CHAPTER 13 : THE MESSAGE IN MY HANDWRITING

You saved the wrong person.

I kept reading those words, hoping they'd change. They didn’t.

The dead messenger lay at my feet. Blood had soaked into the stone, almost black. Darius stood beside me, watching the corridor while guards checked the other rooms. I just stared at the note.

Something was wrong with the handwriting. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Seren,” Darius said, dragging me out of my thoughts. “Give me the paper.”

I closed my hand around it. “Why?”

“Because whoever killed that man wanted you to find it. We need to see what’s on there.”

“I can read it myself.”

His jaw tightened. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Then stop treating me like something that needs managing.”

We stood there, neither of us moving. Then, softer, Darius said, “Please. Let me help.”

He was actually asking. That unsettled me more than if he’d just ordered it.

I unfolded the note, keeping it close. The handwriting was narrow, slanted. The capital S twisted in a way I recognized. The last strokes pressed deeper, as if the writer got angry or scared at the end.

I knew these details. Too well. My hands shook.

“No,” I whispered.

Darius stepped closer. “What is it?”

“This is my handwriting,” I said, looking up.

He went still.

I wished he’d laugh, tell me I was paranoid, blame it on fear. But he just said, “Are you sure?”

“Look at the S. The way the letters lean. I write like this every day.”

“Could someone have copied it?”

“Maybe.” But already I knew better. This didn’t just look like my writing. It was mine. As if I’d written it myself.

I turned the paper over.

Beneath the first line, there was another note, smaller:

Do not trust Darius when the blood moon rises.

My stomach dropped. I read it again. A third time.

Darius reached for the note, but I pressed it to my chest.

“Let me see.”

“No.”

“Seren—”

“Why does it say not to trust you?”

His jaw clenched. “I don’t know.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to ask questions before deciding I’m guilty.”

I laughed, bitter. “That’s rich, coming from you. You’ve spent this whole time choosing which truths I get to know.”

He flinched—a small thing, but I noticed.

It made everything worse, because I wanted to trust him. I wanted to believe the man who mourned me at my execution wanted to save me now.

But the note was in my handwriting, and it was warning me about him.

“What happens when the blood moon rises?” I asked.

He looked away.

My heart sank. “Tell me.”

“It’s three nights away.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know what will happen.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m trying not to scare you with things I can’t prove.”

“Stop deciding what I can handle!”

My voice echoed off the walls. The guards at the doorway glanced at each other, tense. Darius didn’t notice. He just looked at me.

“I watched you die, Seren,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen things I can’t explain. If I knew how to stop every danger, I would.”

For a second, my anger faded. Grief shone in his eyes—the same grief I’d seen on his face at the executioner’s block.

But grief isn’t proof. Neither is love, if that’s what this was.

I tucked the note into my dress pocket. “I need to be alone.”

“That’s not safe.”

“Neither is standing next to you while a message in my own handwriting tells me not to trust you.”

His face hardened, but he stepped aside. I walked past without looking back, feeling his gaze all the way down the corridor.

And I hated that a piece of me wanted him to call me back.

I locked my bedroom door. I needed my journal—my one honest place. That was where I wrote what I could never say: the nightmares about my execution, the fury I still felt toward Lucian, the way Darius made me feel—strange, pulled, on edge.

Most of all, I wrote down every detail from my first life. If someone had copied my handwriting, maybe my journal held the answer.

I knelt and opened the drawer beside my bed. The journal waited under a stack of letters. I almost laughed at the relief.

Then I opened it.

The first pages held. Notes about the assassination attempt. The black symbol. Mother’s pendant. The names from the archive.

But when I turned the pages faster—I stopped.

Three pages missing. Not torn, not messy—cut out with a blade, right along the spine. My mouth went dry. I checked the next section. Two more pages gone.

I slumped on the bed, journal open in my lap. Someone had been in my room. Someone knew where I kept my secrets. Someone took the pages that mattered most.

I forced myself to think.

The guards claimed no one had entered. The servant said she brought food for Seraphina. The man with the scar tried to get into my chambers.

One of them could have done it.

Another detail hit me. The message was on a strip of parchment—the same kind I used for notes in my journal.

I pulled the note out and checked the edges. Blue ink stained one corner. The same ink I used for my journal.

My pulse sped up. Whoever wrote this had my journal in their hands.

But why write a warning in my own hand? Why tell me not to trust Darius? Unless they wanted me to think the warning was from me.

Or maybe it was.

No. I’d died three years in the future and woken up younger, memories intact. Impossible already. Maybe there were things about my second life I still hadn’t figured out. Or someone had found a way to reach into my memories and use them against me.

I stood and searched the room—under the bed, behind the wardrobe, in my mother’s chest. Nothing.

Then I saw the mirror on my dressing table, turned to face the wall. I always left it toward the window.

I turned it around. A thin line had been scratched along the wood. At first, it looked like a random notch, but then I saw the shape—a crescent.

My mother’s symbol.

I stepped back.

A soft knock at the door. “Seren?”

Darius.

I folded the note up, tucked it into my sleeve.

“What do you want?”

“To make sure you’re safe.”

“I’m fine.”

“Open the door.”

“No.”

Silence. Then, quieter: “I know you’re frightened.”

Did he? “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know why I don’t want you in here.”

He waited. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “I won’t force you to trust me. Just don’t let whoever wrote that message decide what you believe about me.”

I stared at the door. He had no idea how much that hurt. Because that was the thing—my fear wasn’t that Darius was lying. It was that I’d believe him no matter what.

“I need time,” I whispered.

“Take it.”

His footsteps faded down the hall.

I waited until everything was quiet before going to my desk. I put the note next to my journal and looked at the handwriting again.

This time I noticed something. The warning about Darius was written in darker ink than the first line. Different moments. Maybe different writers.

I checked closer. There was a tiny mark under the last word in the first line—like the pen had pressed too hard. I did that when my hands shook.

On the day of my execution, I’d written a final letter to my mother. My hands trembled so badly, the ink bled across the paper. I tried to remember the words, but most were gone.

Except one sentence: If I ever get another chance, I will find out who betrayed me.

My knees wobbled. Did the message come from the woman I was—before I died? Had a piece of that moment followed me here?

I pressed my hands to my temples.

“Think, Seren. Think.”

The room stayed still.

And then—the ink on the page began to shift.

I froze. At first, I thought it was just the candlelight. The letters blurred, bending like they’d gotten wet. But the paper was dry.

A thin black line formed beneath the warning.

New letters emerged. My heart slammed in my chest. The second message appeared in the same narrow, tilted handwriting—my handwriting.

You have already killed him once.

I couldn’t breathe.

The note dropped from my hand.

I had never killed anyone. I’d been betrayed, imprisoned, executed. I’d come back three years before my death to change everything.

But I had never killed Darius.

Had I?

A flash in my mind—blood on snow. A hand reaching out. Darius’s broken voice, calling to me.

Then it vanished.

I stumbled back and knocked over a chair.

“No,” I whispered. “That’s impossible.”

But those words stayed on the page.

You have already killed him once.

And for the first time since I returned, I wasn’t sure I’d come back just to save myself.

Maybe I’d come back because something even worse had happened.

Something I couldn’t remember.