Sure enough, Alaric's face changed in an instant. He lost control, sprinting toward her with a speed that was no longer fully human.
"Ivy!"
He gathered her into his arms. She was deathly pale, cold sweat beading across her forehead, as though she were fighting through terrible pain.
She spoke, her voice thin and wounded.
"Darling… don't blame my sister. She was just too upset… I'm fine…"
As if defending me. But every word pressed the blame deeper into my skin.
"I didn't—"
I barely got the words out before he cut me off.
Her choked sob ignited his fury completely.
He didn't hesitate. His voice was ice. "Selene, even if your mate is dead, that's no reason to take it out on someone else. Don't forget: Ivy isn't like you. She has a mate who protects her."
He lifted Ivy into his arms and turned away.
From start to finish, he never looked at me again.
I stood there and watched their silhouettes grow smaller until they disappeared beyond the cemetery ridge.
My heart twisted, wrung hard, as if something had seized it in a fist and refused to let go.
I held on. I did not let the tears fall.
In the end, I walked home alone.
Three days. That was all the time I had left before I was gone.
This time, I did not lock myself inside again.
The places I had once walked with him, I returned to them all. One by one.
The first day, I went to Lovers' Bridge.
Among the rows upon rows of locks, I found ours quickly enough. The face of it was carved with crooked, uneven letters.
"Alaric Nightfang and Hazel Ashvale will be together forever."
That day, he had held my hand as he scratched those words into the metal. His handwriting was always precise, every line deliberate, but the unfamiliar tool had made a mess of it.
I had laughed at him for a long time.
The tips of his ears went red. A rare, unguarded awkwardness.
"Hazel, my head is so full of you that I can't even carve straight. You owe me for that."
Before the words had finished leaving his mouth, he leaned down and kissed me.
I stood on the bridge now. Drew out the key. Turned it in the lock until the shackle released with a small click.
Then I threw it, hard.
The lock traced an arc through the air and vanished below the mountain edge. Gone. The faintest thread of cedar smoke and cold iron still clung to my fingers where the metal had rested, and the wind carried that away too.
The second day, I went to Moonhowl Shrine.