(The night before)
The morning sun had barely climbed above the Ashenveil estate when Duke Elarion Ashenveil found himself standing in the quiet war room, staring at the window as though it could steady the chaos in his chest. Kael Renford stood a few steps behind him, arms crossed, waiting for his lord to speak.
Elarion exhaled shakily, something rare for a man so composed.
"She smiled at me, Kael," he murmured, voice trembling at the edges. "Really smiled. As if… as if I was the first warmth she'd ever seen."
A soft laugh left him, quiet, disbelieving, tender. "I never thought I'd feel this again. Not in this lifetime. Not after…"
He swallowed, unable to say the name.
Kael's gaze softened. "Your Grace, you care for her deeply."
"It's more than that," Elarion whispered. "Every time she looks at me, I feel alive. For the first time in years, I feel like I am no longer made of ghosts and regret."
A brief silence, gentle, vulnerable.
But Kael is Kael, and Kael is honest.
"My lord," he said quietly, "have you forgotten the consequence?"
The words struck like a blade.
Elarion froze.
His breath faltered.
As though the very walls pressed closer.
Kael stepped forward, lowering his voice. "You know the terms, your grace. The moment she loves you again truly, completely you—"
"Enough." Elarion's voice cracked, not with anger but with pain.
"I know the price. God, Kael… I know."
He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers digging into the fabric.
"But when she's near, the thought disappears. Just her voice, her laugh… the way she says my name. For a moment, I forget that loving her is the very...you know what i mean Kael."
Kael bowed his head. "And that is precisely what terrifies me, my lord."
Elarion closed his eyes, as if holding back the shatter of his world.
"I need to find a way," he whispered. "A way to break the curse. I cannot lose her again. I will not."
The duke straightened, masking the agony beneath calm nobility.
"Today," he said under his breath, "I will be gentle with her. Even if it kills me."
Pillyse awoke to the faint scent of rain against stone.
Elarion's mansion was colder than she expected , quiet, vast, and wrapped in a kind of loneliness she hadn't noticed when she first entered. She lay beneath a heavy velvet blanket, her body still aching from exhaustion, her breathing shallow but steady.
Beside her, sitting in a chair he had very obviously dragged too close to the bedside, was Elarion.
Arms crossed. Eyes fixed on her. Jaw clenched like someone guarding a treasure.
Pillyse blinked at him. "Elarion… go," she murmured.
"No." His voice was low, stubborn. "You're still pale."
"I'm always pale," she tried to joke, but her lips barely curved.
He didn't laugh.
Pillyse sighed and poked his arm weakly. "Please. Rest. You look like you haven't breathed since last night."
Elarion leaned in, the corner of his mouth twitching with irritation. "I won't leave."
"You have to," she insisted, pushing lightly at his shoulder. "I can't rest if you stare at me like a hawk guarding its favorite chicken."
Elarion blinked. "…Chicken?"
She cracked a smile. "A very handsome hawk."
"A hawk is never handsome."
"You are." That silenced him wonderfully. Color crept up his neck, and he immediately stood and cleared his throat like she had stabbed him with a compliment.
"Fine," he muttered. "I'll… check on the guards. For five minutes. No more."
"Go," she whispered, already sinking back into the pillow. "I'll be fine."
He hesitated at the doorway, glancing back at her as if memorizing how she looked at that exact moment. Then he left, closing the heavy door behind him.
The room fell silent.
And that silence was when it began.
A heaviness first faint, then sharp pressed down on her chest. Her fingers refused to move. Her breath caught. Panic clawed up her throat.
Not now… I can't… move
Then the darkness folded open.
And she fell into a memory that wasn't hers.
A forest of symbols. An ink-stained desk. A young woman with dark hair tied messily behind her head.
Denova Ravenscroft.
She sat alone inside a dim library, her shoulders hunched, her hands trembling as she wrote line after line. Books surrounded her like walls ancient tomes, scrolls, forbidden texts she wasn't supposed to have.
The Freer Soul… what makes it separate… what allows it to return…
Her quill snapped.
Her breath shuddered.
And then Pillyse felt it, the grief, raw, consuming. Heavy enough to crush bone
Denova knelt beside a bed where a pale woman laying. Her mother.
The only person who had ever shown her affection.
"Please," Denova whispered, her voice cracking. "Not yet. Please…"
She tried to wipe her mother's forehead, her hands shaking. The memories hit Pillyse like waves Denova's fear, denial, bargaining.
Then rage.
Not at herself.
Not at fate.
At the sickness that had stolen her mother away.
If I knew more… if I understood the soul deeper… I could have stopped this.
Day after day, Denova drowned herself in studies. She stopped going to town. She ignored the moon cycles. She slept only when exhaustion crushed her. She ate only when her vision blurred too much to read.
Her isolation was complete.
Until one rain soaked afternoon, when she pushed open a bookstore door and nearly crashed into a tall man with silver-lined dark hair.
Duke Ashenveil.
He had been browsing silently, wearing plain clothes instead of his usual aristocratic attire.
Denova tried to slip past him, but a book dropped from her arms. Elarion reflexively picked it up.
"You study soul theory?" he asked, reading the spine.
She froze.
Most people mocked that path of research.
