141

141
Rowen's POV

Maeve stirred again that evening. Not with the jolts and twitches of bad dreams, but with real movement , a shift of her shoulders, a low sound caught in her throat. I was sitting in the chair beside her bed when her eyes finally opened.

Her gaze found me first. Green, still her green, but dimmer, fragile in a way that made my chest ache.

“Maeve,” I whispered. My voice cracked. “You’re awake.”

She blinked slowly, her lips parting. “Rowen.”

The sound of my name in her voice almost undid me. I reached for her hand. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t lean into me either.

Kieran and Brinley slipped into the room behind me, both of them carrying the same brittle mix of hope and fear.

I forced myself to meet her gaze. “Maeve… what do you remember?”

She frowned, her brow pinching as if the effort itself hurt. Then she whispered: “Selene.”

The three of us froze.

“She came to me,” Maeve went on, her voice soft, distant, like she was speaking from a dream. “She held me. Told me I carried too much. That Valeriese clung to vengeance, let it hollow her out… but I could be different. I could choose love, even when it burned. That’s how the shadow dies. That’s how balance is restored.”

Kieran leaned forward, clutching the sheets. “She talked to you?”

Maeve nodded faintly. “She said I wasn’t meant to walk past this battle. That death wasn’t an ending. That I would rise one last time. She told me… my mates would live because I gave her everything.”
Brinley’s breath hitched. “And you believed her?”

Maeve’s lips trembled, but she nodded. “I had to. I begged her. I begged her to let you live, even if it meant I didn’t. I told her I’d do anything. And she.. she promised.”

I looked away, jaw tight, because I didn’t trust myself not to break if I kept looking at her. “Maeve…”

Her voice wavered. “She called me her child. Her golden flame. Her wolf, her witch, her balance. She said… when I rose again, the world would see what that meant. I don’t know what she meant. But something inside me says I’m not the same. I feel so weak. I feel…” She pressed her hands to her chest. “Empty.”

Finally, I whispered the thing I’d been afraid to say. “You look different too...”

“She gave you back to us,” Brinley said quickly, her voice desperate. “That’s what matters.”

But Maeve shook her head, tears streaking her cheeks. “No… she took everything. My magic. My fire. The bond.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“Maeve,” I said gently, “while you were gone… the light you released, it killed every beast on the field. It saved us. But we think it may have killed one other person too.”

Her head snapped up. “Who?”

Her face went still. Too still. Then one tear slid down her cheek, cutting a line through the dirt.

“She’s dead, isn’t she,” Maeve said. Not a question.

I reached up, brushing the tear away before it could fall further. “Yes.”

For a long moment, she didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Then her breath shuddered out of her, and she whispered, “Good.”

Brinley crawled onto the bed, curling close to Maeve but not quite touching. Kieran sat at her other side, his devotion etched into every line of him.

We stayed like that. Silent. Terrified.

Maeve’s green eyes shimmered with tears as she whispered the truth about Selene. Then her body sagged back into the bed, as if the effort of speech had wrung the last drop of strength from her.

Her breath evened, and slowly she slipped back into sleep.

Kieran refused to let go of her hand. His knuckles were white around her wrist. Brinley watched Maeve’s chest rise and fall.

I leaned back, my own heart hammering with a hollow rhythm. Relief warred with dread inside me. She was alive, yes. but the girl we had fought for, loved with every ounce of ourselves… she wasn’t fully here. Not anymore.

For a long time, no one spoke. The silence pressed heavy.

Then Brinley whispered, “She’s smaller. It’s like the power itself was holding her together, and now that it’s gone, she…” She trailed off, tears shining in her eyes.

“She still has Stormi,” Kieran said, his voice rough. “I felt her. She’s weaker, but she’s there. Whatever happened in the cage of her mind.. and with Selene..”
I rubbed at my face, staring at the bare skin on Maeve’s throat where her mate marks used to blaze. “She’s unmarked.. I don’t even know what that makes us now.”

Brinley lifted her chin, fire flashing. “It doesn’t change what we are to her. Or what she is to us.”

Kieran shook his head. “But she feels it. The bond’s gone with her.. She’ll know we all feelours, just not her's..”

I clenched my fists against my knees. “She looked at me like I was a stranger.” My throat worked.

Brinley quielty added “She’s more skittish now than when she first came here. Back then, she was just hiding behind walls. Now it’s like she’s… missing pieces of herself.”

Kieran’s jaw clencheed. His eyes glistened but he didn’t look away from Maeve. “Then we’ll give her those pieces back. One by one. Even if it takes years. Even if she never remembers what we had—what we were.”

“She remembers,” Brinley whispered stubbornly, almost to herself. “Selene said she gave up her power, not her memory. That means Maeve still knows who we are. She knows what she felt for us. That has to mean something.”

I swallowed hard, my voice low. “Knowing isn’t the same as believing. Or trusting. Or… wanting it again.”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

Kieran turned, his eyes blazing with quiet desperation. “So what? We just give up?”

“No,” My voice came out harder than I intended. “We don’t give up. But we need to face the truth. The girl in that bed isn’t the same one we lost on the battlefield. She’s been stripped bare. We have to meet her where she is now, not where we wish she still was.”

Brinley wiped at her face, nodding. “Then that’s what we’ll do. However long it takes.”

Kieran pressed Maeve’s hand to his forehead. “We’ll bring her back. Even if she never believes in us the same way. We’ll love her anyway.”

I watched the fragile rise and fall of her chest, and the hollow ache in my ribs deepened. Because I knew we would try our hardest.

Maeve stirred faintly in her sleep, murmuring something none of us could catch. All three of us leaned forward, straining, desperate for a thread of hope.

But she only sighed, curling tighter into herself, small and breakable in a way that made my chest split open.

And I realized: the war wasn’t over. Not for us. Not for her.

The battlefield was just different now. quieter, closer, fought in whispers and careful touches instead of claws and flame.

The kind of war you win not by force. But by love.