lost my identity

lost my identity
The silence stretched like a living thing between us as we left the castle gronds. Every now and then, i looked over my shoulders to make sure that she was not following us
“you are safe you know, you don’t have to be looking at your shoulders every now and then” he said, a faint smile appearing on his face as he spoke..
I said nothing, but somehow, i felt assured, my muscles relaxing a bit as we continued moving.
The forest swallowed us whole as we moved, the corpse slung across Aiden’s shoulders, his pace steady but relentless. Each crunch of leaves beneath our boots sounded louder than it should have, each breath too sharp in the quiet. I wanted to speak, to ask him what came next, but the weight of everything—the queen’s warning, the corpse we carried, the raw defiance that had just carved itself into our fates—kept my tongue heavy.
Aiden didn’t look at me. His jaw was set, eyes fixed ahead as though the trees themselves had dared him to falter. The silence wasn’t just silence. It was… unfinished words. Words waiting to burn.
I almost thought he wouldn’t break it. That we would walk in it forever.
But then he spoke.
“I made a deal with Lucia once.”
The words came rough, like gravel pulled from his chest. I blinked, startled, and looked at him. He still didn’t glance my way.
“What do you mean?” I asked softly.
His mouth twisted, though not into a smile. “Back when you were still… safe. Before any of this. Things were turning bad with the Fae King—he’d started noticing you again in the human world. Watching. And there are few worse things in this world than catching the eye of someone like him.” He paused, and I caught the faintest tremor in his hand as he adjusted his hold on the corpse.
My stomach tightened. “You made a deal—with Lucia—to protect me?”
He nodded once, curt, as though ashamed of the admission. “Lucia was dangerous, yes. But she wasn’t the Fae King. And I… I chose what I thought was the lesser evil.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. No words came. I didn’t know what to feel—anger, gratitude, betrayal, fear. All of it tangled together until my chest hurt.
“And that wasn’t the only deal,” Aiden continued, voice quieter now, almost as though he regretted unsealing the past. “I forced my family to take Kandlin in. He was… reckless, unwanted. But I saw something in him, and I knew that if I didn’t, the world would devour him whole. My father hated me for it, but I didn’t care. Kandlin became one of ours—because I made it so.”
I looked at him, not really understanding. “but you guys look so much alike, how is that possible if you are not related?”
At that, he finally looked at me. His eyes, shadowed with exhaustion and a pain I hadn’t seen before, met mine. “You don’t know half of what’s been done to keep you breathing, Advika. And I don’t tell you this for thanks. I tell you because…” He trailed off, shaking his head as if even he wasn’t ready to name the reason.
The silence returned, but it was different now. Heavier. Thicker. No longer empty, but filled with secrets I didn’t know how to carry.
I walked beside him, my throat tight, my heart aching with questions I wasn’t sure I was ready to ask.
Finally, he spoke, his voice low, almost hesitant.
“I had to give up who I was, Advika.”
The words sank into me, colder than the evening air. I turned to look at him, searching his face, but he didn’t slow. He kept walking, eyes fixed forward.
“My name, my place, my life. All of it. I couldn’t risk the Fae King seeing me for what I was, or seeing you through me. So I buried myself. I became nothing—just a shadow at your side. That was the only way I could keep you safe.”
My chest tightened. I had never asked him for that—never imagined what it must have cost him. “Aiden…” I whispered, but the words faltered before they could form into anything real.
He shook his head, his jaw set. “Don’t. I’d do it all over again. Every choice. Every sacrifice. If it meant you were still there, living happily in the human world , I would gladly give up my name a thousand times.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting against the rush of emotion clawing its way up my throat.
But then his voice shifted, softer, tinged with something heavier. “When Kandlin started looking at you… differently, I knew I had to step back. I saw it in his eyes, Advika. The way his gaze followed you. The way he lingered in silence like he was trying to solve a riddle only he could see.”
I stiffened, caught between disbelief and something I couldn’t name. “Kandlin?” I asked, barely louder than a breath.
Aiden’s mouth curved in a grim line. “I didn’t trust it. Not because you weren’t worth his notice—you were. But Kandlin… he’s unstable. Unpredictable. And I couldn’t risk you getting caught in that storm. So I let go. I backed away. Because if being close to me put you in danger, and being close to him broke you… I couldn’t live with either. So i made him promise that he would treat you right and…”
The forest swallowed his words, but they echoed inside me long after they fell silent.
I stared at him, at the man who had carried more of my past than I ever realized, who had cut pieces of himself away just to keep me whole. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t ask for anything in return. He just walked, shoulders bowed under a weight no one else could see.
And I didn’t know what broke me more—that he had given up so much for me… or that I had never even known.