The memory faded, leaving me gasping in the darkness of my cabin.
I was weeping—not the heaving sobs of fresh grief, but silent tears that tracked down my cheeks and soaked into the pillow. The memory was still raw, still fresh, still yesterday in the way that only immortal grief could be. Chen Wei's smile. His words. The way he had stood tall in the face of death, a king in exile, protecting his people to the very end.
I pressed my hand to my mouth, trying to contain the pain. It never got easier. It never faded. Each loss was a fresh wound, layered on top of all the others, until sometimes I couldn't tell where one ended and the next began.
And then my phone buzz.
I grabbed it, saw Apple's name on the screen, and took a deep breath, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
"Hello?"
"G." Apple's voice was sharp, immediate. "Why are you crying? Are you crying? I KNOW you're crying. Don't lie to me. Did that Psycho do something? Did he corner you? Did he—"
"No, no." I forced my voice to steady. "He didn't do anything. It's just... the weather. The forest. It's dusty. All the pine needles. They're getting to me."
There was a long pause. I could practically hear Apple's skepticism radiating through the phone.
"G. It's a forest. Forests are not dusty. Forests are damp. That's literally their whole thing. Damp and muddy and full of bugs. You can't blame pine needles for crying."
"Allergies," I tried weakly.
"You don't have allergies."
"I could have developed them."
"Overnight? In a forest? That you've been in for approximately six hours?" Another pause. "G, I love you, but you're a terrible liar. It's actually impressive how bad you are at this. You'd think after all those years of being gloomy, you'd have learned to deflect better, but no. You sound like a toddler caught with their hand in the cookie jar."
Despite everything, I laughed—a small, watery sound, but real.
"Look," Apple continued, her voice softening. "I'm not going to push. I know you. If you wanted to tell me, you'd tell me. And if you're crying alone in a creepy forest cabin at—" she paused, presumably checking the time, "—eleven PM, there's probably a reason you don't want to share. So I'll just say this: I'm here. Okay? Ready to mobilize at the slightest hint of Psycho-related shenanigans."
"Thank you, App."
"Don't thank me. Just promise me you'll try to get some sleep. You sound like death warmed over, and not in the glamorous, mysterious way. In the "I've been crying in the dark" way."
"I promise."
"And G?"
"Yeah?"
"If he does something tomorrow—if he so much as looks at you wrong—you text me. One buzz for 'I'm fine.' Two buzzes for 'he's being a scumbag.' Three buzzes for 'bring Jessica and also maybe a flamethrower.'"
"A flamethrower?"
"I'm resourceful. Don't test me."
I laughed again, and this time it felt almost normal. "I love you, App."
"Love you too, weirdo. Now sleep. And stop crying. You're too beautiful for that, and I refuse to let some emotionally constipated CEO be the reason you forget it."
The line went dead.
I set the phone down and stared at the ceiling for a long moment. The tears had stopped. The grief was still there—it would always be there—but it had receded to a manageable ache.
Chen Wei's face floated in my memory one last time. That final smile. Those words: I'll find you.
He had kept his promise. He was here, in this life, in this forest, in the body of a man who didn't remember but was starting to wake up.
I sat up in bed, wiping the last traces of tears from my face.
No more moping. No more grief. No more waiting.
Tomorrow, when the workshop began, I would stop being the woman who ran. I would stop being the woman who wept in the dark. I would be Giana—the woman who had loved a king across centuries, who had held his hand through a hundred deaths, who had learned a thousand languages and a million ways to survive.
Tomorrow, I would begin my attack.
Kaelen the Ever-Running wouldn't know what hit him.