"That thing wasn't just hunting," Will says, jaw tight, every muscle in his face pulled taut. "It was tracking you. It knew what it wanted."
"Why would it know me?" The question tastes like rust—metallic and wrong—because some part of me already suspects the answer, already knows where this road ends.
"I'm not whoever you think I am," I tell him. The words shake on the way out. Even as I say them, something inside me whispers: liar.
Will draws a breath like he's about to say the thing he's been swallowing since the IceHouse—like if he lets it out, it won't stop coming.
My vision blurs.
Noise collapses into a high, thin ringing—sharp enough to sting—then empties out completely, as if someone reached in and unplugged the world.
And the moment I look into Will's eyes, the ground drops away.
Silence hits first.
Not the soft kind that settles over a house at night. This is pressure—dense, suffocating—so heavy it presses on my ears until all I can hear is my own breath scraping in and out, shallow and unsteady.
The air tastes like smoke and iron.
Then everything breaks.
Something cracks behind me. Stone on stone. Bone on bone. The sound reverberates through my spine.
I don't turn. I can't.
My bare feet press into cold marble, slick beneath my toes—something wet slides under my arch, and I refuse to look down. Firelight licks along the walls, restless, hungry. Shadows stretch and shudder like they're afraid of what made them.
Crushed myrtle perfumes the air—sweet and cloying—braided tight with fresh blood.
My white tunic clings to my skin, damp and frayed at the shoulders. My knees are raw from kneeling too long, burning with the dull ache of surrender, but I don't dare stand.
Not until I see him.
He strides between the columns like a returning war god.
Scarlet cloth, torn and soot-streaked. Bronze bracers dented, smeared with ash. His hands shake as he reaches for me like he's afraid I'll dissolve if he blinks.
The whole world holds its breath.
"You have no business being here," I hear myself say.
My voice is wrong—older. Roughened. Weighted with lifetimes. It comes out like prayer and curse in the same breath.
He stops in front of me and lowers his forehead to mine.
Fever-hot.
He smells like sea-salt and sandalwood and something devastating underneath—storm wind, battle smoke, the last second before a city burns.
"I would burn every city again to find you," he says.
The words hit like confession, not threat.
Tears spill before I realize I'm crying, blurring the torchlight into streaks of gold.
He moves behind me, fingers working the manacles at my wrists. The metal groans, then gives—snapping open with a scream of steel. The shackles fall and clatter across the stone, echoing like judgment.
His hands—bloodied, shaking—come back to frame my face like it's the only holy thing left in a broken world.
"Do you remember?" he whispers.
And I do.
The night beneath olive trees. Stars as witnesses. A circle of firelight. The way he knelt—unarmored, unafraid—when he never knelt for anyone.
Then he kisses me.
Not with hunger.
With grief.
Like devotion has teeth. Like goodbye has a mouth.
Rain and smoke and endings. His sorrow moves through me like a tide, soaking everything it touches, drowning every place I thought was empty.
This is not a beginning.
It's a farewell.
Thunder cracks somewhere beyond the temple. The floor trembles. I feel gods watching from unseen balconies—restless, displeased.
I don't care.
For one heartbeat, it's only him and me, foreheads pressed together, breaths shuddering in sync, every promise reopening like a wound that never healed.
My eyes open.
For a heartbeat I see him—Will, exactly as he is now and somehow not. Younger. Wilder. A black crown like he was born from war itself. Ares' crest gleams at his shoulder, scratched but unbroken.
We are not in a tree.
We are kneeling in a broken chamber beneath a ruined sky, dust falling like slow stars.
I reach for him—
And reality rips.
Smoke. Marble. Torches. Blood—gone, torn away like mist.
I slam back into my body so hard my bones feel hollow.
I'm in the hollow tree again.
In the dark.
In my jeans and Ninja Turtles shirt and black hoodie.
Back in a night that suddenly feels paper-thin, like it could tear if I breathe wrong.
Will is inches away, flashlight cutting his face into sharp planes. Anxiety carves the corners of his mouth. His jaw is locked like he's holding something back with sheer force.
The echo still crackles behind my eyes like lightning trapped under glass.
I know one thing—terrifying, aching, absolute:
I've kissed him before.
And I've lost him.
"Are you alright?" Will asks.
I realize my hands are already in his.
Skin on skin—that hum spikes up my arms, immediate and undeniable. Not nerves. Not adrenaline.
Recognition.
Will exhales, shaky. Relief flashes across his face—then he buries it fast, like he isn't allowed to show it.
"Aetheria…" His voice is rough, like he's been swallowing stones. "I'm going to tell you something that will make me sound insane."
He stops himself. I see it—the restraint. The deliberate choice not to flood me, not to push.
"I swear to the gods it's the truth," he finishes, quieter. "And I think something terrible was done to you."
My tongue won't work.
It's like I'm split in half: one part of me in this tree, another still kneeling on marble, tasting smoke and vows.
"Someone stole your memories," he says. "Not just moments. Whole years. Whole lives."
My gaze drops to our joined hands.
His thumb moves over my skin in slow, careful circles—like a prayer. Like a promise he's trying not to make out loud.
When I look up, I see a stranger my bones insist is familiar.
"We met hundreds of years ago," he says. "And they found out they couldn't kill you."
His jaw tightens.
"So they did the next best thing."
He leans in—then stops himself. A hard swallow. His voice lowers, controlled, almost clinical.
"They carved you out of yourself. They scattered what you were through the Veil and sealed what was left into the mortal world. New name. New life. No past."
My head spins. "You do sound insane and that's not possible."
"You're standing here," he says simply. "Tell me what feels impossible about you. Your mind is clearly fracturing. Your memories are practically disabling you every time one breaks open. And they've clearly been happening for a while now."
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
"So now," I manage, "what did we just do? What did that kiss… wake up?"
His eyes darken.
"The bond," he says. "The part of you they couldn't reach. Because they didn't know it existed."
He lifts my hand between us and traces the inside of my wrist. Heat flares under his touch—an invisible ring pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
"It was dormant," he murmurs. "Hidden. Sleeping under your skin and mine."
He meets my gaze like it costs him.
"Tonight, you pulled it to the surface."
"So now they can find me," I whisper. "I turned on some cosmic GPS?"
A flash of pain crosses his face. "They were always going to find you," he says. "The Ascension is starting whether you kiss me in a tree or not."
He nods once toward our hands.
"But this means you don't walk into it alone."
The hollow tree breathes around us—bark and roots and moss humming low, subterranean. My pendant burns against my chest, hot enough that my palm clamps over it.
Shaking my head in disbelief. "Gods! I don't know you," I say louder than a whisper.
"You do," he says. "Just not here."
His hand cups the back of my head—gentle, steady, like he's holding a cracked thing together.
"You know me where it counts."
It should be too much. Too big. Too terrifying.
Instead, something in me—small and furious and tired of being afraid—uncurls.
Outside, the wind finally exhales.
Far off, something howls—not hunting now, but answering.
And somewhere beneath my fear, beneath my disbelief, beneath everything they carved out of me—something ancient and furious and mine starts to wake.