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VEYLAN

I push open the doors to the throne room, not expecting anything but dust and silence.

Instead, I see her.

For a moment, my mind refuses to accept it. My breath stalls. My heart forgets how to beat.

She stands beneath the fractured light pouring in from the broken stained-glass windows, her figure cloaked in gold and shadow. The throne room has long since crumbled—its banners torn, its walls cracked, its seat of power just a relic of ruin. But she looks untouched by time.

Otherworldly.

Unreal. Perhaps a ghost I have conceived in my head because of how much I pine for her.

I blink.

She doesn’t vanish.

My throat tightens as I take another step forward. The echo of my boots sounds too loud, too real.

She turns.

And the second her eyes meet mine, I know—this isn’t a dream.

It’s her.

Sera.

She stands in the ruins of what used to be my father’s throne room, where the banners of House Drazharel once hung in victory, where the war still lingers in the broken stone and bloodstained floors.

She looks different.

Stronger.

The way she holds herself—shoulders squared, chin lifted, fire flickering beneath her skin like an untamed beast—tells me she is no longer a girl trying to survive.

She has become something else entirely.

She is no longer prey.

And yet, when her gaze finds mine, I see it—the wound I left in her, the betrayal carved deep.

That has not changed. I have not changed.

I crave to touch her, ache for it. I could. My body urges me to.

Every part of me wants to reach for her, pull her against me, prove to myself that she is real.

But I don’t. I let her choose.

For once, I do not take.

I do not demand. I do not tell her to come to me.

She has had enough of being told what to do. Enough of being used.

So I stand there, unmoving, waiting for whatever judgment she will give me.

I deserve it.

Sera steps forward, and I brace myself for her fury. For the slap across my face. For the scream that will echo through the ruins.

But it does not come.

Instead, she stops just before me. Close enough that I could reach out if I dared, but far enough that she is still untouchable.

She stares at me and I am rendered speechless. Words can’t articulate the things I want to say.

I was prepared for her rage.

But this quiet, aching silence that drowns me whole—this is worse.

She still looks at me the same. Like I am the only thing that ever truly hurt her. Like I am still the wound that never closed.

And yet—she came back. She’s here, despite it all.

I feel the implications of that choice settle between us, a fragile thing that could shatter at the slightest wrong move.

“You look like a ghost,” she says. Her voice is quiet.

I almost flinch at the sound of it, like it is something I was not meant to hear.

She has not spoken to me in weeks.

Not even in the dreams that haunted me, where she stood just beyond my reach, fading into the darkness no matter how many times I tried to grasp her.

"I should be," I say, my voice rougher than I expect. "You killed me when you left."

The words come out without me thinking.

I don’t mean for them to sound like a plea.

But they do.

Her jaw tightens, but she continues to stare at me.

"And yet, here you stand," she murmurs.

"As do you."

She should leave. She has every reason to.

After everything I have done, after everything I almost let happen, she should walk away again.

She stands there, staring at me like she is searching for something in my face.

"Why are you here?" I ask finally, because I need to hear her say it.

Her eyes flicker with something unreadable.

"I don’t know," she admits.

It should be a simple answer.

But it isn’t. She made the choice to be here and despite the agony twisting inside me, I cannot help but hope.

I could tell her I still want her. That I have spent every night chasing her shadow, waking up to nothing, drowning in the absence she left behind.

I could beg. Push. But I want this to be out of her freewill.

I just want to be honest to her. For the truth to prevail between us.

"You are the only thing that ever mattered," I tell her. “I love you.”

Something flashes across her face—something raw, something dangerous.

The ruins around us are silent, as if holding its breath, waiting for her answer.

The ghosts of war still linger in the space, but they are nothing compared to the storm building between us.

She could leave. She could turn and disappear again, and I would not stop her.

But she doesn’t. She stays.

That is all I need.