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Chapter 10: Ashes of the Past

Author: LJ Black
last update Last Updated: 2025-08-29 23:47:07

The packhouse was coming alive as Thalia returned—kitchen clatter, distant laughter, the thud of boots on floorboards. She slipped in through the heavy doors, pulse just beginning to slow. Livia’s warning still rang in her ears, but it was the ache beneath her skin—the magic she’d used, the memories it had shaken loose—that stayed with her.

She moved quietly through the entry hall, skirting the kitchen and the too-bright warmth of early risers. She found a large leather highbacked chair in a shadowed corner of the sitting room, near a tall window that framed the thinning fog and the sun climbing behind pines. It felt ancient, a throne for exiles and the weary. She curled herself small, Mara’s coat wrapped tight, knees hugged to her chest.

She gazed out at the world, light spilling gold across forest and glade. Her breath slowed.

But she couldn’t outrun memory. It came for her—ruthless, unstoppable.

Memory

The woods are alive, velvet with midnight and wild with panic.

She is not Thalia
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