Chapter 17
Ifollowed Evander deeper into the ruins.
I kept telling myself I could still turn back—that I hadn’t yet crossed any threshold I couldn’t retreat from—but with each step, that certainty weakened.
The garden stretched around us, unchanged at first glance—the same winding paths, the same heavy air of neglect—but something beneath it felt…
different. As though the world had shifted in response to my choice to trust him, almost as if it had been waiting for it.
Evander led me into the dusty remains of the castle, the air of decay pressing in after the fresh spring breeze of the grounds.
Directly ahead rose the grand staircase, but Evander guided me down a narrow corridor half-buried beneath fallen stone, the remnants of some long-forgotten collapse.
Broken pillars leaned at precarious angles, and what had once been a polished floor lay uneven beneath my feet, forcing me to watch every step.
And yet, despite the ruin, there was a strange sense of direction to it—as though this path had been cleared not by time, but by intent.
Evander glanced back as he stepped easily over a jagged slab of marble. “This way.”
I hesitated at a wider gap in the rubble, weighing how best to cross it. But before I could decide he turned and extended his hand. I stared at it a moment longer than necessary, a flicker of instinct warning me that accepting it meant more than simply crossing a gap.
Tentatively, I placed my hand in his. His fingers closed around mine—warm, steady, and unmistakably real. Not like a dream at all, or anything that should vanish the moment I questioned it. Involuntarily my own grip tightened on his.
My heart betrayed me with a sudden, uneven rhythm as he guided me across—the same reaction I’d felt when the other version of him had touched me. But this felt different, grounded in a way my life as a thief left me unaccustomed to…which unsettled me far more than the dream ever had.
His grip remained firm until my footing steadied on the other side, but he didn’t immediately let go…nor did I. For a moment, neither of us moved, as though the space between one step and the next had stretched into a fragile bridge leading to a place I wasn’t entirely prepared for.
Yet I couldn’t make myself pull away. I let the moment linger long enough to feel the quiet shift in his hold, the subtle tightening of his fingers, as though he had come to the same realization and had no more intention of breaking it than I did.
By the time he released my hand several corridors later, he did so with the faintest hesitation, as though reluctant to part. I immediately noticed the absence of his touch and yearned for him to reach for me again.
We continued on in silence. The farther we went, the more the ruin began to change.
Collapsed stone gave way to creeping vines, thick with thorns that curled around the archway ahead as though guarding whatever lay beyond.
Pale blossoms dotted the brambles, their petals faintly luminous in the dim light, as though the dream itself was trying to reclaim what had been lost and preserve what still refused to fade.
Evander reached the doorway first, thickly guarded with thorns.
I hesitated at the long, cruel thorns, but he simply pushed them aside; they recoiled at his touch, as though they recognized him.
The space beyond opened into a vast chamber…
or what remained of one. Shelves stretched towards the ceiling, some still standing, others collapsed in splintered heaps across the floor.
Books lay scattered everywhere—pages torn, bindings warped with age, as though time itself had unraveled them.
Not all of it was ruin—a small section near the center had been cleared.
A table stood there, uneven but intact, covered in open books, loose parchment, and hastily scrawled notes.
Candles burned low in melted pools of wax, quiet evidence of the hours Evander must have spent poring over the volumes long into the night, when the thin sunlight eventually gave way to darkness.
“What have you been studying?” I asked, unable to keep the awe from my voice at this pocket of relentless, stubborn effort in a world left to abandonment.
Evander moved past me to the table. “Unable to sit and wait for the curse to solve itself, I’ve been searching for a way to break it.” There was no arrogance in his tone, only frustration edged with determination.
He picked up a loose sheet of parchment, scanning it as though he had already read it a hundred times and hoped it might have somehow changed to reveal information he might have overlooked.
“More of this place returns every time you enter this world,” he added, almost absently. “Shelves I couldn’t reach before, texts previously sealed, fragments that were once missing.” His gaze flicked briefly towards me. “You’re not just wandering through this world—you’re restoring it.”
