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She just finally believes we have.

And maybe that’s what hurts the most.

The Hollow has no gods, but Maeve walks like one. And maybe that’s what made her dangerous—her softness didn’t demand worship. It invited it. Quietly. Thoroughly. Until you believed you’d found something pure inside the ruin.

Now, standing here in this village of ghosts and guilt, I feel what I haven’t let myself feel in years.

Grief.

Not for what we lost. For how little we had the right to keep.

She turns slightly, her attention flicking between the men who once would’ve set fire to realms for a moment more of her. Silas, fidgeting with the leather wrap around his fingers like he wants to say something idiotic and knows he shouldn’t. Caspian, watching her with that slow-burn melancholy only he can carry—an ache too worn to wear openly, but too deep to bury.

She pauses when her gaze touches Riven. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. But the weight of it is carved across his features. Not longing. Something harder. Something rooted in the way you look at someone you carried until they couldn’t breathe, and still wouldn’t let go.

Maeve steps closer, only a pace. Just enough to close the space between memory and regret.

“You still flinch when you breathe around me,” she says gently, like she’s not accusing him. Like she just wants to set the record straight before time folds in again.

Riven lowers his head slightly, the movement so controlled it borders on reverent. “I remember the sound your ribs made when they cracked under that blade. I remember the color of your mouth when you bled out in my hands.”

She smiles, faint and trembling. “You still say it like you could’ve stopped it.”

“I should have.”

“You did more than anyone,” she whispers. “You stayed.”

The others don’t speak. Not because they’re avoiding it. Because the truth Riven carries isn’t just his. It belongs to all of us. We fought for her. Bled for her. Loved her. But she died anyway.

And now, she stands here—flesh and ghost and memory, made whole by whatever law governs this realm—and we remember what it meant to lose her all over again.

Except—

Luna. She hasn’t raised her voice, demanded answers, lashed out. She’s simply existed. Centered. Entire. And in that stillness, I see the fracture forming not in her—but inus.

Because she’s not a memory. She’s not a past we couldn’t protect.

She isnow.

And we all feel it. The recognition. The guilt.

The want.

Lucien doesn't look at her. Hasn’t, in minutes. His attention is fixed firmly on the broken edge of the well, the way old stone warps under rain. For a second, I think he might speak. But Lucien doesn't believe in softness. Or ghosts. Or the kind of woman who loves in layers. He loved Maeve. Maybe not loudly. But deeply. And when she died, I think something in him chose to go with her.

The rest of us didn’t. We stayed. We moved forward. We let something new inside.

We let Luna inside.

Maeve’s gaze drops to the dirt, then rises to meet Luna’s again. No challenge. No pity. Just truth.

“They needed someone to carry them out of the wreckage,” she says softly. “You did what I couldn’t.”

Luna doesn’t flinch. “I didn’t come here to compete with a ghost.”

“I know,” Maeve murmurs. “That’s why you won.”

The quiet that follows isn't empty. It's full. It thrums in the dirt, the stone, the rain still clinging to leaves above. Maeve looks at each of us again, then returns to Riven.