22. Alaric
ALARIC
I'm in my old library, where the air holds the weight of undisturbed years.
The heavy oak doors remain closed, sealing in the quiet that has become my habit.
I have honored Hannah's requests for two days now, even as every instinct pulls me toward her.
Nathan's shadow lengthens across Briar Glen, hunters prowl, and fragments of Elspeth's old secrets at my ears.
Yet I remain here, because forcing myself would only confirm what she already suspects: that I'm just like her ex-husband.
The grandfather clock in the corner has not ticked in years. Its hands rest at a fixed hour, a small mercy I once welcomed. Tonight, the silence presses differently.
A knock echoes through from the main door.
I cross into the corridor, my steps muffled on the worn runner.
When I open the door, Elias stands on the wide stone steps, his coat cut in an old European style that speaks of another century.
His eyes, sharp as polished flint, meet mine without warmth or accusation.
"Alaric," he says. "The town stirs with unwelcome visitors. Draycott being one of them. It's time I came."
I step aside, letting him enter. We move without further greeting into the library. Elias surveys the room—the draped furniture, the books untouched since the last war, the single chair I use. He chooses to stand near the window, fingers tracing the velvet curtain drawn tight against the night.
"Hunters have grown bolder," he says, turning to face me. "But that is not why I crossed three territories before nightfall. I came because I felt the disturbance around you. Not fear. Not grief. Something older waking."
I lean against the desk, arms crossed. "Then you came for nothing. Whatever you felt is mine to manage."
"It is not managing you," Elias says. "It is moving through you like weather through a cracked house."
"Poetic."
"Accurate." His gaze sharpens. "Where is the woman?"
"Where she asked me to leave her. Away from me."
"And still it pulls this hard." Elias's voice lowers. "Then I was right to come."
"She needs space to weigh the truths for herself. Pushing would prove I value my judgment above hers."
He moves to the far shelf, where a small silver frame rests face-down beneath a thin layer of dust. He lifts it and turns it toward the light. The portrait holds a woman with steady eyes and a half-smile that once anchored my world. Her name lingers in memory but stays unspoken between us.
"You have carried this grief for too long," Elias says, setting the frame upright on the shelf. "Loyalty does not require you to become a mausoleum."
"Stop."
"No. You have been careful for ninety years, and look what it has made of you."
The woman in the frame belonged to a life I buried whole. I loved her. I failed her. Those two truths seemed enough to build a prison from.
"Hannah is not her," Elias says.
"I know."
"Do you?" He steps closer. "The first bond you mistook for destiny was grief wearing a crown. This one is different. Rare. Reciprocal, if she ever chooses to meet it. It does not ask you to guard a memory. It asks whether you can stand before a living woman without making her pay for the dead."
The words strike where I have no armor.
Elias continues, mercilessly gentle. "A rare bond does not make her yours. It makes the truth harder to avoid. She remains free. She must remain free, or the bond curdles into possession."
I stare toward the face in the frame and, the memory hurts cleanly. Not as a chain. As a grave.
"I loved her," I say.
"Yes."
"And Hannah is not a second chance at her."
"No."
"I lied to Hannah because I thought knowledge would endanger her," I say. "But I chose what she was allowed to know. I made fear sound noble. That is not protection."
"No," Elias says. "It is only another locked door."
"What do you expect me to do?" I ask.
"Stop treating silence as mercy."
"She told me to stay away."
"Then stay away." Elias' gaze does not soften. "But do not confuse absence with honesty. If you cannot stand at her door, leave her something true enough to test without touching her. A choice is not a choice if you keep the lock and call it safety."
I almost laugh. "You always did prefer impossible instructions."
"I prefer clean ones." He turns toward the door. "Tell her what the bond is not. Not ownership. Not replacement. Not a hunger she is required to answer. Begin there, before Nathan teaches her an uglier version."
I draw the curtains wide. Moonlight spills in, and I sit at the desk, pull out a fresh sheet of paper, and begin to write.
Not a plea for forgiveness, not explanations wrapped in pretty restraint.
Plain facts: what the bond is, what it's not, why I'm usually reclusive, and every choice I took from her.
No plea either. I title the pages simply—What I Owe You—and put them in her mailbox.
The room no longer feels preserved in amber. I leave the portrait facing forward, the curtains open. Hannah has to forgive me. I do not expect her to though, not yet. But I will not be silent or be a shadow anymore. I will do everything I can to win her back.
I extinguish the lamp, and the weight on my chest feels lighter—not gone, but no longer absolute. The future I once refused to imagine now waits in the space between us, unclaimed but possible.