Chapter Eleven: Past Lives

I lounged in my throne, the weight of the silver goblet cool against my fingers as I swirled the crimson liquid within. The silence of my hall was perfect—until a sharp hiss of magic broke it. A bloom of red smoke coiled before me, and when it cleared, there she was.

Snow.

She spun around, disoriented, her pale hair whipping over her shoulder. The instant her eyes met mine, they went from wide shock to icy fury.

“You,” she spat, stalking toward me, her voice dripping with venom. “Where the hell am I?”

Her tone had lost all its gentleness. Gone was the soft-spoken girl the world saw—this was her fire, her fury.

And it was intoxicating.

I took a slow sip from my goblet, savoring the taste—and the sight. “Snow.”

Her chest rose and fell with sharp breaths. Her fists were tight at her sides. “What the hell do you want, Wicked?”

The way she said my name—like it was poison she couldn’t spit out fast enough—made me smile. I stood, the sound of my boots echoing through the chamber as I started toward her. She stiffened, retreating with every step I took forward, until her back met the black obsidian wall. Trapped. Cornered. Her glare didn’t waver, but her pulse was betraying her—fluttering in her throat, quick and frantic. I stopped just inches away, close enough to feel her unsteady breath against my skin. Slowly, I lifted my gloved hand and brushed my fingers along her cheek. Her skin was soft—warmer than I remembered.

“You remember us,” I murmured, voice low and smooth as silk. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be letting me get this close to you again.”

Her jaw tightened. “Why did you bring me here?” she demanded, though her voice trembled on the edges.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I let my gaze linger on her face—on the anger, the confusion, the fear she tried so hard to mask.

“You’re just as beautiful as the day I lost you,” I whispered, the words slipping out like a confession I’d been holding for centuries.

Her lips parted—whether to speak or to breathe, I couldn’t tell. And before she could decide, I closed the distance between us, pressing my mouth to hers. The moment our lips met, the world shifted—red lightning crackled through the chamber, shadows rippled along the walls, and I tasted the spark I’d been starved of for far too long.

Her entire body went rigid beneath me, her breath catching sharply against my lips. For a fleeting heartbeat, she didn’t pull away—and that was all it took for the memory of her warmth to come flooding back. The taste of her, the feel of her trembling, the spark that had once burned between us before everything shattered.

Then, just as quickly, she shoved me back. Hard.

The force of it sent the goblet clattering to the marble floor, its contents spilling like spilled blood between us.

Her chest heaved as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, fury blazing in her eyes.

“Don’t you ever touch me again,” she hissed. Her voice cracked at the end—not from weakness, but from something deeper. Something she didn’t want me to see.

I tilted my head, studying her. The defiance, the trembling hands, the wild storm behind her gaze. She could lie to herself all she wanted—but I could see it.

“You still feel it,” I said softly, almost to myself. “You can’t hide that from me.”

She scoffed, though her voice wavered. “You’re delusional.”

“Maybe,” I murmured, stepping closer once more. She didn’t move this time—she couldn’t. “But tell me, Snow—why is your heart racing?”

Her breath stuttered, and that was all the answer I needed.

I smiled faintly, the crimson light of the throne room dancing across my face. “You can fight me all you want. Hate me all you like. But deep down…” My gloved hand hovered just over her chest, where her heart pounded furiously beneath her ribs. “You still remember what it felt like to love me.”

Her hand shot up, gripping my wrist in a flash of fury and fear. “That person—whoever she was—died a long time ago. So did the man I fell in love with.”

For a moment, silence swallowed the chamber whole. Only the flicker of red fire cast movement across the obsidian walls.

I leaned in close enough for my whisper to graze her ear. “Then maybe it’s time I bring us back.” I gently brushed my thumb along her lower lip, my eyes searching deep within hers.

“You’ve traveled through time again and again. You tell yourself it was to run from me. From us. But you only manage to hurt yourself in the end. Because you know the truth— you want to save me. To save us.”

Snow turned her head away, but not fast enough to hide it—the flicker of yearning that trembled in her icy eyes. She missed it. Missed me. What we were before everything shattered. Before I became what she now feared.

Her gaze drifted past me, and I saw the color drain from her face. Slowly, I turned to follow it—only to find the scene that never failed to break her.

There Carter was—my younger self—stretched across the obsidian altar. My skin pale and streaked with blood, my once-brown hair now darkened to the color of ash and ruin. The sigil carved into my arm glowed faintly, pulsing like a living, beating heart beneath my flesh.

