Chapter 64 I kept walking

Chapter 64 I kept walking
I didn’t run.
That surprised me. I thought I would. Everything in stories says this is the moment you run, breath tearing, legs burning, fear chasing you through the trees. But I didn’t want to give him that image of me. I didn’t want Xander to remember me as something fleeing.
So I walked.
Each step felt deliberate, like I was placing myself back into my own body after being handled by too many hands. The forest shifted around me as I moved, branches parting where they hadn’t before, ground steady instead of uneven. I didn’t question it. I had learned that questioning came later, when you were safe enough to think.
Behind me, voices rose. I heard my name once. I didn’t turn.
I focused on what was real. The sound of my breathing. The weight of the pendant against my skin. The scrape of bark when my shoulder brushed past a tree that hadn’t moved fast enough.
I kept walking until the forest thinned again and the air changed. Not cooler. Just clearer. Like the space had decided to leave me alone.
That’s when my legs finally gave out.
I sat on a fallen log, head tipped forward, waiting for the shaking to stop. It didn’t come all at once. It came in waves, small and stubborn, like my body was trying to remind me of everything it had just survived.
“You don’t get to do that,” I said out loud, to no one in particular. “You don’t get to decide for me and call it care.”
The forest didn’t answer. That was fine. I wasn’t asking for comfort.
The pendant warmed again, not sharp, not loud, just there. It didn’t show me images this time. It didn’t pull at my thoughts. It felt like someone sitting beside me without speaking.
My father used to do that.
I laughed once, quietly, then stopped. This wasn’t the moment for softness.
I stood and kept moving.
By the time I reached the edge of the trees, the sun was higher. Not noon yet, but close enough that shadows shortened and the world looked more honest. I could see the dirt path that led back toward familiar land. I didn’t follow it.
Instead, I went the long way around, through old routes I barely remembered, paths I hadn’t walked since childhood. My feet seemed to know where to go even when my head didn’t.
That scared me more than being lost.
I reached the river by late afternoon. The water moved slow and brown, carrying leaves and bits of broken branch along with it. I knelt and washed my hands, the cool biting just enough to keep me present.
My reflection wavered in the surface. I didn’t recognize the look in my eyes. Not fear. Not confusion. Something sharper. Something that had learned too much too quickly.
“You didn’t break me,” I said to the water. “You just showed me where the cracks already were.”
I stood again, ready to keep moving, when I felt it. Not pain. Not pressure. Just absence. Like something that had been following me quietly had finally stopped.
I turned.
Xander stood at the edge of the trees.
Not close enough to touch. Not far enough to pretend he wasn’t there.
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” I said.
“I didn’t,” he replied. “I waited.”
That almost made it worse.
“Why are you here,” I asked.
He took a step forward, then stopped himself. “Because I chose wrong.”
I crossed my arms. “You chose control.”
“I chose fear.”
“That’s not better.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s just the truth.”
We stood there with the river between us, the sound of water filling the space neither of us seemed ready to cross.
“They’re regrouping,” he said. “They won’t stop.”
“I know.”
“They’ll come after you again.”
“I know.”
“You could still come back,” he said. “Not with them. With me.”
I looked at him then, really looked. At the familiar lines of his face. At the restraint in the way he held himself like he was afraid one wrong move would cost him everything.
“You already decided who I was without asking,” I said. “I can’t unhear that.”
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
Silence stretched. The river kept moving.
“My father trusted you,” I said quietly.
“Yes.”
“And you failed him.”
“Yes.”
“And you still think you get to stand here and ask for anything.”
He lowered his gaze. “I’m not asking. I’m offering.”
I shook my head. “You don’t offer shelter after pushing someone into the storm.”
He flinched, but didn’t argue.
“I don’t know what I am yet,” I continued. “But I know this. If I go anywhere now, it will be because I chose it. Not because you think it’s safer.”
“That choice may cost you,” he said.
“Everything costs something.”
The pendant pulsed once, steady and calm, like agreement.
Xander looked at it, then back at me. “You’re already changing.”
“Yes,” I said. “And you don’t get to manage that.”
He nodded slowly. “Then this is where I stop.”
“For now.”
He hesitated. “If they find you—”
“They won’t,” I said. “Not today.”
I didn’t know why I was sure. I just was.
Xander took a step back. Then another. “I won’t follow.”
“I know.”
He turned away, disappearing into the trees without another word.
I waited until the forest swallowed him completely before letting myself breathe fully again.
The river flowed on. The sky shifted. The world kept moving.
So did I.
Not toward home. Not toward him.
Toward whatever waited next.
And this time, I would meet it awake.