Restoring it from what? The question rose sharper this time, no longer distant curiosity but something closer to recognition, as if a memory glimmered behind a translucent curtain, waiting for me to push it aside and retrieve it.
My gaze drifted over the shelves again, lingering on the sections that remained broken, the ones still incomplete.
The answer still eluded me, but in this chamber I felt closer to it than ever before, as if I could reach out and pluck it from the shelves themselves…
as though it had been here all along, waiting for me to remember it.
I glanced back at the table stacked high with the spellbooks he’d pored over through each attempt, then at him, noting the weariness and discouragement that lined his face. “You’ve been doing this alone?” I asked. Something in his weary nod made my chest tighten. “That sounds…exhausting.”
He exhaled quietly. “It is.”
Evander set the parchment down and reached for one of the open books.
“With your influence on the world, I’m hopeful you’ll be able to help me with something.
This is a spell I discovered shortly after you awoke the first time.
” He shifted closer so we could both read from the page, his shoulder brushing mine.
I leaned over the page, though it was difficult to concentrate when my senses were filled with his nearness—the warmth that radiated off him to encircle me, the way his breath fanned my cheek as we studied the spell, his slight shifts in posture that kept me very aware of just how close we were.
When I glanced toward him and found him likewise stealing a look at me, it was all I could do to force my eyes back to the page.
The page was filled with dense script—symbols woven between lines of text I didn’t fully recognize, though something about them tugged faintly at my awareness, like a word half-remembered. “It’s incomplete,” I said.
“They all are,” he replied. “Fragments of something that used to make sense.”
I frowned, my gaze lingering on the symbols. The longer I looked, the more that faint familiarity sharpened into something deeper, like a memory half-remembered. Without thinking, I reached out and brushed my magic lightly over the page.
As I suspected, a recollection stirred within the words.
A flicker, no more than a breath, flashed behind my eyes.
Voices overlapping, not in chaos, but in perfect, deliberate harmony, their words threading together into something whole.
The symbols beneath my fingers quivered, burning brighter, complete in a way the page before me was not.
The vision vanished, leaving only the dim, fractured text behind.
Beside me, Evander had gone still. I looked up to find his gaze fixed not on the page but on me, sharp and intent. My pulse quickened. “Did you see something?” he asked.
A flicker of unease curled in my chest. I straightened slightly and folded my arms across my chest, as if the gesture could protect my secret.
“I suppose anything is possible within a dream.”
Something in his expression shifted, but though he didn’t press the matter, I was certain he’d witnessed the moment I’d discovered the hidden memory and knew I was lying.
I found myself hating the lie, longing to open up to him fully, but still not sure I dared allow myself to be vulnerable, however strongly I was attracted to him.
“I recognize these symbols,” I said shakily, hoping to divert his suspicion. I took up the nearby quill and ink and penned the spell as revealed by the recollection I’d witnessed, conscious of the way he leaned over my shoulder to watch.
When I finished, I felt the heat of his gaze studying me for a moment longer before looking back to the text. He traced a line with his finger. “Now I understand why it didn’t work when I attempted it on my own—the spell requires two voices, spoken together.”
Of course it did. I tightened my jaw. Cooperation wasn’t my style, but both versions of Evander seemed to possess an unsettling ability to draw me into it anyway, despite my stubborn reluctance.
I frowned warily. “Are you certain it won’t turn me into something unpleasant?”
Something in his expression softened and his mouth curved faintly. “Not to worry, you’re too intriguing for me to want to change you in any way.”
The words enfolded my heart. It appeared that this stoic version of Evander was not entirely immune to flirting. The familiarity calmed some of my reservation.
He motioned me over, shifting to make room. I stepped into the space beside him—closer than necessary, but he didn’t step back.
He tapped two separate lines of text. “I’ll take this portion, you read the second. No matter what happens, keep reading until the incantation is complete.”
I exhaled slowly, steadying myself. Evander nodded once, and with that signal, we began.