************
"You shouldn't have named it after me," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because blades break."
"So do people."
He touched the hilt — blackened steel, laced with ancient runes.
Lysara.
"If I forget you," he whispered, "at least my blade won't."
Years later, when she saw that same weapon pierce a priest's heart…
She wondered if it still remembered her.
***************
The cold wind howled through the bones of the ruined village of Branthor Hollow. Lysara Vale stepped over the burnt frame of a child's cradle, her boots silent against the ash. Her silver cloak fluttered behind her like a ghost. Even the wind dared not whistle too loudly around her.
She didn't flinch at the corpses.
It was the message carved into the stone wall that made her stop.
Do you still dream of me, Lysara?
—D.T.
Her breath caught.
The mark below the initials — a broken serpent swallowing its own tail — she recognized it instantly. She'd seen it once, seven years ago, seared into a wax seal on a blood-stained letter she should've destroyed.
He's alive.
Dren Talovar, the boy she was meant to kill, the heir she'd spared — was alive.
Worse than alive. He was becoming legend.
Behind her, the younger inquisitors murmured, unsure whether to speak. She silenced them with a glance. Then turned her eyes back to the wall. Her fingers — gloved in runic silk — trembled.
A memory surged.
Rain. Fire. That night.
The screams had stopped, but she'd found him still breathing, body pinned under rubble, blood caked into his once-noble face. His lips, broken and full of loathing, had curled into something half-smile, half-prayer.
"You won't do it," he'd whispered, voice rasped with blood. "You're too much like me."
And she hadn't.
She'd turned her blade, lied to the others, said the body burned before she arrived.
Lysara blinked the memory away. "Fan out," she said quietly. "He's taunting us. That means he's still close."
The inquisitors obeyed.
But he was already watching.
Hidden beneath the collapsed tower, cloaked in shadow, Dren Talovar watched her through fractured glass. Seven years had twisted him — not just in body, but in soul. His once-gentle hands bore claws now, faintly sheened with silver blood. His eyes — once warm — were now the same color as stormlight before a funeral.
But when he looked at her, none of that darkness mattered.
She hadn't changed.
Still elegant. Still terrifying. Still the woman who had spared him when all others wanted him dead.
Still the woman he hated for what she didn't do.
You should have killed me, Lysara.
And now?
Now she'd have to suffer the consequence.
Lysara returned to the village square. Alone now, beneath the dying sky, she knelt beside a blood pool that hadn't yet dried. Her fingers dipped into it.
Still warm.
He's watching.
A slow chill crept up her spine — not from fear, but from something worse.
Anticipation.
"You never were subtle," she said aloud, barely more than a whisper.
"Neither were you."
The voice came from behind her — dark velvet soaked in venom. Familiar.
She turned — fast — blade drawn.
But he was already gone.
Only a whisper lingered near her ear:
"I dream of you, too."
Her hand shot to her dagger — but her chest was already rising too fast.
He hadn't touched her.
But her body betrayed her.
Later, by firelight, Lysara sat in her camp, fingers brushing her collarbone where his breath had grazed her skin. It had been years — years since she'd heard his voice, years since she'd let herself remember his mouth, his eyes, the way his gaze used to linger on her lips when he thought she wouldn't notice.
And yet one whisper had undone her composure more than the bloodbath ever could.
In her tent, she wrote a report with a shaking hand. But she couldn't stop replaying his words.
I dream of you, too.
Far above, on a crag of blackened stone, Dren stood barefoot, the blood wind caressing his skin. His wounds — old and new — throbbed with each heartbeat, but he didn't care.
He had seen her again.
And soon, she would see all of him.
The man. The monster. The curse she created the night she chose mercy.
And if her lips still trembled when she said his name…
He would ruin her with it.