Snow’s breath hitched, and tears welled in her eyes before she could stop them. She looked like she was being dragged backward through time—forced to relive every heartbreak, every desperate moment she tried to undo what could never be changed. And like all the times before, her resolve cracked. She stumbled toward the fallen version of me, fingers trembling as she reached out. Because no matter how many times she turned back the clock, no matter how fiercely she tried to rewrite fate… she could never stop loving me.

I moved to her side, the echo of a sigh escaping my lips. My gloved hand rested on her shoulder—soft, almost tender. “You know what waits for you each time you defy time itself,” I murmured, voice low and unshakably calm. “And still… you choose to see this.”

She flinched at my words, but I only leaned closer, my breath ghosting over her ear.

“Tell me, Snow,” I whispered. “How many more lifetimes will you break yourself trying to save the one thing you were never meant to change?”

She turned to me, tears glimmering in her lashes like shards of broken glass. Her voice trembled—but her words cut straight through me.

“Because all I want,” she whispered, “is for the boy I once loved to come home to me.”

The ache behind her words was a familiar wound—one that never healed, no matter how many lives she lived or how many times she tried to change the ending.

Snow turned back to my past self—the boy she meant—and sank to her knees beside him. With trembling hands, she began to clean the gash along his cheek, the same wound she’d tended to in a thousand mirrored moments. Her touch was careful, reverent, her fingers ghosting over his blood-streaked skin like she could wash away the darkness with nothing but love.

Without meaning to, I lifted a hand to my own face, tracing the faint scar that still lingered there. The moment her fingers brushed his skin, warmth rippled through me—through us. I closed my eyes, letting it flood my senses like a phantom memory made real.

Though her hand wasn’t truly on me, I could feel her touch all the same—soft, familiar, unbearably human. For a fleeting second, I wasn’t the Wicked at all. I was the boy she loved—the boy she’d never stopped trying to save.

Her soft humming broke through the silence—an old tune I hadn’t heard in ages, one she used to sing when the world still had light in it. The sound dug beneath my ribs, prying open pieces of me I’d long since buried 

For a fleeting moment, the air around us shimmered. My younger self’s hand twitched where he lay, as if responding to her voice. The threads of time pulled tight, trembling between us. I could almost feel him—feel me—trying to claw his way back to the surface.

“Stop,” I said quietly, though the command came out weaker than I’d intended. “You’ll only make it harder.”

Snow didn’t look up. “You don’t get to tell me what’s hard anymore.” Her voice cracked, breaking something deep inside me. “Every time, I find you like this. Every time, I try to save you. And every damn time, I lose you again.”

My jaw tightened. The storm of centuries pressed against my chest, begging to be released. “And yet you still come back,” I murmured. “Still fight for a ghost.”

Finally, she looked at me—really looked. “Maybe,” she whispered, “I’m fighting for the part of you that still remembers what it means to be human.”

Her words hit harder than any blade. For a second—just a second—the room trembled, and I felt the burn in my arm flare with that same crimson pulse. Carter stirred on the stone, his lips parting as if to breathe. And I realized, with bone-deep dread, that if I wasn’t careful… Snow might actually reach him this time.

I turned from her, letting the last flicker of softness die behind my eyes. “That boy is gone, Snow,” I said, my voice low, final. “And you know as well as I do—there’s no getting him back. You need to leave.”

She opened her mouth, trembling with words she didn’t yet have the courage to say, but I silenced her with a single raised hand. “Tell that Wizard and the boy he keeps on a leash that they were too late. The Change has already begun.”

Her lips parted in a protest I’d heard a thousand times before—pleas, denials, promises. But before she could speak them into existence, I flicked my wrist. The air around her twisted into a violent storm of red and black, swallowing her whole. Her cry was lost to the smoke. And then, she was gone.

Silence fell. Heavy. Familiar.

I turned back to the slab. My younger self—Carter—was stirring. His chest rose with a shaky inhale, his eyes flickering open. For a heartbeat, everything in me froze.

One eye—black as midnight. The other—red as flame. Perfect.

He jolted upright, breath ragged, glancing wildly around the chamber. The confusion on his face, the fear crawling beneath his skin—it was all too familiar. When his gaze finally found mine, it widened with dread.

I let a smirk curl across my lips, the mask slipping easily back into place. The pain, the memories, the woman’s tears—all gone. Buried.

“Welcome home, Carter,” I said softly, almost fondly, raising my arms to gesture to the throne room.

Because now, the cycle had begun again. And this time… I wasn’t going to lose.