Page 28

"Get ahold of yourself," I mutter under my breath. "Next you'll be waxing poetic about her fucking gardening technique."
Still, I don't leave.
Instead, I edge closer, staying within the cover of trees. Something about her silhouette against the sunset strikes a chord of recognition that I immediately dismiss as impossible. My mind playing tricks, conjuring ghosts from wishful thinking.
She straightens suddenly, rolling her shoulders in a stretch that reminds me how my own muscles ache. The woman brushes dirt from her hands, then reaches for a basket beside her. I still can't see her face, just the slope of her back and the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear with an unconscious grace.
A prickling sensation crawls up my neck. My wings shift restlessly against my back.
This is ridiculous. I'm staring at a stranger gardening because I've spent too many weeks alone with only a zarryn for company. I should return to the stream, mount up, and ride through the night. Put this village behind me like all the others.
Yet my feet remain rooted to the forest floor.
Logic screams that I'm seeing things that aren't there, hearing echoes of memories rather than reality. The continent is vast. The chances of stumbling across one specific person after three years of absence are so minuscule they don't bear consideration.
And yet...
I step forward, just beyond the treeline's protection. The dying sunlight catches my wings, setting the silver flecks alight like scattered stars. If she turns now, she'll see me—a dark figure at the forest's edge, staring like some lovesick fool.
Or perhaps like the ghost I half-believe myself to be.
But then the world stops turning. A single moment that stretches into eternity as she turns, her profile cutting against the darkening sky. It's her—all of her—exactly as my traitorousmemory has preserved her. Ronnie. Not some phantom conjured by a lonely mind, but flesh and blood and fury incarnate, standing twenty paces away in a stranger's garden.
My wings go rigid against my back.
Ronnie's delicate collarbone peeks from the neckline of her simple linen dress, and I can trace from memory the thin scar that marks it. Her auburn hair, longer than I remember, falls in thick waves past her shoulders, catching the dying light like liquid copper. She's tied half of it back in a practical knot, a style I've watched her fashion a dozen times while lying in her bed, pretending not to notice how the muscles in her arms flexed as she worked.
The basket sits next to her, heavy with whatever she's harvested. Zynthra, maybe, or dreelk—I can't see from here and it doesn't matter. What matters is the casual confidence in her stance, the way she surveys her work with those sharp gray eyes that never missed a thing. Eyes that saw straight through every charm I ever tried to deploy against her defenses.
"Ronnie," I whisper, the name a curse and a prayer on my lips.
She doesn't hear me. How could she? I'm still hidden mostly by shadows, frozen like a stalking predator at the forest's edge. My heart hammers wildly against my ribs, a caged thing desperate for escape. I press a hand against my chest, surprised to find it trembling.
Three years. Three fucking years since I went to visit her and found her missing. Since I stood outside her abandoned home, holding a bracelet that cost me more than she would have accepted, feeling for the first time in my life like I'd been outmaneuvered. Outplayed. Like the ground had shifted beneath my feet when I wasn't paying attention.
Three years I've spent convincing myself it didn't matter.
She keeps working as I watch her, and the familiar curve of her back ignites something molten and dangerous in my core. The heat of it rushes through my veins, burning away the shock and leaving something far more combustible in its wake. Anger. No—rage. Pure, undiluted, and directed at the woman who walked away without a backward glance.
My hands clench into fists at my sides. My wings unfurl slightly, responding to the sudden flood of adrenaline coursing through my system. The rational part of my brain—the part that kept me alive through court intrigues and political machinations—whispers caution. But another voice, darker and more primal, silences it.
She left. No word, no warning. She simply vanished, as if our encounters had meant nothing. As if I was something to be discarded when inconvenient. The bracelet burns in my memory—a foolish token I'd meant to give her, evidence of my own weakness.
She straightens up, moving to another section of the garden with the easy grace that used to drive me wild. Still does, apparently, because even through my anger, desire coils like a serpent in my belly. Her shoulders roll back slightly—that persistent tension she always carried—and my fingers twitch with the ghost-memory of working those knots free.
The muscles in my cheeks ache from how hard I'm clenching my jaw.
I should confront her. Demand answers. Make her explain why she ran, why here, why now. The unfairness of finding her by accident when I'd spent months searching burns like acid in my throat.
Yet I remain rooted to this spot, watching her check the sky—calculating the remaining daylight, no doubt. Always practical, my Ronnie. Except she was never mine, was she? That was theunspoken agreement between us. No attachments, no promises, just a collision of bodies whenever I passed through.
But if that was true, why did her disappearance feel like having my wings clipped? And why, seeing her now, does it feel like plummeting from a great height with nothing to break my fall?
14
RONNIE
Dusk settles around me like a well-worn shawl as I pull the last bunch of meadowmint from the garden's eastern corner. The fragrant herbs release their scent with each tug—sharp, clean, and comforting. Perfect for the tea Millie loves before bedtime.