Chapter 21: Bound by Shadows
Sasha POV
A circle of flames, tall as me, licked at the night and turned faces into masks of light and shadow. I stood in the ring, barefoot on scorched earth. Ronan was on my left. Kade on my right. Both of them stripped to the bone by rage. They circled each other like twin storms that had finally found land. And as they circled each other, they circled me, who stood in the center.
“Stop,” I said, but my voice sounded small. Stolen by the crackle. I wasn’t even surprised that neither of them listened. I watched in horror as Ronan lunged at Kade, who leaped into the air. “NO!” I screamed. But it was all claws and teeth, fists and fury. The kind of fight that didn’t end in an apology, the kind that ended in blood. I moved between them without thinking. I pressed one hand on Ronan’s chest, the other on Kade’s arm. My mark burned, a sharp crescent of heat against my hip, and for a heartbeat, the flames bent toward me as if the ring itself recognized my name. Time stuttered, and the scene blurred. Suddenly, Kade was older. Ronan was someone I had known for centuries. Or seconds. The fire ate the edges of the world until all I could see were their eyes and the reflection of myself inside them. Someone I didn’t fully recognize, someone I might once have been.
“Choose,” the wind whispered through the flames. “Choose!”
I snapped awake with smoke in my throat and the taste of ash on my tongue. Afternoon light lay across my floor in thin, bright bars. My heart tried to claw out of my ribs. I pressed the heel of my hand to my sternum until it hurt more than the fear. It had just been a dream. But, once again, it didn’t quite feel like one. I had learned the difference. The circle of fire hadn’t been a fever image or a cruel trick of sleep. It was a memory. Or a warning. Or both. Past and future had begun to overlap like wet pages. Ink bleeding, lines blurring, the same story trying to write itself twice. I swung my legs out of bed and sat there for a long breath, listening. The world answered with its ordinary sounds. Distant voices, a cartwheel creaking, the hush of wind moving through needles. Under it, a lower note thrummed. Familiar now. The wind pressed against the cracks of my window and slid along the back of my neck, gentle as breath.
Remember.
I stood so fast that I stumbled unsteadily on my feet. As soon as I had regained my balance, I put on my boots and my sweater. I moved with ease, almost like I had no control over my body. I left my home and stepped into the fading day like I had been called. The path to the sacred cave forked behind the square and disappeared into the stands of ironwood, where roots coiled out of the earth like sleeping serpents. I had walked there as a child during rites, offered petals, and promised to be brave. I had walked there once with Kade, when we were too young to carry titles and too old to pretend, we didn’t want them. I had never walked there alone. That was a lie. I had walked there before. A lifetime I was just beginning to remember.
Remember.
The wind tugged at my sleeve the way a friend might pull you toward a secret. My steps lengthened. Every turn felt chosen for me. The closer I got, the louder that low thread hummed. It wasn’t sound. Not exactly. It was like pressure. Expectation. The promise that whatever waited would not be kind, but it would be true. I rounded a bend and nearly ran into Thelma. She stood in the path as if the forest had grown her there: robes dark, staff planted, hair caught in a stubborn braid that wind could not undo. Her eyes took me in with one quick sweep, bare head, ungloved hands, that look I probably wore when I had already decided to do something foolish and brave.
“Let me guess, you are going to the cave,” she said.
“Yes,” I confirmed. I saw no reason to lie.
“Alone?”
“Yes,” I said and her mouth tightened as she stared at me.
“You are not ready,”
“How do you know that?” I snapped. “The wind keeps telling me to remember…and every time I try, something, or someone gets in my way,”
“The wind isn’t always your friend,” she argued softly. “Sometimes it only wants an old story repeated,”
“What if it wants a new ending?” I asked. Her gaze flicked past my shoulder to the trees behind me, as if the answer might be hanging there like ripe fruit.
“New endings come at a cost,”
“So do old ones,” I shot back. She moved with me, quick for someone with joints that complained in the cold.
“If you dig too deep, you might wake what sleeps,” Thelma warned. “Your dreams are not dreams. I know you know that now. But remembering is not the same as surviving the memory. There is a reason we bury bones,”
“I am done being buried,” I said. “I want the truth, Thelma,”
“That is what you think you want,”
“Tell me to my face that I shouldn’t go,” I said. “Not in riddles. Say ‘don’t do it,’ and I will listen,”
“Don’t do it,” she said, and the breath she drew afterward trembled. The wind answered differently.
Remember.
We both heard it. We both looked toward the dark mouth of the trees where the path narrowed to a ribbon and the air cooled. Thelma’s fingers tightened on her staff until her knuckles blanched. She searched my face like she could still pull me back with love alone. And then she surprised me when she stepped aside.
“If it asks for blood, don’t bargain. Run,”
“I thought you said the wind wasn’t always an enemy,” I said.
“It isn’t the wind I fear,” she replied. And then she was gone, leaving me to continue on my path.