The day started quietly.
Too quietly.
Elara returned to the barn at dawn with a fresh basket of food from her sister—simple things: boiled roots, wolfleaf broth, a single mandrake berry she hadn't the heart to throw away.
That was her first mistake.
She should have known.
Kael had always been unpredictable—but hungry was a different danger entirely.
She found him upright, leaning against the stable beam, stripped to the waist, sweat beading along his collarbone.
"You're up early," she said softly.
Kael looked at her with a strange glaze in his eyes. "You were humming again."
"Was I?"
"Your hum's sharp. Like knives. Pretty."
That was her second warning.
Kael didn't use words like pretty.
And then his eyes flicked down to the basket.
"I'm starving," he muttered.
"Go slow. You've barely healed—"
But he was already reaching for it.
Tearing into bread, biting into dried roots.
He paused at the mandrake berry.
"I shouldn't," he said.
"I didn't know it was in there," she replied.
Kael shrugged. "Maybe a little poison's better than silence."
And before she could stop him—he swallowed it. Whole.
The reaction was fast.
Too fast.
Within minutes, Kael was sweating rivers. His breath came in heaves, and his eyes darkened until the gold was barely visible.
"Elara…" he groaned, slumping to the ground, one hand clawing at the floor. "Too loud."
"What is?" she asked, crouching beside him.
"Your thoughts. They're screaming."
"Kael, listen to me. You're hallucinating."
"No," he gasped, voice high, fractured. "You're dying. I saw it. You were burning."
"That's not real—"
He grabbed her wrist.
Hard.
"You burned, Elara. Like she did."
She stiffened. "She who?"
Kael looked up.
And his voice shattered.
"Liora."
Elara froze.
He wasn't seeing her.
He was seeing someone else.
"Please don't die," Kael whispered, pulling her forward, wrapping his arms around her like a shield. "Please. I was supposed to protect you. I was supposed to—"
Elara pushed back.
"Let go."
But he didn't.
His grip tightened, and they crashed to the floor.
"Elara!" she shouted, trying to reach him through the haze. "I'm not her!"
But Kael—**half shifted now, eyes wild, claws emerging—**pinned her down, forehead pressed to hers, trembling.
"Don't leave me again," he whispered. "Please, Liora…"
And something in Elara snapped.
She shoved him with all her strength.
Grabbed the ceramic broth bowl beside them.
And slammed it into his chest.
It cracked.
Broth splattered across his bare torso.
His eyes blinked.
Focus returned.
Too slowly.
"…Elara?"
She staggered to her feet. "You mistook me for her?"
Kael sat up, groaning. "The bond… it twisted…"
"You kissed me two nights ago. You kissed me. And now you want her back?"
"I didn't want—"
"You held me down and begged another girl not to die," Elara snarled, voice rising. "Tell me, Kael, should I burn myself alive just to prove I'm not her?!"
"I thought you were her because you were dying!" he roared.
"I'm not dying," she said, chest heaving.
"You are," he whispered. "You're dying inside every time I forget your name. Every time I look at you and see a ghost."
She said nothing.
Because it was true.
The worst part of Kael wasn't his violence.
It was the moments when he wasn't looking at her.
It was the absence of her from his gaze.
Kael dragged himself upright, one hand on the chain at his ankle.
Then, with a single brutal motion—he wrenched it free.
Elara reached for her blade, but he didn't attack.
Instead, he dropped to his knees.
And placed her dagger in her hand.
"I'm not safe," he said. "You know it."
"You're not going anywhere," she replied.
He looked up at her.
Eyes calm.
Resolved.
"I'll break again, Elara. I'll see things that aren't you. And next time, I won't stop."
"I know."
"So?"
"So," she whispered, stepping behind him, "we make sure you can't run."
It took her an hour to reinforce the iron lockbox.
The one their father had once used to transport rabid warhorses.
It was rusted, half-collapsed, but the inner hinges still held.
Kael sat inside, silent, folded like a prayer, shirtless and trembling.
"Elara," he said, just before she shut the door. "Don't hate me."
She knelt beside the small vent.
"I don't hate you," she whispered. "I just need you to remember me."
"Even if I see her again?"
"Especially then."
She placed her palm against the door.
His matched hers on the other side.
"Don't forget my name," she said.
And then, quietly, like an echo against the wood:
"Elara. Elara. Elara."
She stayed outside the box all night.
Didn't sleep.
Didn't speak.
Just whispered her name into the air, again and again.
Not for him.
For herself.
So she wouldn't forget who she was—
Even if he did.