The words trembled, but I forced them out, my eyes drawn to the clouds shifting beyond the window. A reminder of how small I still was. How breakable.
Ronan rose with me, all that strength softening as he caught my chin, turning my face back toward him. “Then we don’t stop.” His eyes burned with something that could raze empires. “We’ll remake it, piece by bloody piece. And we won’t stop fighting until it’s whole again.”
And in that vow, I felt it, the click of fate’s jaws closing.
Sleep had taken what it needed from me shortly after Ronan’s promise, as brief as it was. He lay stretched beside me, one arm thrown across his stomach, the rise and fall of his chest the only sound between us.
The sun, though delicate, now greeted us through the window, lighting up the journal resting on the nightstand. My eyes snagged on its unmarked exterior where a feathered pen balanced on top. Ivory faded into rich sorrel, the quill too rare to be stolen from any ordinary creature. It called to me and I reached for it before I could stop myself, the creased leather worn down beneath my touch.
“Curious little thing,” Ronan muttered, not opening his eyes.
“Nosy,” I corrected, flipping open the cover. The pages smelled like dust and smoke. “You left it here in the open for me to wonder about.”
A pause, long enough to feel him watching me. “It’s not mine,” he said.
The first page was covered in neat, slanted writing. The ink had faded, but not the weight of the words. I read it aloud.
“We’ll always find our way back to each other. Even in the dark. Even when all that’s left is everything we couldn’t remember.”
My breath hitched. “Who wrote this?”
He turned his head toward me, eyes still drowsy from dreaming. “It was already in the journal when I found it in my father’s office.” A beat. “I think my mother wrote it. Maybe to him, or me.”
I trailed a finger across the words, the edge of my nail catching on the grooves. “The handwriting looks familiar.”
His gaze lingered on my face, unreadable. “Does it?”
I didn’t answer, just kept flipping through the pages. There were dozens of entries, some blurred by time, some deep, like someone had been desperate not to forget.
“There’s not even dates on these.”
Sighing, he raked a hand through his hair, “I know. None of it makes much sense to me.”
My eyes caught on another passage, different handwriting but written with the stroke of royalty. I hesitated, then read it aloud—
“He asked once, and I refused. He asked again, and she accepted. I promised I wouldn’t decide for her, and still, she chose for us both. Before the memory fades, I need her to know—her life was never the sacrifice. Nothing could ever make me forget her. I will follow her anywhere, to the world’s end, through Hel’s gate, into whatever waits after. But time ran out before we even had a chance to begin.”
I swallowed. “Why keep it if it isn’t yours?”
His eyes shot toward the ceiling, the muscles in his jaw shifting. “Because I thought maybe, one day, I’d fill it. Write something worth remembering.”
My fingers lingered on the page. “And why haven’t you?”
He looked at me, fully, the kind of look that unraveled every wall I’d built. “Because I don’t know where to start,” he said quietly.
A gust of wind blew against the window, throwing shadows of clouds across the wall like wings. I didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know how to answer such a truth. Because just as he said it, just as those words left him, I felt it.
The pull, the surge of a past finding its way back into my memory. And in the space between heartbeats, I saw it.
The grave of another life, another time.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Verena
WHEN THE KNOCK CAME LATER THAT MORNING, I’d expected it to be someone stealing Ronan away to yet another meeting.
Now that he had returned to Sahfyre, Aero refused to let him miss any.
