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He laughs and pulls me into a hug. We sway back and forth in each other’s arms, his chin resting on the top of my head. He pulls back from me, a soft smile on his lips.

“I’ve missed you.” He twirls a piece of my hair around his finger, and tucks it behind my ear.

A signature Cole move I dream of, even when we are apart.

“I’ve missed you.” I mirror. “And I’ve been thinking…”

He stops swaying. “Yes?”

I fidget with the chained ring around my neck. His mother’s ring. His proposal from a week ago fresh on my mind.

“What if we go somewhere else?” I whisper.

Cole tilts his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“What if we went to Stoneshire? We could move there, start a new life. I could learn a new trade. Maybe practice archery. I could get good enough to hunt, or try to get into the military. It could be a good life. A better life.”

He brushes my cheek with a thumb. “I’d go anywhere with you.”

“Then let’s go. Tomorrow.”

He drops his hand from my face. “I…I can’t leave my family. And what about your mother? You can’t leave her.”

“She would come with us.”

“But my sisters couldn’t?”

Words spill out of my mouth in desperation. “Well…they have your father. And Vivian will be eighteen? Willard spoke to me of a possible cure for my mother. There’s been accounts of people cured of lameness and disease in Stoneshire by a blue flame. He said sometimes there’s seasonal shifts in—”

“Willard isn’t the most dependable source of information. You know that,” he murmurs.

“It’s a risk I have to take. And if it’s seasonal I can’t wait, I have to go.”

“Kat, listen to yourself. You’re going to travel across the entire kingdom, with your sick mother, for a rumor that Willard shared with you. The same one who kept his pet goat’s teeth to try and bring it back to life? He’s a drunk. A nice person…but a drunk.”

The soft way his gaze settles on me is enough to crumble every wall of defense I have.

But I can’t give in. Not now.

“I have to do this, I have to try. We could always come back.” I offer.

“I’m all they have, it’ll crush them—”

“—they have your father.” I counter.

“He isn’t around, Kat.” An anger creeps into his voice.

My own frustration and desperation bubbles to the surface. “How are we to be together then, Cole? What happens if I get there, and I can’t come back?”

“Then don’t go—stay. Stay with me.” He squeezes my hands in his. “I need more time. I’ll figure out a way we can be together, and we can go to whatever town you want. Wherever.”

This conversation isn’t going how I planned, or hoped. My stomach twists into knots at the thought of traveling with my mother on my own to the eastern part of the kingdom. Not to mention how much I will miss Cole. How much I don’t want to leave him.

But I can’t sacrifice finding a cure for my mother. Not when it may be my only chance to help her. And not when the last time I didn’t act, someone I loved died.

I search his golden eyes. “I don’t have time. Willard said it’s a fickle thing, and nobody knows how long it will last.”

“Then how do you know it will still be there by the time you get to Stoneshire?”