20. 19 #3
“I had these dreams … A girl with flaming hair calling me into the woods. I never saw her face. Only heard her voice. I thought nothing of it at first. But they kept coming. Weeks of it. She haunted me.” His jaw tightened.
“Then Mabel arrived. I met her in passing that first night, and I knew. The second she spoke, I knew it was her. The voice. The hair. And suddenly the dreams had a face. The most heartbreakingly beautiful face I’d ever seen. ”
His gaze flicked to Ada, something raw slipping through. “The dreams didn’t stop. They were becoming …”—his eyes dragged over her, assessing, almost shy—“… intimate.”
“Is this the part where you tell me you followed your dreams?” Ada huffed.
“I wasn’t going to do anything—until I found out she had them too.” Lance’s gaze cast down over Mabel deep in the garden, her copper hair standing out among the frost.
Ada stilled. “It’s an act of the gods.”
“Of course it is,” Lance said. “I just wanted to know what it meant. Why we were sharing dreams. And then I … I fell in love with her. Just for them to take her away.” He sank further against the stone. “What did the gods want from us? Why push us together if it ends this way?”
Ada’s eyes flicked to the sky, searching for answers she wouldn’t find. “Maybe this isn’t the end. Maybe it was a test. Maybe you passed.” Her eyes flickered to the copper-headed girl. “Maybe she passed.”
Lance didn’t respond right away. He just stared, jaw tight, eyes fixed on Mabel like she might look back and undo everything.
Then, low, almost like the words hurt to say, he whispered, “She told me she loves me.”
Ada turned to him sharply. “When?”
“Today,” he said, shoulders drawing in. “Before she broke up with me.”
Ada blinked. “And you brought me out here why, exactly?”
“I needed someone else to see it,” he said, his voice thin. “To see if she’s already gone.”
Ada didn’t make a joke. She just looked at him for a long beat. Then, quietly, she rested a hand on his arm. Not for comfort, just to let him know he wasn’t as invisible as he felt.
They lapsed into silence. The wind whispered through the frozen ivy as they watched Mabel and Theodore’s figures grow small against the snow.
Lance’s jaw set, and a dark humor flickered in his eyes. “Perhaps I will storm the chapel,” he mused. “Sweep aside guards, drag her from the altar—”
Ada threw her head back and laughed, the sound bright against the hush of snow. When she finally caught her breath, she wiped a tear of mirth from her cheek.
“Ah, yes,” she teased, “because nothing says true love like armed insurrection at dawn. You’d make quite the hero—wanted, banned, and forever etched in every royal proclamation as a traitor.”
Lance scowled, but even he couldn’t suppress a reluctant grin. “I’d do it. For her.”
Ada reached up and tugged his hood down over his ears. “Then do this instead. Be her anchor until she’s ready to choose her own escape. If it’s truly what the gods want, she’ll need you by her side.”
He looked at her, serious now. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You must,” she said softly, stepping closer so her words were just for him. “However this ends—whatever it becomes—we choose her.” She met his eyes, steady and sure.
They lingered on the frost-touched balcony, Lance’s expression settling into unwavering determination. Beside him, Ada wore a hint of ease, as if—for a moment—the weight had lifted.
After a long beat of silence, a tired, crooked smile broke onto Lance’s face. “You’re being awfully kind for someone who insists she isn’t my friend.”
Heat crept up Ada’s cheeks, and she refused to look at him. “I’m being decent. There’s a difference.”
“Whatever you say.” He grinned, unbearably smug.
Ada opened her mouth to fire back, but her gaze caught onto the two—no, three—royals below. Her stomach plummeted. “Lance.”
“What? Just admit it—”
“Lance, look.” She grabbed his face and turned him toward the garden.
Lance’s eyes widened. His hands clamped the balcony rail as he straightened his spine, all traces of humor gone. “What is he doing here?”
Out in the frost-laced garden, Cavric stood a short distance from Mabel and Theodore. He looked to be in conversation with the prince, as Mabel hovered just behind Theodore’s shoulder.
“He’s not meant to be here for another month,” Ada whispered. Then, quieter, “Do you think he knows?”
“Why else would he be here?” Lance’s voice snapped like ice. His eyes couldn’t leave Mabel. Even from the balcony, he could see her trying to hide, trying to be small.
He’d always known how this would end. He knew the leash her father kept around her throat, knew their affair would never stay hidden, knew that choosing him would cost her everything.
Maybe he’d been foolish enough to believe he could fight it.
That he could defy duty, blood, and expectation by sheer force of wanting her.
But above all, he knew he loved her.
And seeing her down there now, shrinking back into the girl she’d been before him, before she ever dared to imagine more for herself—
He wouldn’t stand for it.
He’d already lost her once—he refused to lose the woman she’d become.