The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Its glow bathed the room in gold, casting lazy shadows across the high-vaulted stone. Kaelira sat with her legs curled beneath her on the rug, robes loosened at the neck, curls damp from a quick wash. Dorian rested beside her, a half-full glass of crimson wine in his hand, his eyes never far from her.
They weren't touching now. But the space between them pulsed with memory and magnetism.
---
Kaelira ran a finger along the rim of her glass, her thoughts turning like smoke.
"I hated you," she said, quietly.
Dorian looked down. "I know."
"I hated how much I loved you first."
That made him glance up.
"When they chained me," she continued, voice a fragile ember, "I kept waiting for you to come. For you to speak. But you stood there. I watched your jaw tighten. Your hands shake. You wanted to stop them. And you didn't."
He set his glass down, slowly. "I was twenty-one. I thought if I obeyed them, they'd spare your life. That you'd be exiled, not—" He broke off, throat tightening.
"You were the only part of that world that ever felt like mine," he said. "And they made me watch them take you."
Kaelira stared into the fire.
Then whispered:
"You gave me silence when I needed your scream."
That hurt him more than any curse. She saw it in his eyes.
---
A long pause. He shifted beside her, closer now. Not touching her—but his hand brushed the floor where hers had been.
"I know apologies don't fix lifetimes," he said. "But if I had been stronger—"
"You weren't," she interrupted gently. "And I died. That's the truth."
She looked at him, really looked.
"But you're here now. And I don't know what to do with that."
---
They sat in silence again, but this one was different. This one wasn't born of old wounds. It was the stillness between inhale and exhale. A moment that belonged only to them.
Then he said softly, "What do you dream of now?"
She blinked. It was such a strange question. So simple. So gentle.
"I don't know," she said truthfully. "I've spent every breath chasing what was taken. My name. My fire. My voice."
A pause.
"I don't know what I want… now that I have it back."
He leaned forward, gaze warm.
"Then let's find out together."
---
She turned toward him again, eyes softened with a pain that wasn't sharp anymore—but still there. Always would be. Kaelira reached out, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead. Her fingers lingered there, then slid down to his jaw.
"Do you still feel it?" she whispered.
He didn't need to ask what she meant. He took her wrist, gently guiding her hand to his chest. Over his heart.
"I never stopped."
She felt it — the echo of the bond between them, not forged by blood or vows, but by shared scars and stolen years. A slow, steady beat. Warm. Real. The one thing that never changed.
---
That night, they did not rush. They undressed like lovers learning each other for the first time — not because they'd forgotten, but because they remembered everything.
The ache.
The fire.
The love that had tried to kill them, and the love that somehow brought them back.
---
Later, wrapped in each other beneath silk sheets and flickering firelight, Kaelira whispered, "If we fall again, Dorian…"
He kissed her forehead and replied,
"Then we rise again. Together."
---
And for the first time in lifetimes, Kaelira slept—
not in fear,
not in memory,
but in peace.