Dear Nazareth
Takada Castle is everything I always dreamed it would be.
There are no cherry blossoms. It's the wrong season for them — just the moat and the stone and the sky doing its quiet Japanese thing, completely indifferent to the woman sitting on a bench at the water's edge writing in a diary for the seventh consecutive day.
I keep replaying the last thing you said to me.
Your hands on my face.
Your voice cracking open on those three words like you were offering me the last piece of your soul before the world took you away.
You said it like you knew what was coming.
Like you needed me to carry it.
I didn't get to say it back.
I've been saying it every day since, like love is the kind of thing that crosses distance without a signal.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Why aren’t you here yet?
Ian said you’d be here. He said this was the plan, the one you two made together in case everything went to hell.
This specific place.
And I’ve been here every day. In this exact spot. Waiting.
I’ve watched the light change over the water seven times. I’ve learned the swans’ routines. The big one charges if you have bread. I respect him for it.
I've written to you every morning and every evening and every hour in between when the waiting gets loud enough that I need somewhere to put it.
I miss you.
I miss you.
I'm still right here. Waiting. Hoping.
Every day.
But today feels different than yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day…you get it.
Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is. But I feel it. In my chest, in my bones, in my heart.
Nazareth…I think…
I think…
God, it’s hard to even write. But I…
I don’t think you’re coming.
I think…
I feel like…
I lost you today.
Reth and Sophia's story continues and concludes in…
A Delicate Kind of Carnage
The final book in the Pretty Savage trilogy.