I don't let go of his hand.
That's the first thing I notice — not the cold, not the dark pressing in beyond the light's glow, not the way the woods feel like they're listening with teeth.
I stayed.
My pulse is still sprinting, but my feet are planted. The choice echoes in my bones louder than fear.
The shadows beyond the hollow don't retreat. They settle. Like something patient has just marked time.
Will doesn't speak right away. He shifts closer — not crowding, not claiming — just enough that his warmth bleeds into the night. Like he's shielding me without pretending he can stop what's coming.
"This is where it always gets dangerous," he says quietly. "When you stay."
I swallow. "Then talk."
He studies my face, searching for cracks. For panic. For regret.
Whatever he finds there makes his expression soften into something almost unbearable.
And then his voice drops low enough to tremble.
The memories he chooses—raw, intimate, devastating—hang between us like lightning waiting for a storm.
"I remember lifting you," he murmurs, "pressing you against my door… and against me."
His breath stutters.
"I wanted you with every breath I had. And it still wasn't enough."
Heat floods my face so fast I have to look away. The memory shouldn't mean anything to me—but my body knows it. The flush. The ache. The dizzy familiarity that makes my stomach turn.
My muscles remember being pinned between a door and a man I trusted with my whole existence.
My mind doesn't.
And that's the most humiliating part—my skin believing him faster than my brain can build a defense.
He drags in a sharp breath, like he's forcing himself to stop. When he speaks again, the desire is gone—replaced by something far worse.
"But none of that matters now." His jaw tightens. "The Keres will come. I don't know when—hours, days—but they're already moving. They want to take you back to whoever is tracking you."
My pulse slams so hard it hurts.
The word tracking makes my stomach drop, because it isn't romantic. It's tactical. It's a leash being tested.
"My father wants revenge for stealing you from him," Will continues, voice hard with shame and defiance. "He'll say he needs you for his guardian games. 'A weapon, not a wife.' That's his excuse."
His eyes darken.
He steps closer—too close—the air tightening around us like the world itself is bracing.
I should move.
Something ancient and treacherous inside me whispers stay.
And something smarter whispers: keep him talking. Every word is a breadcrumb.
"He knows the truth," Will says quietly. "You were my weakness. I never cared until you."
A laugh bursts out of me—small, sharp, spiraling. It won't stop. My vision shakes.
"Will," I gasp, "can you hear yourself?"
The laughter cracks into something hysterical. "You expect me to believe we're some immortal couple ripped apart by gods? That my mother is a literal Fate? That I'm—"
The word lodges in my throat.
My tongue won't say it like it has teeth.
"—some soon to be eternal goddess who controls life?"
Tears blur everything. I hate that I'm crying. I hate that this feels like drowning with no water in sight.
My chest aches like the hollow tree is shrinking around my lungs.
"Your nightmares weren't dreams," he says.
"I don't see monsters," I snap, pressing my finger into his chest. "I see you. Every time. I'm watching a replay of my death. Over and over."
And the worst part is my body reacts to him even while I'm accusing him—like it doesn't know how to separate danger from devotion.
His composure fractures.
"Aetheria—listen to me."
His voice—wrecked, shaking—pins me in place.
For a heartbeat, he hesitates.
Not fear.
Calculation.
Like he's choosing which truth will break me least.
"There were whispers in Olympus," he says finally. "The gods accepted you as Clotho's daughter because they couldn't reject you. But some of them didn't believe that was all you were."
My stomach flips. "Meaning what?"
"You came into power too quickly. Too violently. Even as an infant, you radiated breath and ending—both. No Fate is born with both." His mouth twists. "The threads are inherited through the mother alone. Always."
I stare at him. "So I didn't… make sense."
"No," he says without humor. "You terrified them. Zeus called you an anomaly time could not explain. Ares called you an error in destiny. Hera swore even the Three couldn't make something like you without… help."
As he says Ares, my pendant gives a faint, cold pulse against my sternum—like it recognizes the name and hates it.
He looks away, like the next part tastes worse than blood.
"They never agreed on what you were. Fate-born. God-born. Something older. Something more." His gaze locks onto mine. "But they all agreed on one thing."
My breath goes shallow.
"You were not meant to exist."
Cold spreads through me, slow and precise.
The sentence doesn't land like an insult.
It lands like a verdict already signed.
"You're turning twenty-one in this life," he continues. "Five hundred and twenty-one in truth. They kept the same date to avoid cracking your soul. You're ripening."
The word splits something open.
Ripening—like fruit. Like a weapon being tempered. Like bait being sweetened.
"That's why the visions are coming."
Something tears through my skull.
Power slams into me like the earth breaking.
A vision snaps behind my eyes—marble floors cracked with gold, a hand reaching for mine, a voice saying my name in a way Will never could.
I gasp.
The image shatters—and I am standing in a temple.
