The boarding house creaked with the familiar groans of settling wood, but tonight every sound felt magnified sharp enough to cut through the fragile composure Aria tried and failed to cling to.
Her room was small, barely large enough for the bed, the chipped table, and the tiny chest at the foot of it. Yet tonight it felt cavernous, hollow, echoing with thoughts she could not quiet.
The windowpane rattled softly as a gust of cold wind swept through Hawthorne. Aria drew her knees to her chest beneath the thin blanket, staring at the faint glow of the streetlamp filtering in through the curtains.
She wished she could still her mind.
She wished she could feel nothing at all.
But Kaelan's voice followed her into the quiet, curling around her like smoke:
I think… I did too.
Why had he said that?Why had he looked at her like that?Why had she let it touch her?
She pressed her forehead to her knees.
This can't happen, she whispered to the dark.
Her mother's warnings wrapped around her memory like old scars.
"Don't let hope make a fool of you, Aria. The world won't catch you when you fall."
But what if she was already falling?
She lifted her head, eyes burning.
She had worked so hard to keep her life small, manageable, safe.There was no room for longing. No room for foolishness. No room for a man whose world would never make room for someone like her.
And yet…
Her chest still throbbed from the way he'd whispered her name.Her skin still warmed from the nearness of him.Her thoughts, traitorous, unrelenting, kept drifting to the look in his eyes, that soft, startled recognition.
As though he had found something he didn't even know he was searching for.
She rubbed her hands over her face violently, as if she could scrub the memory from her skin.
But she couldn't.
Her heart refused to listen.
When she finally drifted into an uneasy sleep near dawn, the dream came back.
The burning sky.The choking smoke.The fire consuming everything.Her voice, breaking, calling a name that didn't belong to this world.
Kael!
Not Kaelan.Kael.
The difference tore at her.
This time, in the dream, she reached him, just barely. Their fingers brushed, the barest touch, and she felt an overwhelming rush of something warm, familiar, devastating.
Love.
But not a new love.
Old.Ancient.Fractured.Lost.
She woke with a strangled gasp, tears already streaming down her face.
Her breath shook uncontrollably.
She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, as if she could calm the frantic pounding inside.
What is happening to me? she whispered into the predawn silence.
The dream left something behind, a hollow ache beneath her ribs, as though she had lost someone all over again.
Someone she shouldn't know.
Someone she shouldn't miss.
Someone who should not exist outside her imagination.
But he did.
His eyes.His voice.His hand reaching for hers.
It was Kaelan.
Or someone who wore his face.
Aria stumbled from the bed and splashed cold water on her face, gripping the edge of the washbasin to keep from collapsing.
It's nothing, she told her reflection.Just stress.Just exhaustion.Just a foolish girl imagining things because a man had looked at her kindly for once.
But she didn't believe a word of it.
Not when the dream felt like memory.Not when the ache in her chest felt older than her body.
Not when Kaelan's voice still whispered through her bones.
She paced the small room, shawl clutched tight around her shoulders.
She had to stop this. She had to.Whatever strange pull existed between them, she needed to sever it before it destroyed her.
Tomorrow, she would avoid him.Leave earlier.Leave later.Walk a different route.Do whatever it took.
Anything.
Because if she let this continue, if she let him any closer, she feared she would unravel completely.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands.
I can't afford to feel anything, she whispered.
But as the morning light slowly crept across her floorboards, painting the room in a pale, fragile gold…
Her heart whispered a truth she could not silence:
But you already do.