Chapter 4 Unnatural Familiarity
I don't move when he finishes the sentence for me.
The words hang in the air between us, heavier than they should be. Ink and breath and something else, something that doesn't belong to either of us, but seems to recognize us both.
I stare down at the page.
Then I look up at Alaric.
He is already watching me.
Not triumphantly. Not nervously. Just… steadily. Like this moment has been waiting for us longer than I have.
"That wasn't written there," I say.
My voice sounds calm. My body does not agree.
Alaric tilts his head slightly. "No."
"You didn't read ahead," I continue. "I hadn't turned the page."
"I know."
"You couldn't have known how the sentence ended."
He exhales through his nose, slow and measured, like he's choosing patience over instinct.
"You paused," he says. "Right before the verb."
"That doesn't explain anything."
"No," he agrees. "It doesn't."
I close the book, not gently this time. The sound is sharper than I intend, echoing faintly off the stone walls.
"Do you do this often?" I ask. "Finish people's thoughts?"
"Only when they invite me to," he replies.
"I didn't invite you."
"You brought the notebook," he says quietly.
That lands harder than it should.
I push my chair back and stand. The room feels smaller now. The shelves closer. The air thicker, like a storm waiting to decide if it will break.
"That sentence," I say, keeping my voice even, "appears in the letters exactly once. It isn't part of the main text. It's marginal. Fragmented. You couldn't have guessed it."
"I didn't guess."
"Then how?"
Alaric doesn't answer right away. He moves around the table instead, giving me space without leaving the room. I notice how careful he is not to crowd me, how deliberate every step feels.
"You're not wrong to be wary," he says. "I would be."
"That's not an answer."
He stops near the shelves, running a finger along the spine of a book without pulling it free.
"Have you ever reread something so many times," he asks, "that it feels like memory instead of text?"
I cross my arms. "That's not the same thing."
"No," he says. "It's worse."
I let out a short laugh, sharp and humorless. "You're very good at sounding like you're explaining something while actually saying nothing."
"I've had practice."
"With what?"
"With being asked questions that don't have safe answers."
I study him closely now. The lines at the corners of his eyes. The way his mouth tightens when he thinks he's said too much. The faint ink stains on his skin, old and new layered together.
"You knew the letters existed before I came here," I say.
It's not an accusation. It's a test.
He meets my gaze. Holds it.
"Yes."
My stomach dips.
"How?"
"I've seen them before."
"When?"
He hesitates. Just a fraction of a second.
"Long ago," he says.
"That's vague."
"It's honest."
I shake my head. "You expect me to accept that?"
"I expect you to listen."
"I am listening," I snap, then soften. "I just don't understand why you know so much about something that was supposed to be lost."
He pushes off the shelf and comes closer again, stopping a careful distance away.
"Some things aren't lost," he says. "They're hidden."
"By who?"
He looks past me, toward the closed door.
"By people who needed the world to believe a simpler story."
I think of the letters. The careful omissions. The way the handwriting shifted when the truth got close to the surface.
"You speak like you knew her," I say.
The air changes.
Alaric's shoulders tense, just slightly. His voice, when he answers, is quieter.
"I know what it's like," he says, "to watch someone be turned into a lesson."
That unexpected honesty hits me in the chest.
"I'm not trying to expose anyone," I say. "I'm trying to understand her choice."
"She made it to survive," he says quickly.
Then he stops.
I catch it. The speed. The certainty.
"You're defending her," I say.
He looks at me, something raw flickering across his face before he schools it away.
"Someone should."
I swallow.
"You don't talk about this like a scholar," I say. "You talk about it like someone who remembers."
Silence stretches between us again. Not empty. Charged.
Finally, he speaks.
"You came here because the letters felt alive," he says. "Because you sensed they were more than ink. That they were reaching."
I don't deny it.
"But some things," he continues, "aren't meant to be reached back."
I take a step toward him. "You don't get to decide that for me."
"No," he agrees softly. "I don't."
"Then what are you saying?"
His gaze drops to the notebook still on the table. When he looks back up, his expression has changed gone guarded, almost afraid.
"I'm saying," he says, voice low and urgent, "that you should stop reading the letters."
Chapter 5 The Winter Night
I read the letters again even though he told me not to.
I tell myself I'm only skimming. I tell myself I'm being careful. I tell myself this is research, not defiance. None of that is true. My hands shake as soon as I open the notebook, the paper whispering softly beneath my fingers like it knows what I'm about to ask of it.
The room around me the stone walls, the shelves, the quiet presence of Alaric just beyond my line of sight begins to fade.
Not disappear. Just… loosen.
The letters pull.
And suddenly, I am not alone.
---
It is winter.
Not the polite kind that arrives with soft snow and quiet mornings, but the brutal kind that bites and refuses to let go. The cold seeps through wool and skin and bone. It stings my eyes. It cracks my lips. It makes every breath feel earned.
I am standing in a village square.
No she is.
