Chapter 84

Isla POV

The space between us pulsed once gold light, faint but alive.

For a heartbeat, the forest disappeared. The wind stopped. The world went utterly still.

And then I saw it not a vision, not a dream, but a memory that wasn’t mine. A woman standing beneath a silver sky, her hair wild with wind, her hands glowing gold as she reached for a wolf whose eyes burned the same color as Kieran’s.

When the image shattered, I stumbled back, gasping. “What was that?”

Kieran’s voice was soft. “The first remembering.”

“You showed me that.”

“No.” His eyes darkened. “The bond did.”

We stood there in the quiet, the echo of that vision still burning behind my eyes.

Then Kieran took a slow breath and said, “You need to tell him.”

“Tristan?”

“Yes. The wards will break soon if he keeps suppressing the magic. He needs to know what’s tied to you.”

I shook my head. “He’ll see it as proof you’re manipulating me.”

“Then make him believe it’s your choice.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It never is.”

For a moment, he looked like he wanted to say more but the sound of distant footsteps broke the spell.

Tristan.

Kieran’s gaze flicked toward the path. “He’s coming.”

“Then go.”

He hesitated. “Be careful what you remember, Isla.”

And then he was gone.

Tristan reached me seconds later, breathless and tense. “You came out here alone again?”

I forced a calm smile. “Technically, I wasn’t alone.”

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t joke.”

“I’m not.”

He exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Or find the answers you won’t look for.”“Answers about what?”

“Why the bond won’t fade. Why the stones react to me. Why he’s still fighting for us when every law says he shouldn’t.”

Tristan’s expression softened for just a second. “You still trust him.”

“I have to.”

“And me?”

The question hung there, raw and quiet.

I met his gaze, searching it. “You’re the one who never stopped holding the walls, Tristan. I trust that.”

For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Then he stepped closer close enough that the air between us tightened.

“Don’t give me that kind of faith,” he whispered. “It’ll destroy us both.”

“Maybe we’re already past that.”

The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was something heavier the kind that settles between people who’ve both lost too much to walk away now.

That night, I stood at my window again. The moon hung low, pale and full, its light catching on the glass.

Somewhere beyond the forest, a faint gold shimmer flickered not warning, not danger. Just a sign.

He was there.

And so was I.

The bond pulsed once, softer this time, like a heartbeat shared across distance.

Maybe this was what peace looked like fragile, temporary, and still full of things unsaid. But it was enough. For now.

Because the forest might remember, the stones might hum, and the magic might rise again but until it did, we still had this.

Two worlds holding their breath. Two hearts still choosing to beat.

And the silence between them alive.

The first sign that something had shifted came before dawn.

It wasn’t a sound not the wind, not the whisper of branches but a feeling. The kind that crawled under your skin and hummed against your bones, like the air itself had remembered your name.

I woke with my heart already racing. The room was dark, the curtains barely stirring. For a second, I thought I’d imagined it that pulse through the bond, faint and steady. But then it came again, softer this time, threading through the quiet like a heartbeat wrapped in light.

Kieran.

He wasn’t calling me, not exactly. It was more like he was steadying me. As if somewhere out there, he could feel the way my thoughts had started to spiral.

“Stop it,” I whispered into the dark, pressing my palm over my heart. “I’m fine.”

But I wasn’t.

Because every time he reached for me like that, the bond pulled tighter. Every time he steadied me, a piece of me remembered what it felt like to stand beside him not as a Luna, not as someone divided by duty, but as the girl who once believed in the way he looked at her.

The forest outside was still half-wrapped in fog when I pushed open the window. The air was cold, biting, clean. It carried the scent of pine and rain and beneath that, faint but undeniable, his scent.

He was close again.

Too close.

I leaned against the window frame, breathing him in, letting the memory settle before the guilt caught up to me. Because even though Tristan slept in the room down the hall, his presence steady and familiar, it wasn’t his scent that made my chest ache.

It was Kieran’s.

By morning, the packhouse had begun to stir.

The corridors buzzed with soft footsteps and low murmurs the kind of careful movement that came when everyone sensed something was changing but no one wanted to say it out loud.

I found Lyra in the library, surrounded by maps and old scrolls. The fire beside her had burned low, the faint smell of ink clinging to the air.

“You didn’t sleep,” I said.

She didn’t look up. “Neither did you.”

“Touché.”