"Can I just.....have one life?"
Clarisse froze.
Her slender arms slowly closed around me, uncertain at first, as if afraid I would shatter in her grasp. I probably would have, if she hadn't held me tighter a moment later. My skin was burning cold, my heart thudding with the thunder of countless memories—voices, faces, blades, betrayals—every version of me bleeding into this one trembling frame. I felt her breath catch, felt the stiffness in her spine as she realized I wasn't exaggerating. Something in me had broken open, and now I couldn't stitch it back.
I sobbed. I couldn't stop.
I clutched her dress like a drowning girl to driftwood, and she just let me, quietly smoothing my hair, her lips parting like she wanted to say something but didn't know how. What words could you possibly give to someone who had remembered being burned alive, poisoned by her own child, drowned in winter floods, and loved to death by a man who whispered forever?
I was Delmira—the queen who ruled too gently, and was set aflame by the one man she once dared trust.
I was Veanna—the spirited daughter sold like a cattle bride, who slit her own throat before she could be used again.
And I was the many unnamed ones, the quiet girls with wide eyes and hollow hearts, whose voices never made it into the scrolls of Solvanne. Lives stolen, stolen, stolen. Again. Again. Again.
I couldn't breathe in this body anymore.
Clarisse leaned her forehead against mine, whispering like she wasn't supposed to be this kind to me, like she'd been taught to hate me but didn't have it in her to follow through.
"Elira," she said softly, her voice steady even though she was shaking too, "You don't have to stay."
I blinked up at her, barely seeing through the blur of tears. "What?"
Her fingers tightened around mine. "If you stay in this house, if you stay in Solvanne, they will take you from yourself. You said it yourself, didn't you? There won't be a 'you' left soon. You'll just become… her."
My knees nearly gave out again at the truth of it.
The scroll. The blood-soaked script. The shard of the mirror. My memories… weren't just memories. They were a summoning. A reclaiming. The moment that script etched itself into my skin, I'd become the vessel again. I had no more time to delay, no more protection between the world and me. If I stayed, the cycle would continue. I'd be Delmira reborn—not Elira at all. I would die again. Eventually.
"I don't want to be her," I said, voice cracking. "I just want to be… someone real."
Clarisse stepped back, her eyes already gleaming with a plan. "Then we run. Now."
She didn't wait for me to say yes. She moved with quiet urgency, pulling on her cloak, packing nothing but a small bag with food and a flask of water. I stood frozen in the dark of the room, light from the hearth flickering on the cracked mirror that had started it all. That face—my face—looked different now.
Older.
Haunted.
But free.
By the time I stumbled out of the house, Clarisse was already leading a speckled chestnut mare out of the stable. She looked back at me like this was the most natural thing in the world—helping her stepsister, the cursed girl, the disappointment, the walking omen of death, escape into the wilderness.
"Why are you helping me?" I whispered, pulling my threadbare cloak tighter around me.
She hesitated, brushing the horse's mane. "Because I've seen enough to know this house kills people in ways that don't leave scars."
That made something twist inside me. She wasn't just talking about me.
Clarisse helped me mount the horse. It wasn't regal. It wasn't graceful. I was trembling, my body still half-wrecked by visions and centuries of suffering that weren't mine but somehow lived in me all the same. But once I settled onto the saddle, something strange happened.
The wind hit my face. The night opened wide. And the mare—gods, it was like she understood.
She ran.
Her hooves struck the earth with purpose. Every beat of her gallop thudded in my chest like the promise of a heartbeat finally my own. Clarisse faded into the darkness behind me, watching from the edge of the forest with tears in her eyes and a look I would never forget—regret, maybe. Or hope.
The wind bit at my skin as we rode west—away from the kingdom, away from the palace, away from the life they wrote in blood and burned into bone. I didn't know where we were going. I didn't care. I just knew that with every mile, something inside me loosened.
I cried as we rode.
Not the desperate sobs of before. These were quieter. A release. Memories clung to my ribs—Delmira begging for peace as the flames licked her spine. Veanna, gasping her last breath into her own blood. The silent ones, all of them, who died with names no one remembered.
I carried them still.
But for once, I wasn't just the vessel. I was the one choosing the direction.
I was Elira.
I was seventeen.
And I wanted to wear a sundress and run through the garden without someone watching me die in advance.
I wanted to kiss someone who wouldn't prosecute me.
I wanted to be real. Just real.
So I fled, not like a coward, but like a girl who had tasted a thousand deaths and decided, for once, to steal a life.
Mine.