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I know better than to speak. This village doesn’t want noise. It wants memory.

I let my eyes scan the crowd. One leans against the frame of a weather-beaten house, her gaze catching mine for a second too long. Her smile doesn’t reach her mouth. Behind her, another woman peels an apple with a blade I remember losing years ago.

My jaw tightens. This is not a place meant to be found.

The drizzle thickens slightly, catching in my collar. It smells like ash and wild rose, like something left burning too long on an altar no one tends anymore.

A door creaks open. Another woman steps through. Her hair is twisted with copper wire, her bare feet streaked with earth. She sees Lucien. She smiles. It’s small. Sharp. And then she disappears back inside.

Riven turns to me, voice low. “How far behind are they?”

“Ten minutes, maybe less.”

He nods once.

Lucien shifts his weight. His hands curl slightly. He doesn’t look at either of us. I watch him for a moment longer, then let my gaze return to the village.

We don’t need to knock. These doors open on their own.

And when she arrives, she’ll feel it.

Not the place. The weight we’ve tried to bury. And what it says about the men we were before we ever touched her.

Then the voices begin. Soft at first. Almost incidental.

One of them speaks from the shadow of a porch tucked between two narrow houses. Her voice is low and deliberate, shaped around a memory only she can taste. She doesn’t call Lucien’s name like she wants to hurt him. She says it like it’s something she once loved carving into his skin. He doesn't flinch—of course he doesn't—but I see the shift in him anyway. The hard turn of his shoulders. The line of his jaw dragging tighter, sharper. The past doesn’t move fast here. It coils. Waits.

Another woman emerges, barefoot and lovely, her braids still damp with rain. Her eyes settle on Riven like they belong there, as if they never forgot the shape of his silence or the weight of his hands. She doesn’t speak, not immediately. Just stands in the open with her arms loose at her sides, gaze drinking him in like she’s trying to remember which version of him she preferred—the one who kissed her gently, or the one who didn’t say goodbye.

The door to the cottage across the lane creaks open, a woman steps out like she’s still allowed to look at me like that. Her dress is torn at the hem, her hands ink-stained from whatever spellwork she’s still pretending she understands. She leans against the doorframe, a bottle slung casually in one hand, and smiles with her mouth, but not her eyes.

“Still quoting dead men, Orin?” she calls, her voice smooth as river stone and twice as cold.

I don’t answer. I’ve already buried the version of me she knew, and I have no interest in digging him up just to let her confirm he stayed dead.

All across the square, more doors open. More women. Some watch from windows, their fingers curled around the edges of curtains like they’ve been waiting for this day longer than they’ll admit. Others step into the rain like it might carry them back to something better. And every one of them turns her eyes on one of us.

Riven’s gaze skims the well near the center of the square, where a woman sits cross-legged on the stone rim, her skirt hitched high over one knee, her hair twisted into knots I remember pulling loose. She lifts one hand, not quite waving—more like marking him. Claiming her share of whatever this is.

He doesn’t move.

And neither does she.

Lucien walks forward like he’s counting steps to something he can’t name. Not escaping. Not confronting. Just moving, like if he stops, the past might catch up and strip him bare.

Then the women begin to laugh.

Not in unison, not coordinated. Just the scattered sound of remembered sins being spoken aloud for the first time in decades.

“Still got that knife in your boot, Vale?” one says. Her voice is lower now. Private. And not speaking to me anymore.

Another from somewhere behind us adds, “He used to quote poetry while fucking. Kept it in his coat pocket. One hand between your legs, the other on a leather-bound tragedy.”

The third is bolder, her voice warm and wicked. “Lucien didn’t talk at all. Not even when he came.”

Lucien stops.

Not for long.