Something had been feeling off between me and Will too. He kept his distance in a way he never had before. I wasn’t sure if he was afraid of me, or afraid for me, or if it had nothing to do with me at all. Maybe it was everything we’d been through. Something inside him had fractured in a way I couldn’t fix. He was still furious about Aran, that much was clear. I heard them arguing over Aran drinking during his first night watch. Will had shouted that it wasn’t safe, and Aran snapped back that all soldiers drank, so why couldn’t he? I didn’t step in. As long as they weren’t tearing each other apart, I counted it as a win.
Still, it struck me as strange how quickly Aranhad forgiven me. I don’t know why. After everything, he should’ve run.Iwould’ve run. If someone had leftmescreaming on the ground, skin blistered and smoking, I’d be halfway across the continent by now. But Aran didn’t go anywhere. He stuck around. It was like he saw something in me. A mystery he couldn’t walk away from. A puzzle he needed to solve, even if it meant getting hurt again.
One morning, he told me to come with him to a nearby village.
No explanation. Just “Come on, get up. You’ll want to see this.”
Will wasn’t really speaking to me—still furious, still grieving—so I went. Not because I trusted Aran, but because… I didn’t feel like I’d explode if I did. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t even tired for once. I wasn’t dreaming. I was awake. Calm. Present. And that felt rare enough to follow it wherever it wanted to take me.
I kept asking where we were going, but Aran only grinned and said, “It’s a surprise.”
A surprise? Like I hadn’t just almostmurderedhim. Twice. He had asurprisefor me?
I stared at the back of his head as he led the way, completely unbothered. Just whistling softly like we were out on some leisurely stroll and not on the run from a town I may or may not have set on fire.
I couldn’t make sense of him. Aran was one of those rare things in life I never quite managed to grasp, because there were so many versions of him. The soft, sensual one I’d caught glimpses of when he was with Selma. The ruthless, wild one who’d nearly died picking a fight with soldiers. The broken version, the one who let Will beat him bloody and didn’t even try to fight back.
And now there was this weird, almost brotherly version of him. I guess that was the version he'd been around Will. The Aran that made Will demand I healed him. Aran was showing that side to me, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I never knew which Aran I was going to get. And after what I’d done—after what heknewI was capable of—why the hel was he even near me? Let alone dragging me somewhere with a godsdamnsurprise?
There had to be a catch.
Then a small village just… appeared at the edge of the forest. It was almost hidden, like it didn’t want to be found. No main roads passed by, and I guess that’s why it felt so desolate.
As long as I kept my distance it would be fine. As long as I stayed awake. Because when I was awake, I could be careful. I could think. The danger only came when I slipped, into dreams, into memories, into moments where the world blurred.
The village was smaller than Novil for sure, but there was a market, tucked between a handful of crooked old buildings. I expected to find the usual: barking dogs, market noise, children darting between carts, a soldier barking orders. But there was none of that, just silence. Not heavy, not dangerous silence, but peaceful. Like the war had never touched that part of the country. Like it had been spared.
Statues lined the main path. Towering, still, with blank faces that gave nothing away. They weren’t beautiful, not in the way people might expect. They were unsettling. Like they'd been watching the village for centuries, keeping it safe perhaps. It felt like stepping into another world. As if we’d wandered through some invisible doorway and ended up a hundred years in the past.
As we walked, I caught pieces of conversation in a language I didn’t know. The words held no meaning for me, but the sound of them did. The cadence. The lull of it. It was the language my mother had spoken. When she whispered to gods she swore had a plan for us. Gods she thought would keep us safe.
It stopped me cold. The ache came so fast I didn’t have time to brace. It felt like being pulled underwater, familiar and cruel.
It felt like home.
And I hated that. Becausehomewas gone. Burned. Buried. And that place, that language, had no right to bring it back.
I kept walking, mostly because I didn’t want Aran to see me unravel. He didn’t say much, and the air between us was thick with things we weren’t saying.
A woman stood by a stall cluttered with trinkets. Not the cheap kind you find in every market, but the sort of things that felt older than the town itself. Polished stones stacked in careful little towers, wax-sealed jars, candles, charms, and strange carved pillars that looked more like something you'd find in a temple than at a market.
And she didn’t look like a merchant. Her hair was silver streaked, braided loosely over one shoulder, with wisps escaping to frame a face with a look that told me she hadn’t cared what people thought of her in a long time. Her green dress shimmered in the sunlight, threads of gold twisting through the fabric like winding rivers.
Then her eyes landed on me. And it felt like she’d been expecting me.
“This is the girl I told you about,” Aran said.
My heart dropped. What had he told her?
I turned toward him, slowly. “You didn’t.”
Even Aran wouldn’t be that reckless?
The woman smiled, her expression soft and unreadable.
“Ah, yes,” she said, her gaze sliding fully to me. “Your friend mentioned you’ve been having trouble sleeping. Nightmares. Feeling... ungrounded.”
Friends. That’s what she thought we were. That’s what she saw.
