“I remember,” I whisper, heart pounding. “You pulled away for a second when I leaned in, just long enough to make me doubt. But then you closed the space between us, your breath ghosting over mine, and everything else disappeared.”
“I’d held back for so long,” he murmurs. “But in that moment, I couldn’t pretend anymore.”
“If that enforcer hadn’t appeared—”
“I know.” His voice catches, ragged. “Gods, Aria, I know. The next morning, my father had the contract drafted. He said he’d seen how I looked at you. That he could make it ‘official.’ Package what we had into another transaction.” Rowe’s fingers tighten around mine. “That was the moment I knew I couldn’t let him have it. Couldn’t let him turn something real into another political play.”
“I never went back there,” I confess, the words barely audible. “The observatory. It felt desecrated, like going there without you would be lying to myself.”
“Neither did I.” His thumb begins tracing quiet circles against my palm. Only then do I notice the tremor running through me. “But I thought about it. About you. Every day.”
“And now?” The question escapes before I can restrain it.
“Now I look at you, and every rush of that night comes back. That pull, ache, and clarity that you’re the only person who gets me,” he says, eyes fixed on mine. “I’ve spent years convincing myself I could silence it. That if I kept my distance, if I watched from afar while you built walls I couldn’t scale, maybe the feeling would die.”
His gaze softens, and suddenly I see the boy from the observatory. Someone who saw stars in ruins and asked what it meant to matter.
“But every time you’re near, it floods back.” His voice is barely a whisper now. “Even when you looked right through me in the Academy halls, and lethimhold you, that thread never snapped.”
His other hand rises, brushing a tear from my cheek with devastating tenderness. My heart stutters beneath my ribs, frantic and unmoored.
“Tell me you don’t feel it too,” he says, his voice wrecked with honesty. “Say I’m wrong—that I’m the only one who wonders what might have been. That it’s just me who forgets how to breathe when we’re this close.” His hands tremble against mine, but he holds steady. “Tell me, and I swear I’ll never ask again. But I need to hear you say it.”
The truth scorches the back of my throat. That my heart still stutters when he’s near, that his presence steadies something inside me no one else can touch. I’ve always wondered what it could’ve been—what it might be, in another life. But I can’t let it breathe. Not with Dom’s blood staining my memory, not with Astrafel pulsing like wildfire beneath my skin, not with everything I’ve become.
“Rowe . . .” His name is a plea I don’t know how to take back. “I can’t.”
“I know,” he says, and the quiet in his tone cleaves through me sharper than rage ever could. “I’m not asking you to choose or promise me anything. Just . . .” he swallows, “tell me if there’s even the smallest part of you that still remembers what it felt like before all of this. When it was just us.”
I pull my trembling hands from his, every nerve screaming in protest. “We can’t live in fragments, Rowe. Or in the remnants of what might’ve been. The stars didn’t align for us then, and they’re even further apart now.” My voice splinters. “I’m no longer the girl who dreamed beneath shattered skylights. I’m not soft or hopeful. I’ve turned into something dangerous and broken.”
“I never wanted perfect,” he says, fierce and unwavering. “I only ever wanted you. Exactly as you are, whatever comes next.”
“Stop.” The word slices out of me. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.” My throat burns. “Dom is still out there, possibly dying because of what I chose. Because of me. And I’m here with you, feeling what I have no right to feel anymore.”
He runs both hands through his hair, frustration etched deep across his features. “I’m not asking you to forget him, or to pretend you’re okay. I just need to know if what we had is gone. If there’s nothing left of it.”
Tears spill down my cheeks, blurring the outline of his face. “What we had mattered because it stayed untouched. Because it lived in the space between reality and dreams.” My voice catches. “But they shatter when you try to make them real. And I won’t . . .” I break off, watching hurt darken his eyes. “I can’t destroy the only perfect thing we ever had.”
“Aria—”
“Please.” I rise before he can reach for me again. “Let me go, Rowe. Letthisgo. I don’t know if I’ll survive what’s coming, and I won’t offer a future I may not live to see.”
I turn away, every step toward his bedroom an incision, cleaving me further from the one thing I cannot stop wanting.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, almost too low to hear.
