Iris Montgomery's POV
My grandmother tenses like she's about to fight something ten times her size.
Luna moves toward me with her knife drawn. She positions herself between me and the man standing at the edge of the porch. The man with silver and gold eyes. The man who woke up three hundred years ago and dreamed of me the entire time.
But I know something Luna and my grandmother don't know yet.
This man isn't a stranger.
I know him the way my blood knows how to flow. The way my heart knows how to beat. The way my lungs know how to breathe. The connection between us is more real than my own body. More solid than the ground beneath my feet.
I step around my grandmother.
"Don't," she says, reaching for my arm. "Iris, don't do this. We need time to prepare. We need to understand what he is."
I keep moving.
My grandmother tries to hold me back but I'm stronger now. I'm so much stronger than I was before. I pull my arm from her grip gently, trying not to hurt her. She looks shocked that I can break free from her so easily.
I walk toward him.
With each step closer, everything feels more right. Like I've been walking away from my own heart my entire life and I'm finally walking back toward it. Like every piece of me that was scattered is starting to gather together again.
When I'm two feet away from him, I can see his eyes properly.
They're not just silver and gold. They're ancient. They're sad in a way that makes my chest hurt. They're looking at me like I'm the only real thing in the entire world.
"Who are you?" I whisper. But I already know. Some part of me has always known.
He doesn't answer with words.
Instead, he reaches out slowly. His hand moves like he's giving me time to run if I want to. Like he's prepared for me to reject him the way Kael rejected me. Like he's ready to accept that I might not want this.
I don't run.
I reach up and meet his hand halfway.
When his fingers touch my face, lightning explodes through my entire body.
Not painful lightning. Real lightning. The kind that tears through your bones and rebuilds them into something new. The kind that stops your heart and makes it beat stronger when it starts again.
For just a moment, I feel everything he's felt.
Three hundred years of darkness so complete it nearly breaks me. The feeling of being trapped in a space between death and living. The weight of time pressing down on you with no hope of ever being free.
His sister's face as she completes a spell that will destroy him. Tears streaming down her cheeks. Love and betrayal mixing together in one terrible moment.
The sound of his own screams as the curse takes hold. The agony of being pulled into nothing. The horror of realizing that he might be trapped forever.
But underneath all of that darkness, something else. A constant ache. A pull toward someone he's never met. A dream so real it feels like living. Three hundred years of needing someone. Of reaching for someone in the darkness. Of never giving up hope that she would exist.
That she would be me.
He pulls his hand back.
When he speaks, his voice comes out rough and broken. Like he hasn't used it in forever. Like the words are scraping their way out of a throat that's been silent for centuries.
"I am Aldric Kane," he says. "I have been asleep for three hundred years waiting for you to wake up. And I will never leave you again."
My grandmother makes a sound that might be a curse or might be a prayer. Something between grief and acceptance.
Luna is staring at both of us like she's trying to understand something that doesn't make sense. Her knife is still drawn but her arm is lowering. Even she can feel it now. The certainty. The rightness of this. The way everything just clicked into place.
I understand something in that moment that breaks my entire life into before and after.
Everything I thought my life was going to be is wrong. Everything is different now. There is no going back to normal because normal just became something completely new.
Aldric takes my hand.
His grip is gentle but certain. Like he's touching something precious. Like he's been waiting three hundred years to hold this specific hand.
Without asking permission, he pulls me toward the forest.
My body follows without my mind catching up. The connection between us is too strong. The pull is too real. Everything in me wants to go with him into the darkness and never come back.
But my grandmother runs forward and grabs my other arm.
"Wait," she shouts. "You can't just take her. She needs time. She needs preparation. She needs to understand what's happening before she binds herself to something that ancient."
Aldric speaks in a language I've never heard before. It sounds like broken starlight. Like stars being shattered and reformed. Like the very beginning of the world being spoken into existence.
My grandmother responds in the same language, her voice fierce and protective.
I'm caught between them.
Literally pulled in two directions. My grandmother holding one arm like she's trying to keep me anchored to my old life. Aldric holding my other hand like he's pulling me toward my fate.
I look between them.
My grandmother's face is scared but determined. She's trying to protect me from something she thinks will destroy me. From a king who spent three hundred years in darkness. From a bond that was written in the stars before I was even born.
Aldric's face is gentle but absolute. He's looking at me like I'm everything. Like I'm worth waiting three hundred years for. Like he would burn the entire world down to keep me safe.
And I realize something that makes me pull my hand away from both of them.
I'm tired of people deciding what's good for me.
My grandmother spent my whole life protecting me by keeping me weak. By hiding what I am. By feeding me herbs that suppressed my power.
Kael rejected me in front of five hundred people because he thought he knew what I was.
And now my grandmother wants to keep me from Aldric because she's afraid of what he might be.
But I'm done being controlled.
I'm done being protected into smallness.
I'm done letting other people decide my life for me.
I look at my grandmother first and I see the fear in her eyes. I see her trying so hard to keep me safe that she's forgetting that I deserve the chance to live.
"I love you," I tell her. "And I know you've kept me alive because you love me. But I'm not staying in a cage anymore. Even a cage made of love."
Then I turn to Aldric and I step closer to him.
"I don't know who you are," I say. "I don't know what any of this means. But I feel it. This connection. This pull. And I'm not running from it."
I take his hand.
My grandmother makes a sound like her heart is breaking.
But I'm done breaking.
"Show me," I tell Aldric. "Show me what I'm meant to become."
He looks at me like he just got everything he's been dreaming about for three hundred years.
Then he pulls me into the darkness of the forest.
And I don't look back.