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He pulled back his hands. Red lined his eyes; unshed tears brightened them to a dark green. The mask was absent, the cowl he’d used to hide his face had fallen back. A wide, taut scar carved in jagged lines from his brow to jaw. It mangled the skin in a line like a raised spine down his face. How it missed his eye was a mystery, but it looked painful and deep.

Some might call the wound frightening, cursed, even. To me, he was the brightest memory. To me, he was home at long last.

With slow, tender movements, I cupped the damaged side of his face. He blew out a rough breath and tilted his head into my touch. For a long pause, we simply stayed there, heads together, breathing deeper until our emotions calmed.

“Do you know . . .” Silas cleared his throat. “Do you know what it’s like?”

With the back of my knuckles, I stroked his cheek. “What what’s like?”

His eyes burned through mine. His voice steadied. “Do you know what it’s like to watch the light of yoursouldie over and over? Do you know what it’s like to burn for lifetimes for another who fears you in the end?”

A sob burst from my chest, and I flung my arms around his neck. He jolted in surprise, but it took mere heartbeats before his strong arms crushed me against him. Silas turned his face and drew in a long breath, as though soaking up every piece of me.

“I didn’t . . . I didn’t fear you,” I said, voice rough. “I just . . . feared that fate would rob me of myself. I feared death. I lost sight of who belonged to my whisper in the dark. You were always there, and I . . . I left you alone all this time.”

Silas didn’t speak, but I was starting to think sometimes he simply didn’t know what to say.

Steady warmth built in my heart the longer I held him, some force tethering me to this man. Something sturdy and unbreakable, a promise that he wouldn’t hurt again. A desire to fight off all the demons that came for him, the enemies, the blades; I wouldn’t let them near my Whisper.

Silas’s shoulders shook, but his tears were silent and tangled with mine. A song of sorrow and fate tied us together and kept us apart in the same breath. I hated it. I hated that he’d suffered. He’d watched Annon, he’d watched me, succumb to death time and again, unable to do anything but carry the tales onward with his voice and my words.

He’d been alone and suffering, and I’d fled from him.

I’d ignored him.

I’d left him.

Truths were clear now. I’d spoken true to my Kind Heart when I told her there were signs of four storytellers before me. What I hadn’t known was each one . . . was me.

“How was it possible?” I asked softly. “I looked so different each time, even in my age and name.”

“You . . . chose the proper place to join each path and fated tale,” Silas said. “You kept each name connected to your past.”

“I didn’t know my past.”

“Your heart did.”

My brow furrowed. “But . . . when the tales ended, where did I go? It is like I simply appeared.”

“I don’t know where you would go. I would feel your soul still in existence, until it burned brighter, and you were there again, ready for another tale.” Silas sniffed and tightened his embrace.

So, between each moment, I . . . simply drifted into oblivion? An ache pummeled my skull. “But how did my soul remain? It goes against everything I know of the Otherworld and lifetimes.”

Silas hesitated. “Your soul lived on because . . . your soul bond lived. A tether in the darkness, a ballast in the tumult.”

Soul bond. My lips parted when I pulled back to look at him. “You?”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. Silas, my phantom voice, was the deepest bond. Deeper than the heart, he was a piece of my soul.

“You were left to live this way all to bring me back? You are the bond—gods—you lived such an existence simply to keepme alive?”

Silas’s eyes burned with something new. “I would do it all again to see you breathing.”

Bleeding gods. The pain, the suffering, it was almost too much to bear. Then again, there was more. Devotion, strength, unyielding love. All the brighter pieces of the heart would be needed for him to survive such a wretched existence of solitude and death and darkness.

And he felt them for me.

I had lived different lives, over and over again.