Chapter 15
764 Words
Kael
The letter reached me at dawn.
Nivia did not speak when she pressed it into my hand. Her eyes were red, her mouth drawn tight, as if words might shatter her if she tried to use them. That alone told me this was not a message meant to be read lightly.
I waited until she was gone.
Until the corridor was empty.
Until the guards’ footsteps faded.
Only then did I unfold the parchment.
Her handwriting was careful. Controlled. The same discipline she wore like armor in a house that never deserved her.
Kael,
I don’t know how to say goodbye without breaking myself open, so I won’t try to do it gently.
What we had was real. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise—not even yourself.
I will carry you with me wherever I go, even where you cannot follow.
Please don’t hate the world for this. It is cruel enough already.
Thank you for holding me like I mattered.
—L.
The world went silent.
Not quiet—absent.
I read it again. And again. Each word carved deeper, precise and merciless. My hands began to shake, the parchment trembling like a living thing between my fingers.
Goodbye.
The word echoed without ever being written.
I did not feel the pain immediately. Pain comes later, once shock releases its grip. What I felt was emptiness—vast and hollow—like something vital had been torn free and taken with her.
I folded the letter slowly, reverently, and pressed it to my chest.
I do not remember falling to my knees.
I only remember the sound that tore out of me—low, broken, animal—and the way the stone floor bit into my skin as if to remind me I was still alive.
Alive.
The irony was unbearable.
Later—how much later, I don’t know—a guard spoke my name.
“Did you hear?” he said quietly, voice stripped of its usual indifference. “Valerius’s daughter. She nearly died last night.”
The world snapped back into place violently, breath slamming into my lungs as if I’d been drowning.
“Nearly?” I asked.
The word scraped my throat raw.
“She lives,” he said. “Barely.”
My hands clenched so tightly my nails drew blood. Relief and agony collided inside me, leaving me dizzy, unsteady.
She lived.
And she had thought she wouldn’t.
I understood then what the letter truly was.
Not a goodbye.
A mercy.
She had believed she was sparing me a future of watching her be destroyed slowly, piece by piece, by a life she never chose. She had chosen a clean ending over prolonged suffering.
For me.
The realization broke something final and fragile inside my chest.
I sought out Nivia that same day, catching her in a narrow servants’ passage where eyes rarely lingered. She startled when she saw me, fear flashing briefly before resolve replaced it.
“She lives,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “But she is watched. Closely.”
“Can I see her?” My voice betrayed me then—too tight, too urgent.
Nivia hesitated.
“She asked me to,” she said. “To see you. To tell her… that you received the letter.”
My breath stuttered.
“Did you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“And?” I pressed.
“She cried,” Nivia said softly. “But not with regret.”
Hope flared dangerously.
“Can you—” I stopped myself, swallowing hard. “Can you arrange for me to see her?”
Nivia looked around the corridor before answering, weighing risks the way people in this house learned to do early or not survive at all.
“I can try,” she said. “No promises. Your existence is watched now. Hers too. But—” She met my eyes, something fierce there. “I owe her that much.”
Try.
It was not certainty.
It was not safety.
But it was everything.
That night, alone in my cell, I took out the letter again. I smoothed its creases, traced the shape of her name as if it were a wound that might heal if touched gently enough.
She had chosen death over a life without me.
I had survived worse than death.
If the gods were cruel enough to keep her alive—
then I would endure anything to see her again.
Memory had nearly killed her.
I would not let it be the only thing we had left.
- Writer
