Page 152 of Evermore

He turned to face me, and something in his expression made my heart ache. “You tell me.”

The raw vulnerability in those three words cracked something inside me, breaking past the numbness, the anger, the confusion. Tears welled in my eyes, hot and unwelcome.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I whispered. “People have been using me my entire life—lives—whatever. I can’t handle any more lies, Thorne. Not from you. There’s trauma here and the ice is thin.”

He reached for me, slowly, giving me every chance to pull away. When I didn’t, he drew me into his arms, cradling me against his chest with a gentleness that made the tears fall faster.

“I have many regrets, Paesha. Too many to count. But loving you has never been one of them.”

And gods I loved him too. Deeply. I had spent lifetimes being used, twisted into a shape that fit someone else’s needs, someone else’s desires. But love, real love, wasn’t a weapon. It wasn’t a trap. It wasn’t a leash held tight in another’s hand or a magical bond holding someone hostage.

It was this.

It was choosing to stay here despite the pain, despite the betrayals, despite the wreckage of the past and the uncertaintyof the future. It was looking into his eyes and knowing he had broken me a thousand times over, but I’d broken him, too.

And yet, here we were.

Love was supposed to be simple. Or at least, that was what the stories said. But ours had been built in the wreckage of lies, on the broken bones of trust, and yet… it had survived. Because love wasn’t solely about warmth and light. It was about standing in the dark and still reaching for each other. It was about knowing the damage and choosing it anyway. Because fire does not destroy iron, it tempers it. I did not love him in spite of the pain. I loved him because we had walked through it and still found each other on the other side. And that had to mean something.

I pressed my face into his shirt, breathing in his familiar scent as his arms tightened around me. My Remnants quieted, settling into peaceful shadows at our feet.

“There are things I need to tell you,” he said after a while. “Things I should have told you already.”

I pulled back enough to search his face. “About Ezra?”

“About everything.” He brushed a tear from my cheek. “But not here. Will you come with me? There’s something I want to show you.”

Against my better judgment, I nodded.

“I’d like to tell you a story,” he said, rising and offering me his hand. “Our story. The real one.”

The ride to Perth was quiet, the steady rhythm of the horse’s hooves on the cobblestones oddly soothing. Thorne sat behind me in the saddle, one arm wrapped securely around my waist, his solid presence an anchor amid my turbulent thoughts.

When we reached Misery’s End, I stiffened. The theater loomed before us, unchanged amid the transformed cityscape around it. The familiar wrought-iron railings, the cracked steps,the faded sign, all exactly as I remembered them, preserved like a monument to my past.

“Why here?” I asked as Thorne helped me dismount.

He tied the horse to a post before facing me, his expression solemn in the moonlight. “Because this is where it began. This time, at least.”

“The Maestro’s theater?”

“The place where I first saw you dance,” he corrected softly. “The place where I fell in love with you all over again, even though I’d been chasing you across lifetimes.”

He offered me his hand once more. “Let me show you the truth, Paesha. All of it. Then you can decide what to believe.”

I hesitated only a moment before placing my hand in his. Whatever secrets waited inside that theater, whatever painful truths Thorne had been hiding, I needed to face them. As he led me up those familiar steps, the Remnants flowed around us like a protective cloak, and for the first time since Aeris’s revelation, I felt something close to calm. Not because I wasn’t afraid of what I might learn, but because I was finally ready to hear it.

Whatever happened next, at least it would be the truth. My truth. Ours.

The theater was as I remembered it, a cavern of shadows and secrets, haunted by memories both beautiful and terrible. Misery’s End had been my sanctuary and my prison, the place where I’d danced for the dregs of society and found a strange kind of freedom in their hungry gazes. The stage lights were dark now, but moonlight spilled through the high windows, casting long silver fingers across the worn floorboards.

Thorne’s hand was steady in mine as he led me through the empty rows of seats and toward the stage. As we drew closer, I realized it wasn’t empty. Objects were arranged across it, each one bathed in a small pool of golden light that seemed to come from nowhere.

“What is this?” The words caught in my throat as recognition dawned.

“Pieces of you,” Thorne said softly. “Fragments of the lives we’ve shared. I wasn’t sure if this would agitate the past lives in your mind or if this would bring you peace, but these are things that mattered to your soul. Not the blood of a mortal, nor the lineage of a goddess, these items are our love story.”

I approached the display with cautious steps, drawn forward by that curious pull that lured my Huntress power’s curiosity. The first item made my heart stutter, a delicate teacup with a small chip in the rim.Myteacup. I reached out, fingers trembling as they hovered over the porcelain. I’d almost forgotten it with all of the chaos, but here it was. Protected. Treasured.