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NORA

T he tremors don’t stop after we escape the ruins.

They continue long after the tomb collapses behind us, long after the echoes have faded into the silence of the Wastes. I feel them in my bones—in the way my teeth clench, the way my magic pulses erratically beneath my skin. It’s not the earth that’s shaking.

It’s me.

We walk in silence, but it’s a fragile thing, thin as frost. Rhaegar’s jaw is tight, his expression locked into that stone-like grimace he wears when he’s hiding something. I know that face now. I’ve memorized its edges, the way it hardens when he thinks I’m too close to something he doesn’t want me to see.

I’ve seen it too many times.

I stop walking.

He slows, then turns, his wings curling slightly behind him as though they’re echoing his tension. I fold my arms tightly across my chest—not because I’m cold, but because I need something to hold together.

“Start talking,” I say.

His brows lift slightly. “About?”

“Don’t insult me.” My voice is colder than the wind. “That tomb. Your name. The runes. What was that place, Rhaegar?”

He exhales like the question exhausts him. “It was a mistake.”

“That’s not an answer,” I snap.

His eyes flash. “It’s the only one I’m giving.”

Something cracks inside me. “You dragged me out here. You kept secrets about the Wraithborn. You threw me into a ruin that nearly killed us both. And now you won’t tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I didn’t drag you,” he growls, stepping toward me. “You chose to bind yourself to me. You made that pact.”

“Because I was dying!”

“And I kept you alive!” The words ring out, echoing across the Wastes like a war cry. His voice drops then, raw and low. “And I would do it again.”

I don’t know if it’s fury or grief that clutches my throat.

“What did I see down there?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer.

“Was it a tomb?” I ask. “Or a prison?”

Still, silence.

Something flares in my chest—hot, volatile. “Why is your name carved into a grave, Rhaegar?”

He doesn’t flinch.

But he doesn’t deny it either.

I take a step forward, magic buzzing wild in my fingertips. “Are you already dead?”

His lips part. The wind catches between us, brushing against my skin like a breath held too long.

“It was meant to be my resting place,” he says at last, the words like ash on his tongue.

I blink. “What?”

“That chamber—it was sealed centuries ago. When the war ended. When I... was betrayed.”

I can barely breathe. “By who?”

He looks at me. Not past me. Not through me. At me.

“You,” he says.

It doesn’t make sense. It can’t. But the moment he says it, the whisper returns.

Medea.

The name slides through my thoughts like a knife.

“No.” I stagger back, shaking my head. “That’s not possible.”

“I said the same thing,” he murmurs. “When I saw you. When I felt your magic bind to mine. When the ruin trembled beneath your presence.”

I clutch my temples. The visions are coming faster now—screams on the wind, fire rising through marble floors, soldiers bowing before a throne. A woman’s face in a shattered mirror.

My face.

But not me.

Not anymore.

“You’re wrong,” I say. “I’m not her.”

“You may not remember, but something in you does.” Rhaegar’s voice is calm, too calm. “You walked through that ruin like you belonged there. You found the seal. You broke it.”

“I didn’t mean to?—”

“But you did.”

The wind howls between us.

I can feel it, magic spinning out from me in ragged threads. I close my eyes, try to center it, but it’s slipping through my fingers like water. Everything feels like it’s peeling away from the inside. My name, my memories, my sense of self. Every whisper in my head carries a new piece of someone else’s life.

And worse, it feels good.

It feels powerful. Like slipping into armor I didn’t know I wore.

“I’m not her,” I say again, but my voice breaks halfway through.

“No,” Rhaegar says softly, stepping closer, the edge gone from his voice. “You’re not. But she’s waking in you. And you have to decide who you’ll become before she takes control.”

I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to grab him and shake the truth out of his cursed gargoyle frame. But I can’t do any of those things because all I can feel is guilt. Ancient, echoing, marrow-deep.

“I see things when I sleep,” I admit, trembling. “Places I’ve never been. People I don’t know. And every time I wake up, I remember a little more.”

He studies me like I’m a spell he can’t break.

“What did she do?” I ask. “What did... Medea do to you?”

He hesitates. “She betrayed the Wraithborn. Broke a pact sealed in blood. And with it—my life.”

I reel. “So I killed you?”

“You ended what I was,” he says. “And now you’ve started it all again.”

Our bond pulses hard enough to make me stumble. Rhaegar steps forward to catch me, but I jerk away.

“I don’t know if I can survive this,” I whisper. “If you were sealed here, why are you in that ruin?”

“Fate. Magic. I don’t know,” he says. “Fate has its ways and they play with people. I will make sure you will survive, though. I won’t let you become her.”

“Why are you helping me when I am your enemy?” I whisper.

He gazes at me, and replies solemnly, “I’m an existence that should have perished years ago, but you woke me up. You are mine. I protect what’s mine. I’m also the only one that could destroy what’s mine.”

I hold my breath, his words sounds like a vow coiling around me. It feels like a promise of a thousand lifetimes.