I stand frozen, watching him cross the courtyard. The stone under my feet suddenly feels unsteady, like the past is trying to drag me down with it.
He moves past the mermaid fountain at the center of the courtyard, where the water catches the last of the light as it drips down her frozen carved scales. And just before he reaches the stairs—he stops.
My lungs seize as I stare after him, and I stifle a sob.
His hand curls against his side. Shoulders tense. Not turning back, not quite. But I know he feels me watching. The pull between us races up like the tide, like the shadows themselves haven’t yet let go.
For a flicker of a second, he tips his head—just barely. Then he keeps going. Vanishing into the house.
And that’s it.
I just stand there, the weight of everything we didn’t say crashing down all at once. My chest tightens.
My oldest friend, my almost-everything.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I imagined this moment in a hundred different ways. Not one of them felt likethis.
The shadows may have left the arena, but one of them just walked through that door. And he took the last unspoken piece of me with him.
I run.
I run all the way back to the Spanish Steps.
CHAPTER 22
Control is not the absence of desire—it is merely command over it.
—Vikhrostrum Akademiya Doctrine of Elemental Discipline
GAVRAIL
Celeste…
She looks like she belongs somewhere warmer, wilder.
Not here—not the fog-choked lakefront of Whittaker. Not in this circus built for performance and control.
What the hell is she even doing here?
Gone is the girl I once knew, the one who used to race barefoot through the forest, the river-dweller who spoke to lakes like they were old friends. That girl was all softness and summer, untouched by cruelty or war.
But the woman standing in that arena…
She moved like moonlight sculpted by tides. Honed into a weapon by the very forces she once worshipped. Dangerous. Devastating.
There is a quiet confidence in her now—captivating in its grace. The dark waves of her hair, her sun-touched skin, eyes the color of autumn. Gods, her eyes. They are still the same piercing hazel, flickering between gold and green, like they can’t decide what part of the world they want to reflect.
And her magick… Ifeltit in the arena before I even saw her. It ran through my veins like a drug I never stopped craving. Fluid and coiled. I could feel it pulsing beneath her skin like water behind a dam. Waiting. Watching.
My shadows knew the second they touched her. They always did. They always will.
Because her touch has been ingrained in my very soul, as if her water is somehow mixed into the blood currently pumping far too fast through my body.
And when I saw her standing there in front of me…Fuck.I felt everything I’ve spent years trying to bury.
She has always been beautiful, but now she is something else entirely.
The flushed curve of her throat when she said my name. That ridiculous Whittaker uniform that clung to her waist and hips like a challenge. Even the rose-petal color of her lips, catching the last of the sunset like temptation wrapped in defiance.