I feel her before I see her. Isolde. The name settles into my chest like it belongs there. She is small, wrapped in a heavy cloak that does nothing to hide the way she's shaking. Her hair is dark, loose around her shoulders, already dusted with snow. Her hands are bound, the rope rough against her wrists.
She is not screaming.
That's the first thing that feels wrong.
The crowd presses in around her, faces red with cold and fear. Men with pitchforks. Women clutching rosaries. Children peeking from behind their mothers' skirts. Their breath fogs the air, sharp and uneven.
"Witch," someone mutters.
"Monster's whore," another spits.
Isolde lifts her head.
Her eyes search the crowd, not wildly, not desperately. She is looking for someone specific. I feel the ache of it like it's my own.
"He won't come," a woman hisses from the front. "The beast won't save you."
Isolde swallows.
"I don't need saving," she says.
Her voice is steady. Too steady.
A man steps forward broad-shouldered, wrapped in a fur-lined cloak, his beard stiff with frost. He smells of smoke and iron and fear.
"You brought this on us," he says. "Crops failed. Children sickened. And always the wolf seen at the edge of the woods."
"There have always been wolves," Isolde replies.
"That one walks like a man."
Murmurs ripple through the crowd.
Isolde closes her eyes for a brief moment. When she opens them again, there is grief there. And resolve.
"I loved him," she says simply.
The words hit the square like a thrown stone.
The man laughs, sharp and ugly. "Then you'll burn for it."
They pull her forward.
I feel her stumble. Feel the way her boots slide on the packed snow. Feel the rope bite deeper into her skin.
She looks up at the post waiting at the center of the square. The wood is dark, scarred by old fires. There are bundles of kindling stacked neatly at its base. Too neatly.
Something tightens in my chest.
This has been prepared.
"Do you repent?" the man asks.
Isolde's gaze drifts, just slightly, toward the tree line at the edge of the square. The forest stands dark and silent, heavy with snow.
"I repent nothing," she says.
The crowd erupts.
"She admits it!"
"Burn her!"
"Do it before night falls!"
Hands grab her. Push her. Bind her to the post. The rope is wound carefully, methodically. Not rushed. Not cruel.
Almost… gentle.
Isolde's breathing quickens. Not with panic, but with something else. Anticipation. Grief sharpened into something harder.
She lifts her chin.
"I chose this," she says, though no one has asked.
A young boy near the front looks up at her, eyes wide and wet. "Will it hurt?"
Isolde meets his gaze.
"Yes," she says honestly. "But it will pass."
The man with the beard signals to another. A torch is lit. The flame flares bright against the gray sky.
Isolde closes her eyes.
And then
Nothing happens.
The torch is held there. Too far from the wood. The man hesitates, glancing to his left, then to the crowd. Someone coughs. Someone shifts their weight.
"Do it," a voice urges.
But the torch-bearer doesn't move closer.
Isolde opens her eyes.
Her gaze snaps to the forest again.
A sound rises not a howl, not quite. A low, resonant call that ripples through the trees. The crowd stiffens. Several people cross themselves.
The man with the beard swears. "He's here."
Panic flares. Not enough to scatter them. Just enough to make them sloppy.
"Light it!" someone yells.
The torch dips finally toward the kindling.
It should catch.
It doesn't.
The wood smolders. Smoke curls, thin and gray, but no flame takes hold. The wind shifts, sudden and sharp, blowing the smoke back into the torch-bearer's face.
He coughs, swears again, steps back.
Isolde exhales.
It is the smallest sound. Relief and sorrow tangled together.
She whispers something under her breath.
I can't hear the words.
But I feel them.
Go.
The crowd begins to argue. Voices overlap.
"This is wrong."
"She cursed it."
"We should wait."
Night is coming on fast. The sky darkens. Snow begins to fall harder, thick flakes swirling between torchlight and shadow.
The man with the beard steps back from the post. "Enough," he says. "Let God judge her."
Hands move again. This time not binding, but cutting. The rope falls away.
Isolde stumbles forward, nearly collapsing. Someone catches her elbow an older woman, eyes averted.
"Run," the woman whispers. "Before we change our minds."
Isolde doesn't hesitate.
She runs.
Into the forest.
The crowd shouts. Someone gives chase. Then another howl echoes through the trees, closer now, deeper.
The men stop.
No one follows her past the tree line.
The snow swallows her footprints almost immediately.
---
I gasp and stumble back into myself.
The room snaps into focus the stone walls, the lamp, the smell of old paper. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. My cheeks are wet.
Alaric is there. Closer than before. His face pale, eyes dark.
"You saw it," he says quietly.
"It wasn't " My voice breaks. I swallow. "They didn't kill her."
"No," he agrees.
"They let her go."
"Yes."
My hands curl into fists. "They meant to be seen letting her die."
His jaw tightens.
"The story spread faster that way," he says. "Fear always does."
I shake my head, breath unsteady. "The wood was wrong. The fire. The way they hesitated."
He closes his eyes briefly.
"She was never meant to burn," he says.
I look at him, understanding it is dawning slowly and heavy in my chest.
"The execution scene feels staged."