Chapter 259
ELENA
The world tried to pull me back.
I felt my body rise toward the surface, like a swimmer breaking through the final layer of water before air. My awareness strained toward consciousness.
Light. Motion. The scent of the herbs in Dr. Voss’s office. But something inside me screamed not to go. Not yet. Not now.
Not when I was finally close
My heartbeat thundered behind my ribs. My hands clenched unconsciously against the worn arms of the chair, fingertips tingling. I wasn’t ready. But I was afraid too. Afraid of what might be waiting for me if I stayed submerged.
“Elena,” Dr. Voss’s voice came through the fog, low and commanding, like it had in other sessions. But this time it wasn’t comfort. It was an anchor. “Don’t wake up yet. You need to finish this.”
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. My breath caught. I couldn’t speak the fear that churned inside me. Could only whisper a strangled, “Please…”
“This is a reckoning,” he said, firmer now. “This is a memory that has needed to surface. One that has been repressed by you and by the people who have led you astray for too long. And once it surfaces, everything else will follow. You have to remember. There is no other way.”
My body fought it, wanted to run. But some deeper part of me—the part that remembered being brave–listened.
So I stayed.
And I fell.
***
I was back in the woods with a teenaged Cassandra. She sat before me, her bloodied arm held tight to her chest.
The air in the memory felt too real–sharp and cold in my lungs, filled with the mossy, green scent of the forest I hadn’t stepped foot in for over a decade. But I knew this place. My body remembered it, even before my mind did.
And now that I was back here, the weight of what I had forgotten pressed down on me.
I was a child again, but with all the ache and understanding of the woman I’d become.
I saw Cassandra–young, wounded, afraid—and I felt two things at once: a swell of compassion for the girl she had been, and a rising, bitter grief for everything she would choose to become.
And me? I wasn’t scared in the memory, not really. I was angry. Righteous. So sure of who I was and what I had to do.
I saw that now–not as a ghost floating above the moment, but from within it. I remembered how it felt to stand in those too- big boots and think I was invincible. I remembered the quiet terror I’d pushed down to help a stranger, to do the right thing when no one was watching.
And I realized something else.
No one had ever told me to be brave that day.
I simply was.
The weight of that truth knocked the wind out of me. How many times since had I been told I wasn’t strong enough? That I couldn’t be trusted with leadership, with love, with legacy?
But I had saved a life. At ten years old.
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I had stood in the dark with a bow and a heart full of courage.
And no one-
no lie, no manipulation, tio forgotten memory–could take that away from me now.
I fell completely back into the memory.
I was ten again..
I had my bow. My arrows. My cloak. My boots that didn’t quite fit but made me feel like a warrior.
I moved through the trees carefully. Focused. The woods were darker here. Denser. Every leaf seemed sharp with warning.
“The rogues. They found someone.”
“Who?”
She swallowed. “A prince, I think.”
My chest tightened.
A prince?
I stood.
“We have to help him,” I said.
Her eyes widened. She shook her head fast. “No. I can’t. I told you, can barely stand.”
I looked back the way I’d come. My hands trembled as I reached for the bow
across my back.
“Then stay here.”
I nocked an arrow.
“I’ll go.”
The wind shifted as I slipped through the trees. Every step I took seemed louder than the last. Every branch I pushed aside screamed at me to stop.
But I didn’t.
I moved like the hunters I’d watched my whole life. Careful. Measured. Alert.
The voices grew clearer.
I reached the edge of the next clearing and crouched low behind a fallen log.
There were three of them.
Big. Unshaven. Dangerous.
And in the middle of them was a boy. Slumped. Bleeding. Barely upright. His hair was dark and thick, matted with blood. There was a gash on his head, just above his brow.
One of the rogues raised a rock over him.
I didn’t think.
I loosed the arrow.
It flew clean.
It hit the rogue in the chest with a sound I’d never forget.
He fell. The rock clattered harmlessly to the dirt.
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Chapter 259
The other two rogues turned on me instantly.
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One had a blade. He flung it at me as I raised my bow again. The arrow struck him in the shoulder even as the knife grazed my forehead.
Pain tore through me. Warm and sticky. I reached up and felt blood The knife had split my eyebrow.
A scar. I knew it, even then.
The third rogue was coming fast. His teeth were bared.
I shot him through the chest at nearly point–blank range.
He fell without a sound.
The last one, wounded and staggering, drew another knife.
This one was beautiful. Etched and ornate.
“Took it from a pack wolf,” he said. “A girl like you. I cut her good. Now I’ll cut you.”
I stared at the knife. Took in the beautiful detail of it.
It had to be Cassandra’s.
Traised my bow.
He hesitated.
A sound behind me- -a snapped twig.
He turned and ran.
Coward.
I lowered my bow and ran to the boy.
He was barely breathing. His chest rose shallow and fast. His blood had soaked into the dirt beneath him.
I dropped to my knees. Tore fabric from my shirt and pressed it to the wound on his head.
“You’re going to be okay,” I told him. I don’t know if I believed it.
His eyes blinked open, unfocused.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
It was the faintest breath of a sound.
I stared down at him. Then I heard movement behind me.
I turned.
Cassandra.
She had followed after all.
She stepped into the clearing, her face white with shock. She looked at me. At the boy. At the bodies.
I saw her shoulders sink.
“I have to go,” I said quickly, standing. “If my brother sees me here, I’m done for.”
She nodded slowly.
Chapter 259
I pulled my bow from my back and held it out to her.
“Here. In case that rogue comes back.”
Her eyes widened as she took it.
“Wait,” she said, but I was already turning.
I glanced back once at the boy.
His head had lolled to the side. Unconscious again.
And then I ran.
Ran through the trees toward Mason’s voice.
Toward the safety of home.
Leaving behind the truth. The blood. The prince I had saved.
And the girl who would grow up to lie about it.
