Chapter 48: Echoes in the Stone

Chapter 48: Echoes in the Stone
Ronan POV

My breath came hard. Too hard. The cave smelled of iron and smoke, the walls still ringing with the echo of old magic. I turned away a fraction, jaw working. The sound that tore from me wasn’t loud, but it carried anyway, as though the stone itself wanted to hold it. Kade spoke first, his voice steady but stripped down.

“But it’s different,” he said. Kade was referring to the fact that they still loved each other. I turned to face him. My pulse was still an unsteady hammer, but I forced myself to face them both.

“It’s not the thing that held us,” Sasha said. And I could hear the truth in her words. It was like a clean cut instead of a wound. “Now it's…it's just…us. Or at least, what is left and what we made. It’s ours now. Not what was made for us,” she continued. Kade nodded once. His eyes were bright in the dim light.

“I can live with that,” he said quietly. “I think I can finally live with that,” I wasn’t sure what to say to either of them as I struggled with my own emotions. This wasn’t about me. And I didn’t care much for Kade. At least, not in this situation. My focus was on Sasha. We stood in the new space between us. It wasn’t empty. It wasn’t full. It was honest, and honesty was heavier than silence. I reached for Sasha’s hand. I didn’t squeeze. I didn’t pull. I just held it, the way an anchor holds a ship steady against the pull of tides. She let me. My chest loosened for the first time since the ritual began. Kade’s gaze dropped to our joined hands. For a breath, I braced for the flare of anger, the jealousy I knew too well. But he didn’t flinch. “Good. Good,” he said, more to himself than to us. There was no anger. There was no jealousy. But I did feel like maybe he was disappointed. Or sad. Kade bent and picked up the broken halves of the locket. The pieces caught the faint glow of the stones before he set them down on the flat altar rock and stepped back.

“Keep them,” he said to Sasha. His voice was stripped raw. “Or throw them in the creek. Do what you want,”

“I might burn them,” she murmured. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Fair,” he said, and for a heartbeat, I thought he would say more. His shoulders shifted like words were waiting. But they never came. He straightened instead, his gaze fixing on me. “Take care of her,” he said. I met his eyes and didn’t look away.

“I already do and I always will,” I said, and the words cut through him. I saw it. A hit and a gift in one breath. He absorbed it, exhaled slowly, and nodded once.

“I should get going,” Kade said. He didn’t wait for us. He didn’t hang around. He merely turned away and left us. The wind came in to meet him, cold and sure, tugging at his jacket, carrying his scent out into the trees. He hesitated once at the edge, like he wanted to look back. But he didn’t. Instead, he stepped into the dark and was gone. The silence that followed was deep and full of tension. The stones, which had blazed with their strange light during the breaking of the spell, dimmed to nothing. My pulse eased into a steadier rhythm, though it still carried too much of the old rage, the old jealousy. Sasha leaned into me, her head against my shoulder. I felt the heat of her breath through my shirt, the way she steadied herself against me. My chest ached with relief. And with something sharper. I had her, finally, truly, but Kade’s shadow still lingered. He had been hers once, if only by lies and bindings. He had touched what was mine. That knowledge would never sit clean in me.

“Are you ok?” I asked Sasha. My voice was low as I tried to hide the roughness in it.

“I…yeah…I think so,” she whispered. “I feel…lighter…it’s hard to explain,” I looked down at her, and I could see that the strain was gone from her eyes. Her skin seemed softer somehow.

“You look lighter,” I said. “If that makes any sense,”

“Ronan?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you help me find out more about my twin?” she asked.

“Yes,” I promised. Sasha stared up at me, and I leaned in and kissed her forehead. We stood like that for a moment before we finally left. The walk back to her cabin felt almost surreal. I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around everything that had happened. It all felt so unreal. Like a dream. Or a nightmare. I wasn’t sure which. By the time we stepped inside the cabin, I wasn’t just tired, I was exhausted. I could see that Sasha was as well.

“Ronan…I know you are staying with Thelma…but would you stay the night?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said as another wave of relief hit me. It was then that I realized just how much weight my brother had held over me without even knowing it. It wasn’t just Sasha and Kade that had been released from the spell. I had been released as well. Sasha and I got comfortable on the couch after I got the fire going. We sat side by side, the warmth felt as if it had wrapped itself around us. But the silence was heavy. Thick with the unknown.

“A part of me hates that this has happened…finding out about my mother, and my twin,” Sasha said as she broke the silence. I glanced at her and frowned. “But then there is another part of me that is relieved…I never really thought about who I am, Ronan. And now, all of a sudden, it means everything,”

“You never really thought about it because it never mattered. And now it does,” I said. Sasha stared at me, and then she slowly nodded.

“Yes, but what does that make me?” she asked. “If they were alive…living out there somewhere, how would they feel about the fact that I never cared?”

“Well, what would it say about them?” I asked her. “After all, everything works both ways, Sasha,”

“You are right,” she said before she rested her head on my shoulder. “You are right,” she repeated. I wasn’t sure if I was or wasn’t. But I made a silent vow that I would help her no matter what.