The worn leather was hidden in a pocket sewn into his coat lining. Kaelen thought I had never found it.
I drew it out.
It was the herbalist's journal I had lost in Moonwillow Grove a decade ago. Years of handling had softened the cover.
Dried moonpetal still clung between pages covered in my younger, slanted handwriting.
Kaelen stared at the book. “You knew?”
I pressed the journal to his chest and rested my forehead against his.
Then I opened my mind to him.
The last walls between us dropped. Through our bond, I gave Kaelen what I could never fit into an oath.
He saw Caleb as I did now: a memory without a bond, an old scar without pain.
Then, he saw himself.
I gave him the years after the Severance Ritual, the first time I recognized him, and every day we had built since.
He fel
