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September 24 - October 18, 2025
“I am not pleading my innocence,” I hissed. “I’m giving credit to its rightful owner. I did not kill Atroxus. Mische Iliae did, and she deserves to have her name painted in the stars for it.”
Mische Iliae would be remembered by the bones of time itself, and I knew it because I would write her story there with my blood if I had to.
As if the gods had seen some beauty in mortality but failed to realize that the imperfection of it was what made it remarkable.
Send me to the underworld. Send me home. Send me to her.
“Billions of threads,” she murmured, “and not a single one where you say no.”
“I wonder,” a voice said, “what it must feel like to be so important to someone.”
He was coming for me. That stupid, reckless, foolish man was coming for me.
“There is no map for the path we must walk in times like this,” Vincent said. “But we must seize the chances that are given to us. I’ll follow you to help, where I can, though there is only so much I can see up there.”
A shame, he thought to himself, that it would be such a painful one.
“Mische Iliae, Dawndrinker or Shadowborn, living or dead, I will never let you go.”
But the way he looked at me was the way my friend, my lover, had. His eyes were not those of a god or a king. They were Asar’s. My Asar’s.
It is a refuge for those who have nothing else. And perhaps, my disgraced prince, it can be a refuge for you, too, if you allow it to be.”
And a voice, quiet and booming at once, said, “Get your hands off my wife.”
It was hard to question what kept you alive, even if it did terrible things with the life it gave you.
“Your woman is lovely,” he murmured. “You’ll ruin her.” Probably, I thought.
She looked at me with such abject, undeserved affection. It made me think of how a sunrise I’d never witnessed must feel.
everyone is the hero of their own tale.”
It was the kind of powerlessness I’d been taught to fear my entire life. And yet I was so eager to run headfirst toward it. Even now. Especially now.
“They need to hear, ‘Even if it is your fault, I will love you anyway.’ ”
“For whatever of your mistakes, Mische Iliae,” he said, quietly, firmly, “for whatever of your faults, for whatever unintended pains you may bring this world, I will love you anyway.”
You are the sacrifice I will not make, Mische. You. Don’t ask me to apologize for that.”
“I don’t care.” The easiest answer I’d ever spoken. Perhaps the only time I, a man obsessed with answers, had ever said it.
“You will make mistakes,” I murmured. “And I will love you anyway.”
