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four

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My breath caught.

I searched her face, looking for the lie, the trick, but found only raw honesty in her golden gaze.

Yearning pulsed through me at our contact, and my body remembered her touch once more.

The old bonds we once shared roared to life, searing and unbreakable.

I hated the hold she still had on me after all this time.

It wasn’t fair that she could do this—show up out of nowhere and reduce me to a trembling mess with just a look, a kiss.

Yet I knew that when she inevitably left again, I would be devastated, a hollowed-out husk of myself.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered brokenly.

“You left, Arisya. You left me. What was I supposed to think?”

She reached up to cradle my face between her palms, thumbs tenderly brushing away the tears I hadn’t realized were falling.

“Oh Kaelen,” she sighed.

“I’m so disappointed in how easily you forgot us, what we meant to each other. Did you really believe I could ever abandon you?”

I tried to turn my face away but she held me firm, forcing me to meet her intense stare.

“I’ve spent so many lonely nights dreaming of you, aching for your touch,” Arisya confessed softly.

“The years apart have been agony, but it was all for us, my love. All for the plan.”

“What plan?” I demanded, struggling to make sense of her words through the haze of arousal and old pain.

“What are you talking about?”

Her lips curved.

“The plan we made together, all those years ago. To grow stronger, smarter, to tear down the corrupt institutions that sought to keep us under their heel.” Her eyes flashed.

“Tell me you remember, Kaelen. Tell me you haven’t forgotten our vow, our purpose.”

I swallowed hard, mind racing.

A plan?

A vow?

I forced myself to think past the feel of her skin on mine, the scent of nightshade and sex that clung to her.

There was something, a wisp of a memory .

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Late nights huddled together, whispering our dark dreams to the stars .

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I met her hungry gaze, lips parting.

“I remember,” I breathed.

Arisya’s smile turned triumphant.

With a wave of her hand, the shadows of the devil’s snare melted away, replaced by a shimmering vision of our younger selves, tangled together beneath a canopy of stars.

I watched, transfixed, as the memory played out before me.

We were little more than children then, all sharp edges and rumbling bellies.

But there was a fire in our eyes, a fierce determination as we mapped out our futures between fevered kisses.

“We’ll get out of here,” my younger self vowed, trailing reverent fingers down Arisya’s spine.

“We’ll rise above the gutter, fill our pockets with gold and jewels. Dine on fine delicacies and dress in silk and lace. And then we’ll burn it all down, my love. Raze their glittering towers to ash and build something better from the rubble.”

Arisya pulled me closer, pale skin gleaming in the moonlight.

“And we’ll do it together,” she promised fiercely.

“Always together, no matter what it takes. Even if we must spend years apart, grow strong in the shadows ... We will find our way back to each other.”

I watched, breathless, as our younger selves sealed their pact with a searing kiss, stars glinting overhead.

Arisya’s fingers dug into my shoulders as she steered us out of the memory, the devil’s snare reforming around us.

“Do you see now, my heart?” she murmured, dark eyes boring into mine.

“Do you remember the promises we made, the future we dreamed of?”

Shame burned through me, sharp and acrid.

How could I have doubted her?

How could I have let the long years dull the vividness of our visions?

I’d been so focused on surviving, on the next score, that I’d lost sight of what truly mattered.

“I remember,” I whispered hoarsely, leaning into her touch.

“I’m sorry I ever forgot. But I’m here now, I swear it. We’ll see our plan through to the end. Together.”

Arisya’s smile was a flash of white in the gloom, fierce and triumphant.

She leaned in to capture my lips with her own, the kiss searing me down to my bones.

“Together,” she agreed, the word thrumming with power, with promise.

“Now and always, my heart. Now and always.”