“I found out. I—” Pain cracks across her face, raw and sudden. Her hands tighten into fists at her sides. “I’ve been looking for her. For her body. I thought—” She cuts herself off, breathing hard. “She deserves a proper burial. Not to be left on this deserted island like she was nothing.”
Alder shifts beside me, but before he can speak, Sylvie rounds on him.
“And don’t pretend to be innocent in this.” Her voice turns to venom. “I heard you speaking with Queen Rothmore.”
A ripple of tension rolls through Alder, his entire body locking into place.
I blink, turning to him. “What is she talking about? I thought you were discussing trade deals and our way back home…”
“There are matters within the palace you cannot begin to understand, Gemma.” Sylvie’s voice drops, fierce and trembling. “If you have any sense, you’ll leave. Return home and forget you ever set foot in Cups.”
The wind howls through the trees as the sky presses lower, thick with a coming storm.
Sylvie steps closer, her gaze boring into mine. Something in it roots me to the ground, holds me captive. “And you’ll run far away fromhim.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. Because in the way she says it—in the steel behind her softness, the fear she’s trying to hide—I hear it for what it is.
Not a warning.
A death sentence.
I glance at Alder, expecting him to react, to snap back with a comment that will make everything Sylvie is saying make sense. But he doesn’t.
Instead, his fingers flex at his sides. His jaw tightens. His breath is slow and measured. His gaze is distant, calculating, like he’s rewriting something in his head—some timeline he thought he could control.
Goose bumps prickle across my arms. Something is wrong. Not just with Sylvie. With him. It thrums in the space between us like a silent alarm.
I glance at him. Then back at Sylvie.
The wrongness of it all coils around my ribs, tightening, waiting.
I could go. I could turn around, walk away, try to figure out my way back home, pretend none of this ever happened.
But I don’t.
Because I can’t.
Not just because this world makes no sense, not just because I don’t know how to fight masked guards or survive in a forest or find my way home. But because as messed up as this is, as confusing, as dangerous, there’s something between Alder and me that I can’t walk away from.
The gravity of him, the force that holds us together, isn’t just attraction. It isn’t just survival. It’s deeper, woven into my being, stitched into the spaces between my heartbeats.
With him, I don’t feel like I’m drowning.
With him, I feel like me.
Sylvie looks my direction one last time, and there’s something in her gaze—grief, regret, resolve. And thenshe turns.
She runs.
And this time, I let her go.
Twenty-One
The sailboat ride back to the castle’s isle is cold and silent.A storm is coming, swallowing the last traces of sunlight in thick, iron-hued clouds. The wind claws through my damp hair, and the tang of salt is thick on my tongue.
Alder doesn’t speak, and neither do I. The rhythmic slap of waves against the hull fills the void between us. The longer we drift in silence, the wider it gets.
By the time we reach the docks, the air is buzzing with electricity, the promise of rain hanging above. I leave Alder to deal with the boat, my feet moving before I’ve fully decided where I’m going.