"Yes," she whispered.
Instead of laughing, he nodded with interest. "Then you must be far more intelligent than half the scholars in this city."
She blinked, startled by the sincerity.
He smiled slightly. "Tell me about it."
Against all her instincts, she did. She told him everything, her theories, her failures, her mother's death, her obsession with the Freer Soul. She spoke like someone who hadn't been heard for years… because she hadn't.
Elarion said little, but he listened, truly listened.
And for a moment, Denova didn't feel alone.
The memory blurred. Shifted.
Now Denova stood in the center of a circle she had drawn on the ground symbols etched in chalk, glowing faintly like breathing silver.
Her hands hovered above her chest. Her eyes were wild with a terrible mix of brilliance and desperation.
"Just a little more," she whispered. "If I can reach beyond… if I can separate… if I can understand the soul's threshold…"
A pulse of light.
A sound like cracking glass.
Then pain, violent, searing, ripping through every nerve. Pillyse felt it echo through her own ribs like her body was being torn open.
Denova gasped, and collapsed, unconscious, her body falling in the very center of her own symbol.
The memory snapped.
Pillyse was hurled back into the present, her lungs unable to pull in air. Her vision blurred. Her fingers twitched the paralysis slowly lifting.
The door slammed open.
"PILLYSE!" Elarion rushed to her side, gripping her shoulders, his voice sharper than she'd ever heard. "What happened? Talk to me!"
She tried. She couldn't.
Tears slipped down her temples.
Not from pain.
From everything Denova had endured.
From everything she had felt with her.
Elarion pressed his forehead to hers, breathing hard, trying to steady her. "You're safe. You're here. I'm right here."
His voice shook.
He didn't leave her side.
The world squeezed around Pillyse like a tightening fist.
The paralysis held her still on Elarion's bed, breath shallow, limbs frozen but her mind was dragged somewhere else.
Not Denova this time.
Herself.
A door slammed. The scent of rice porridge and stale liquor filled the air.
She was home.
A wooden house that should have felt warm, but instead pressed cold against her skin even on hot days. The kind of cold that came from people, not weather.
Pillyse stood in the middle of the small room, younger, thinner, wearing a simple dress patched at the shoulder. Her mother stood near the stove, stirring food with trembling hands, glancing nervously toward the doorway.
Footsteps.
Heavy.
Irritated.
Her father.
He entered with that familiar look on his face, resentment sharpened into a weapon.
Pillyse's younger self stiffened immediately.
"Why are you standing there?" he snapped. "Move."
She stepped aside quickly. Her heart pounded loud enough that present-day Pillyse could feel the echo of it in her chest.
He threw his coat onto the table and glared at her like she had personally ruined his life.
Her mother tried to speak. "She didn't do anything, love! "
"Don't call me that," he spat.
Then his eyes moved to Pillyse's face.
And that was enough.
"You," he hissed, pointing a shaking finger at her. "You're the reason everything fell apart."
Pillyse froze. She had heard those words since she was old enough to understand language.But they still sliced.
"If it weren't for you," he growled, stepping closer, "I would have married the woman I loved. I would've had the life I wanted. But your mother" he jabbed a finger toward the trembling woman by the stove.
"trapped me. Because of you."
"That's not true," her mother whispered desperately. "You chose me—"
"Liar!"
His hand swung before her mother even finished the sentence.
But it didn't hit her mother.
It hit Pillyse.
Her head snapped to the side, the sting exploding across her cheek. The sound was sharp enough to echo into the present, where Pillyse frozen in Elarion's bed felt phantom heat and tears gather in her lashes.
Flash after flash memory after memory broke open like bruises.
Her father knocking over a chair.
Her mother crying quietly so Pillyse wouldn't hear.
The sound of something being punched, thrown, broken.
Her father whispering to himself like a man being swallowed by regret and rage.
Her mother dragging Pillyse into her arms when he stormed out, apologizing until her voice cracked.
"I'm sorry.""I'm sorry.""I'm sorry."
But Pillyse always whispered back"It's not your fault, Mama."
Yet her father's words carved themselves into her bones
"If you weren't born, I'd be happy."
"You ruined everything."
"You're why I'm trapped."
And Pillyse a young, frightened, trying to survive in a home with no warmth believed every word, even if she wished she didn't.
The memory dissolved, and she fell straight back into Denova's.
The contrast was disorienting, from her father's bitterness to Denova's grief, from the cold house to a burning circle of symbols.
Then everything collapsed into darkness.
Until
"PILLYSE!"
" DENOVA!"
The present returned with a violent pull.
Her body jerked.
Air rushed back into her lungs.
Elarion was beside her, gripping her shoulders with an expression she had never seen on him before terror, raw and unguarded.
"Pillyse god, please look at me."
"Breathe." She did.
Barely.
Tears slid down her face before she even realized it.
Elarion brushed them away with trembling fingers. "Who hurt you? Tell me."
She shook her head weakly, voice barely audible. "It's… old. It's just old memories."
His jaw clenched in a way that meant he wanted names.
Names he could destroy.
But instead, he lowered his forehead to hers, drawing a steady breath.
"You're not alone," he whispered. "Not then. Not now. Not anymore."
And for the first time in a long time, Pillyse believed it.