Fog clings to my dress, thick with myrrh and incense. Pillars stretch toward the sky like bones. A thousand screams tear through the air—not from mouths, but from everywhere, vibrating through my body.
My hands glow too bright. Molten gold spills from my fingertips.
Threads.
Tangle. Snap. Bind.
Infants. Strangers. Lovers. Family.
Begging.
Silent.
Screaming.
A soul lashes into a newborn in my arms.
Another tears loose from an old man dying among roots and fallen leaves.
Another claws at me—
don't let me go—
I scream—and the temple vanishes.
The power rips away so violently it leaves splinters.
Pain arrives late—then all at once.
A spike behind my eyes. A hot, metallic taste flooding my tongue like I bit my own cheek.
In the brief afterimage—gold pillars, burning threads—I notice something I didn't before.
None of the gods meet my eyes.
Not even Zeus.
Like they're afraid if they look, I'll look back.
The hollow tree crashes back into view. Rough bark. Damp moss. Flashlight glow.
I'm shaking. Gasping. Digging my nails into my palms just to stay here.
My skin feels too tight, like the vision tried to wear me from the inside out.
"No," I whisper. "No. That wasn't real."
But my wrists ache. My fingers remember the weight of the threads.
Will hasn't moved. He looks carved from grief.
I can't believe him.
Because if I do, everything I've ever loved becomes a lie.
"Have you always practiced magic?" he asks softly. "Your mother or grandmother must've started you young. Charms. Healing. Hand-work. They are most likely waiting before teaching breath. It's too dangerous."
My heart pounds hard enough to bruise.
Shelby.
Shelby's the only one who knows I'm a witch.
Have they been preparing me?
Training me?
For that?
The Fate's life is isolation. Eternity. No family. No end.
"I don't want this," I choke.
And Will—looks destroyed.
"You think I wanted this?" he whispers. "A bond that turns my existence to ash if I lose you?" His voice breaks. "I would've died the night they took you if death could've found me."
He grips my arms—not to hurt. To anchor.
His hands are warm. Steady. Real.
And my body—traitor that it is—leans into the steadiness like it's starving.
"We're already risking everything by being here," he says. "If you don't understand what's happening, you'll be taken again—and I won't survive finding you one more time."
His forehead rests against mine.
"I found you," he breathes. "I won't lose you again."
I pull back just enough to see him—icy eyes desperate, searching.
"I owe you more than love," he whispers. "I owe you myself."
Something in me breaks.
Not trust.
Not belief.
Just the thin part of me that's been trying to pretend I can outrun whatever's inside my bones.
Then—
A memory slams into me.
A soft yellow gown. Lace like vines. Blue-purple flowers carpeting the forest floor. His hair pulled back. His smile gentle, unguarded.
He says something I can't hear.
But I know him.
I've always known him.
The memory rips away. I'm back in the hollow, heart racing, breath shaking.
My knees wobble like the world isn't done rearranging my gravity.
"Please," he whispers. "Don't disappear from me. Not now."
Rage erupts.
He walked into my life and detonated it. He pulled every thread loose until I don't know who I am.
"How can you say this to me?" I shout. "How can you expect me to believe any of it when I don't even know myself anymore—when you are the reason everything is falling apart?"
And even as I say it, another truth burns behind my teeth:
He might be the reason everything is finally being revealed.
Before he can answer—
The ground moves.
Not a tremor.
A violent, hungry shudder.
Moss tears free. The hollow creaks like old bones remembering how to stand.
Dust sifts from the bark in a slow spill, and the tree's inner walls seem to tighten—like it's bracing to protect… or to trap.
Then—
The air changes.
Cold pours in, metallic, sharp. The night goes wrong-quiet—no wind, no insects, no distant hum. Just a pulsing stillness.
It isn't silence.
It's a hunt holding its breath.
Will's head snaps toward the dark beyond the trunk.
His face drains of color.
His hand finds mine, grip iron-tight.
The mark on my finger—blue, faint—gives one small pulse, like a heartbeat waking.
"They've found us," he says.
And in the black beyond the flashlight's reach—where the woods are too still and the dark is too deep—something smiles.
The pendant spikes hot against my sternum—not warmth, not comfort. A flare, sharp as a struck match.
I hiss and clutch it, but my fingers don't stop it. Nothing stops it.
The air inside the hollow tightens until it feels viscous, like we're breathing through water. The light bends sideways, stretching toward my chest like it's being pulled by magnetism.
Will's grip on my hand locks.
He goes still in that soldier way—every muscle braced, eyes tracking things I can't see.
Something inside my chest answers first.
Not fear.
Not instinct.
Recognition.
The mark on my finger flares brighter — blue burning toward white — and the ache behind my ribs locks into place, like a mechanism finally finding its notch. The pendant at my throat pulses once, hard enough to steal my breath.
Not a warning.
A signal.
Somewhere far above the trees, the air tightens — pulled taut, like the sky itself has just felt my name.