Two days later, I stood at the threshold of Amir’s townhouse, watching Roman’s figure grow smaller as he strode down the cobblestone street—toward destiny, toward danger, away from me.
My heart shattered into fragments, each jagged piece a testament to love lost, a life altered, and a future teetering on the edge of the unknown.He had left—just as Dancing Fire foretold, just as Amir had warned.Our son will leave… and find his destiny.
The pain was searing, a hollow ache that pulsed with every heartbeat.I clutched the doorframe as if it could somehow tether me to the life I once had.How I needed Amir now—his strength, his touch—but he was gone.The letters had stopped.His visits—those precious moments I clung to like breath—had vanished into the ether.
Silence pressed in like a closing fist, suffocating.As the final glimpse of Roman disappeared around the corner, I turned back inside.The door shut behind me with a heavy finality, an echo of farewell that seemed to stretch across the years, sealing away the last flickers of hope I still harbored in my weary soul.
Months drifted like autumn leaves spiraling to the ground—colorful, dying, forgotten.Each day bled into the next beneath a veil of solitude, the townhouse filled with the absence of laughter, life, and love.Roman’s voice, once a constant, now echoed only in memory.
I lost myself in the delicate threads of my work, the needle a metronome for the grief I couldn’t speak aloud.Lady Harrington’s emerald masterpiece gown shimmered in the candlelight—vibrant, alive—everything I no longer felt.I stitched as if the fabric could hold me together when everything else unraveled.
Where was my son?
Where was Amir?
The questions haunted the silence.And still, no answers came.Only the rhythmic pull of thread through cloth—and the suffocating weight of love left unanswered.
Then—a sudden knock at the door.
I jolted upright, my breath catching, my heart slamming against my ribs.Hope flared, sudden and reckless, an ember igniting in the cold ashes of solitude.I cast aside the gown, the needle slipping from my grasp and vanishing into the folds of fabric at my feet.
“Please be him,” I whispered, already moving, nearly stumbling in my haste as I reached for the door.
My fingers fumbled with the latch, and I threw it open with a force born of desperation.
Not Amir.
A young post boy stood there, cap askew, cheeks flushed from the chill air.He grinned, oblivious to the storm behind my eyes, and thrust an envelope into my hands.
“Miss!A letter for you!”he chirped, his voice far too bright for the shadows clinging to my home.
“Thank you,” I managed, voice hoarse, fingers trembling as I accepted the worn envelope.The edges were smudged, the paper soft from many hands, but the name scrawled across it was unmistakably mine.
I turned it over, holding my breath.The script wasn’t Amir’s.
A knot tightened in my stomach.Confusion prickled along my skin, and the spark of hope guttered.Still, I tore the seal open, parchment crinkling like dry leaves in my hands.
The scent of ink and faint smoke rose from the page.
I froze.That scent—I knew it.
Dancing Fire.
My heart plummeted.
“Dear Elizabeth,” it began.
I couldn’t read further—not yet.My hands clutched the letter as dread laced my veins.The room tilted, narrowing to the parchment in my hands and the storm of memories rising.
I closed my eyes.
“Please,” I whispered—to no one, the heavens or the gods I no longer trusted.“Let this be good news.”
But as my eyes fluttered open and the inked words took shape, I felt that dark and inevitable tremor creeping in to claim me again.
“Mary has died.”
The world buckled beneath me.
