The days after the ball carried a strange weight.
Arthur was more distant than before, but she noticed the subtle, almost invisible moments when he lingered in doorways, or when his gaze followed her from across the courtyard. He never smiled, yet something in his eyes told her he wanted to.
And every night, she dreamed the same thing — a shadowed figure reaching for her throat, while Arthur's voice echoed in the darkness, desperate and broken: "Vivian… not again."
She would wake breathless, heart racing, with an ache she could not name.
Vivian's POV
On the seventh morning, she found herself in the library, searching for something — anything — to distract her mind.
Her hand trailed along the spines of old tomes until it stopped on a book wrapped in crimson leather. She opened it.
Inside was a pressed violet, faded but carefully preserved between the pages. Underneath it, in Arthur's handwriting:
To the girl I met by the riverbank. You didn't know my name then. I knew yours.
Her breath caught. The riverbank? She remembered — a summer many years ago, when she had been no more than a girl, and a young soldier had pulled her from the water after she had slipped on the rocks. His hair had been black as night, his eyes golden like the sunrise.
Arthur.
The realization sent warmth and sorrow through her all at once. Why had he never told her?
Arthur's POV
From the corridor, Arthur saw her standing with the crimson book in her hands. He turned away before she could look up.
He had kept that violet all these years, a reminder of the day he decided — without truly understanding why — that he would protect this stubborn, fearless girl from anything that dared to harm her.
But fate was cruel. Protecting her now meant letting her go.
That evening, a courier arrived with a sealed letter. Arthur broke the wax and read:
The council has voted. They demand her removal from Helio within the month, or they will charge her with treason for conspiring with your enemies.
The parchment crumpled in his fist. Vivian was no conspirator — but the council didn't care about truth. They wanted leverage, and she was the easiest way to strike at him.
Arthur poured himself a glass of wine he didn't drink. The more he thought of the coming weeks, the more the memories of his dreams returned — dreams where she lay lifeless in his arms, just as in the vision that had haunted him for years.
Except… in the dreams, there was something else.
Her voice, faint but certain: "When time turns, find me again."
The Night Before Everything Changed
Vivian sat by her window, staring at the stars. She had made her decision. If leaving would keep Arthur safe from the council's wrath, she would go quietly.
But as she watched the moonlight on the palace gardens, she whispered something no one could hear — except, perhaps, the goddess Ailsa, whose temple lay far beyond the city walls.
"I wish… for another chance," she said, voice trembling. "Even if I have to give something precious in return. Let me meet him again, in another life where he can love me freely."
The air around her seemed to still.
In the temple, miles away, a single candle extinguished itself without wind.
Far in the Future — A Thread Pulls Tight
Somewhere beyond the boundaries of time, a faint golden thread trembled, holding the last moments of a woman's life and the unspoken love of a man who would spend years drowning in regret.
It would snap soon — only to be tied anew.