The forest was no longer a sanctuary. It was a prison without walls—just infinite trees and throbbing quiet.
Isla walked, not aimlessly, but with numb determination. Her body was in motion, but her heart was hollowed out. Each step was a refusal of what she dreaded most—that Tristan had fallen. That the man she loved had fought for her, bled for her… and was dead.
She gripped the dagger he'd shoved into her hands as he pushed her away. The handle was warm against her, the only indication she hadn't imagined him. The kiss tingled on her lips, the smell of pine and ash remaining in her hair.
"If this is the last time I get to hold you…"
She closed her eyes tight, shoving the memory aside. No. She would not allow it to end like that. She wouldn't.
At the eve of sundown, she chanced upon an opening—a gentle brook basking through gnarled green rocks, an area that could have been serenity. That was not where she ended up. She kneels down, and she just weeps. Harsh, raw sobs. Not demure weeping for a court lady brought up behind silk borders, but ragged despair by a woman lovesick for one whom the world had labeled off-limits to her.
She wept until her throat was sore, until her body shook with something beyond fatigue. And when she had no tears left, she sat in stillness, eyes searing, lips pressed in a line of determination.
The world wished to rip them asunder?
Then she would rip it asunder first.
By moonrise, Isla had a plan.
It wasn't created out of reason—it was born of love. A burning, all-consuming love that made her bold and crazy in the same moment.
She knew where they'd bring Tristan if he survived. The Stonehold Tower. The darkest section of the palace, where traitors were shattered and discarded. No one escaped Stonehold.
But no one had ever loved like she did.
In the capital, meanwhile, the streets were abuzz with rumors. A guard had come back, limping and covered in blood, saying the princess had eloped with the captain of the royal guard. A traitor. A scandal. A betrayal.
The king was furious.
The Queen Mother had fainted.
And in the topmost tower of Stonehold, Tristan swung from iron manacles, his body battered, bloodied, but not broken.
He never spoke her name. Not once.
Even when they inquired. Even when they hit him. He kept her memory like a candle flame.
Three nights elapsed.
Isla crept back to the capital, shrouded in the shadows of her own city. She changed out of her riding attire into healer robes, stole herbs and salves to make the disguise complete. Her information on the palace—the tunnels, the guards' shifts, the blind spots—had once been mere curiosity.
Now, it was her lifeline.
She crept under the streets, through sewers and spiderwebs and blackness so dense it strangled her. Her hands oozed from the ascent. Her knees were skinned to pink. But she didn't desist.
She arrived in Stonehold with the bells ringing midnight.
The odor greeted her first—blood and mildew and despair. She fought through it.
At the far cell on the left, behind red iron bars in disrepair, Tristan slumped in chains, barely conscious.
"Tristan," she whispered.
His head jerked up—hardly. His good eye did, however, open wide.
"Isla…?" The voice cracked as old parchment sounds.
She came running at the bars, shaking. "I came back. I told you I would."
"Gods," he whispered, with a broken grin trying to take hold of his puffed-up lip.
"I go where my heart lives." She leaned between the bars, cradling his bruised cheek. "I love you. And I will burn this tower to the ground before I leave you here."
A tear dripped down his cheek and sank into the bruises.
"You're insane," he croaked.
"I'm yours," she replied matter-of-factly.
With stolen key and quiet stealth, she unlocked the cell and assisted him to his feet. He groaned, his weight on her, but remained standing.
"Do you think you can walk?" she whispered.
"I'll crawl if I must," he said grimly.
They crept down the corridor like specters. Isla was familiar with the blind spots, the dead spaces where even the keenest guard wouldn't look. But cruel and twisted fate had its way with them at the last stairwell.
A shout. Then metal from its sheath.
"Run," Tristan told her, pushing her towards the door.
She didn't.
Instead, Isla wheeled and threw a concealed knife, hitting the first guard in the throat. The second advanced—Tristan brought his shoulder down on him, snatching the sword of the man he knocked to the ground.
They faced each other, back to back. Like fighters. Like lovers.
When the hallway fell silent again, Tristan slumped against the wall. Breathing hard. Blood on his shirt—some his, some not.
Isla caught him before he fell. "We're not done. Not yet."
"No," he said, looking at her with something between awe and disbelief. "You saved me."
"You saved me first."
And then she kissed him.
Not a desperate goodbye kiss. Not this time. This one was different.
This was a promise.
Of all the kingdoms, all the gods, all the lives they would never have lived—this one second was theirs.
"I love you," she breathed into his mouth.
He smiled weakly. "Then let's live. Just to spite the world."