“I’m still angry with you,” I continue, letting my voice carry the weight I don’t usually show. “I really needed you when everything fell apart, and you weren’t there. But…I think I can understand why you kept it to yourself. Selfish? Definitely. But I understand enough to try to let it go.”
I pause, letting my gaze sweep across his face. “I don’t fully forgive you yet. That will take time. But now that we have each other back, I just want to put it behind us. I’m tired of dwelling on the pain. Starting in the morning, we move on as if none of it happened. For now, I’m just happy to have you back.”
I turn to leave, expecting a protest. Instead, I catch a full, infuriating grin spreading across his face.
I spin back, crossing my arms. “Really? That smug little face is all I get?”
He tilts his head. “What? You told me to just listen.”
I make a sound of frustration. “You never listen. And this is when you decide to start? You’re impossible!”
“Yet,” he says, leaning back, “you still love me anyway.”
I narrow my eyes. “I didnotsay that.”
He laughs softly, eyes gleaming. “But you do.”
I let out a sharp laugh, shaking my head. “I swear, one of these days I’ll punch that infuriating smirk off your face.”
“Good luck with that.”
I stomp out, feeling lighter than I have in years.
Chapter 29
?---- Koen ? ----?
It begins with water.
Not the gentle lap of lake waves, but a deep, rhythmic surge. The kind that presses against your chest, that swallows the sound of your own heartbeat. I open my eyes and find myself standing ankle-deep in black water. The air smells of rain and steel.
A figure waits ahead of me, half-shrouded in shadow. Broad shoulders. Short blond hair. His armor gleams softly, every plate etched with sigils I do not know, yet somehow recognize.
“Kallan,” I hear myself say, but the voice that leaves my throat is not my own. It’s lower, steadier. It’s the voice of a man who has stood on countless battlefields.
The figure turns, revealing Serenya behind him.
Not as she is now—guarded, honed to a perfect edge—but younger, dressed in worn leathers, her braid falling loose over one shoulder, shadowlight pooling in her palms.
The sight hits me like a blade to the chest. I try to movetoward her, but the water deepens with every step, dragging at me as if it would rather pull me under than let me reach her.
“You can’t,” Kallan says.
Her mouth moves. At first, the words are lost in the rush of water.
Then I hear them.
Come back to me.
A memory surges forward. A battlefield under a blood-red sky. The smell of smoke and iron. Serenya kneeling in the dirt, hands shaking as she presses hard over the wound in my chest. Her fingers lit with shadowlight, flickering frantically and weakly.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispers, voice raw, tears streaking through the soot on her cheeks. “You can’t leave me.”
I remember the heat in her hands. The rattle in my lungs. The taste of blood flooding my mouth as I try telling her to live.
The battlefield bleeds away, replaced by the black water again. Serenya’s face is pale and distant. She reaches for me, but her fingers pass through me like mist.
“Koen.”
