Page 74 of Ashes to Ashes

“Later,” he says, stepping back into the shadows between trees. “After your human obligations end. Let me show you more of what you’re becoming.”

Before I can respond, he’s gone—melted back into the forest like he was never there. Only lingering scent of woodsmoke and warmth still spreading through my body prove the encounter wasn’t hallucination.

I stand there for a moment, touching my face where his hands had been. The overwhelming senses have settled intomanageable awareness—still enhanced beyond human normal, but controllable as long as I don’t think too hard about what that means.

The earth has chosen. I’ve chosen.

His words echo as I force myself back onto the glowing path. Each step toward Academy feels like walking away from something essential, something I’ve been unconsciously searching for my entire life.

As I near the Academy gates, frost patterns spread across the ground before me—intricate whorls that form and dissolve with each step. I look up to find Kieran watching from the eastern tower, his expression unreadable even to my enhanced senses. But the ice beneath my feet pulses with something that feels disturbingly like possession.

From the western corridor, golden light spills onto the path—Finnian emerging from the library, ancient text in hand, eyes finding mine with unsettling accuracy across the distance.

Three distinct pulls on whatever I’m becoming. Three men who see what I’ve been hiding.

“Three heartbeats calling to mine from across campus. Three different ways to lose myself completely.” I touch dirt-bonded skin. “Mourning someone who never existed while becoming someone I don’t recognize. Just another Tuesday in paradise.”

The pendant sits heavy in my pocket, still removed from earlier. Without its suppression, I feel each of them like separate heartbeats alongside my own.

Seven days to choose. If choice is even possible anymore.

But as the Academy gates swing open to welcome me back, something ancient and certain whispers through my bones?—

You’ve always known. You just weren’t ready to remember.

14

ASH

I slam into my room,back thudding against the door.

Acid burns up my throat. My hands shake—violent tremors I can’t control.

The woman who survived twenty-seven impossible missions just broke.

The panic claws through my chest—sharp, foreign, wrong. I don’t panic. Ever.

But here I am, heartbeat hammering so hard the pendant bounces against my chest with each pulse, vision tunneling to pinpricks while my body betrays twenty-eight years of conditioning.

“What the fuck do I even—” The words die.

What, Ash? What exactly are you supposed to do now?

Shower. One controllable thing in a world spinning beyond my grasp.

I push off from the door on unsteady legs and glance down at my arm, slowly lifting my sleeve.

My breath dies.

Stems spiral up my forearm, alive and hungry. Buds swell fat with impossible life, splitting open to birth flowers that shouldn’t exist. Petals unfurl like tiny mouths gasping for firstbreath. The patterns pulse with my racing heartbeat, moving beneath my skin as though they’ve always been there, just waiting.

I tear my shirt off and stagger to the mirror, eyes widening at the reflection that can’t possibly be mine.

The stranger in the mirror blinks when I blink. Her eyes burn green where mine were gray. Her skin tells stories mine never lived. Vibrant patterns splash across pale flesh, spreading from the collarbone down my torso, wrapping around ribs like living tattoos that breathe with her lungs.

I press my palm to the glass—she mirrors it, but I don’t recognize the woman touching back.

My fingers trace a pattern that ripples in response, delicate petals moving beneath my touch. A sound escapes my throat—half laugh, half sob.

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