Chapter 20
651 Words
Livia
When he holds my hand now, it is not in secret.
The room is quiet but not hidden, the candlelight steady instead of trembling. I can feel the scars in his palm, the strength in his fingers—real, present, undeniable. Kael stands beside me, not below, not behind.
Beside.
I am still weak. My body has not forgiven me yet for what I tried to do. Some mornings my limbs feel heavy, my breath shallow, as if I am still learning how to inhabit myself again.
But when he looks at me, I feel whole.
I had imagined our reunion a thousand times while I lay between waking and sleep—imagined tears, imagined despair, imagined breaking all over again. Instead, there is something quieter between us now.
Resolve.
We have already broken. There is nothing left to shatter.
I watch him from the edge of the bed as he moves through the room with that careful awareness born of survival. Even here, even now, he does not forget what the world has taught him. But there is a difference in him—a steadiness that was not there before.
Hope has weight.
It changes the way a man stands.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” he says without looking at me.
I smile faintly. “I always do.”
He turns then, crossing the room in two strides, kneeling in front of me as if it is the most natural thing in the world. He does not bow. He does not lower himself.
He meets me at eye level.
“Regret?” he asks quietly.
I don’t hesitate. “No.”
Not the night.
Not the love.
Not even the pain.
“I regret that I almost let the world convince me I was alone,” I continue. “I regret that I believed memory was all I was allowed.”
His thumb brushes gently over my knuckles. “Never again.”
Outside these walls, plans move like shadows. My father is distracted, angry, grasping at control that is already slipping through his fingers. The house trembles without knowing why. The arena still roars, unaware it is witnessing its own ending.
My aunt and uncle are fire made patient.
They do not rush.
They prepare.
And I—
I wait.
Not helplessly. Not quietly.
I wait knowing exactly where I am going.
There will be one last match. One last performance demanded of Kael by a world that never deserved him. I hate that part. I always will. But I understand it now—not as submission, but as strategy.
After that, everything changes.
Sometimes, when fear creeps in late at night, I imagine the life I want so clearly it feels like memory instead of dream.
A small house.
Open land.
Morning light instead of stone walls.
A place where blood is something that stays inside the body.
A place where names are spoken gently and often.
A place where I belong to myself—
and choose him freely.
“I don’t know how to live quietly,” I admit to him once, my forehead resting against his. “I was never taught.”
He smiles, slow and real. “I’ll learn with you.”
That is when I know—truly know—that no matter what burns behind us, no matter how violently the world resists, it has already lost.
Because love like this does not fade into memory.
It survives poison.
It survives chains.
It survives cages disguised as comfort.
I was born in a house that taught me obedience.
I will leave it as a woman who chose.
And when the doors finally close behind us—when the arena falls silent and the balcony stands empty forever—
I will not look back.
I will take his hand.
And I will walk toward the life that was always meant to be ours.
- Writer
