> Music Suggestion:
đ” "After Dark" by Essie Jain â Let this play low in the background as you read. It echoes the ache of truths long buried.
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The pendant was cold in Kyrell's hand. Burnt edges. A memory scorched into metal. And yet⊠it throbbed like a second pulse.
Lucian was in the library, unmoving, a flicker of candlelight casting long shadows behind him. The fire had dulled to coals, leaving the room dim and hushed, like a cathedral of lost things. He didn't turn when Kyrell entered.
But he knew.
Kyrell's voice cracked the silence.
"You wiped my mind."
Lucian closed his eyes. Not in surprise, but in surrender.
"You left me wandering," Kyrell continued. "You let me believe I was⊠no one."
Lucian turned slowly. His face looked older, tired, beautiful in that haunted way. "Because you were dying," he said, voice low. "Because I thoughtâif I let you remember, it would destroy what was left of you."
"And now?" Kyrell's voice trembled. "Now that I remember what I was to you⊠what we wereâwas it all just to make me forget how I chose you?"
"No," Lucian whispered. "It was to make you forget how I failed you."
Kyrell stepped forward, fingers clenched tight around the pendant. "I saw myself, Lucian. A hunter. And you wereâ" His voice caught. "You were on your knees. Bleeding."
Lucian looked away. "I killed many things to stay alive. But I never wanted you to be one of them."
"Then why did you take it from me? The memory?"
Lucian's throat bobbed with a swallow. "Because you had died once already in my arms. I thought... if I buried it, if I held you close enough... maybe I could stop it from happening again."
The room felt too small for what lived between them. Kyrell's heart pounded like a drumbeat in his ears. He stepped closer until Lucian's breath touched his lips.
"You had no right," Kyrell whispered.
"I know."
"I could have handled the truth."
"You were seventeen," Lucian said. "Human. Fragile. And I... I was not ready to lose you."
Kyrell's eyes stung. The pendant fell from his palm to the floor with a soft clink.
"I don't know what I am anymore," he said. "But I remember what we were."
Lucian's hand cupped Kyrell's cheek like the ghost of a promise. His thumb brushed under Kyrell's eye, catching a tear before it fell.
"I remember too," he said. "Every day. Every night I watched you sleep, I saw the scar where my past touched you."
"I don't know if I forgive you," Kyrell whispered, leaning in, drawn like a tide to something older than memory.
"I don't ask you to."
Then their mouths met.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't rough. It was desperate. As if the world might split in two and they would only exist in the space where mouths met and breath tangled.
Lucian tasted like ash and snow. Kyrell tasted like a storm breaking after years of drought.
Lucian pulled back first, his chest heaving. "Not yet," he breathed. "Not until you want me again, truly. Not just because you're drowning."
Kyrell's lips were swollen, his gaze molten. "And if I never do?"
Lucian smiled faintly, bitter and soft. "Then I will burn quietly. But I won't pull you into the fire."
They stood in silence.
The bond between them was frayed. Not brokenâbut no longer hidden.
Kyrell reached down and picked up the pendant. This time, he put it on.
Lucian looked as though he might shatter at the sight.
"What am I?" Kyrell asked, voice low.
Lucian said, "Not just mine."
A pause.
"But something else entirely."
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