✧ Chapter Twenty ✧
What Still Binds Us
from Have You Someone to Protect?
By ©Amer
The silence in the bookshop wasn't just silence anymore—it was weight.
It lived in the corners, settled on the bookshelves like fine dust. It hummed between ticking clocks and the smell of old paper. Caelum moved through it like someone drifting underwater, quiet and slow. He had not slept—not truly—since the moment she collapsed.
Three days.
Three days since Lhady's fever took hold after Silas's sudden departure. Three days since her body had stopped responding, though her lips still murmured things in her sleep. He had caught one name whispered again and again:
"Don't leave me, Silas..."
Caelum didn't flinch when he heard it.
But the pause in his breath… was noticeable.
He'd refused to leave her side the first night. Mira had tried to convince him.
"You need rest," she said, voice firm. "This isn't like her catching a cold."
"No," he had answered plainly, brushing a damp cloth over Lhady's forehead. "It isn't."
He had been there when the shivers started. When she turned away from even light soup. When her hand curled toward her chest, where once a boy had placed a wildflower ring.
And now it was just Caelum—and she, unmoving, lost in dreams he could not enter.
He watched her more than he breathed, it seemed. Her lashes would sometimes flicker, and he'd hope—just for a heartbeat—that she might wake. But then they'd still again, and the ache would return.
Downstairs, the bookshop still opened every morning.
Because Caelum opened it.
He ran the counter, made the deliveries, tied every parcel with the same care she had taught him. He didn't want her to wake and find anything undone.
To Sian, "If I let anything fall apart," he told her once, quietly, "she'll wake to a ruin. She deserves more than that."
Sian placed a hand on his shoulder and left without saying a word. She understood. They all did.
Even Lady Calvera, who stopped by once with her foxglove-blue eyes studying Caelum like one studies a painting that doesn't quite belong in the present century.
"She's not merely sleeping," the Lady said softly, almost absently, as she glanced toward the stairs.
"She drifts through a thread not stitched to this time."
Caelum had turned to her then, voice quiet.
"You speak as if you know more than I do."
"I know what it feels like to be caught between lifetimes."
Her voice was cool. "You, of all people, should remember that too."
And then she left. No further explanation. No goodbye.
That night, when the world was soft and dim and the bookshop lights had all gone out, Caelum returned to the chest.
The same one they had opened together. Where everything changed.
He knelt before it like a knight kneeling at a tomb.
The wood was dark with age, the metal corners worn smooth by time and touch. His fingers hovered above the clasp for a moment, reluctant, reverent. Then—he opened it.
The old journal lay atop a folded cloth. The same one they had pored over. The same one with secrets written in a hand older than memory.
He opened to the passage he could no longer forget:
"If death comes, I will stand before it. If darkness touches her, I will be the light. I vow, in every breath I may ever draw again—let her live."
His hand trembled.
"This was my voice."
"But I don't remember speaking it."
He stared at the ink, now faded with time. He thought of the way her hands had brushed his that night. How her eyes had widened, not just from wonder—but from something known.
"It was always her," he whispered. "Even before I knew it."
Then—a sound.
A click beneath the floorboards.
Caelum stilled. His fingers grazed the bottom of the chest. A seam.
He pressed into it.
Another click.
A hidden panel slid open, revealing something wrapped in velvet.
A fragment of a sigil, faintly glowing, humming like a heartbeat. Old magic. Familiar. Ancient.
Caelum stared at it, his chest heavy with dread.
It pulsed in his palm—not hot, not cold. Just... alive. Like it knew him. Like it had always been meant to return to his hand.
"You've always been more than just a girl with kind eyes and stubborn hope, haven't you…"
He rose slowly, still cradling the fragment, the light brushing up his wrist like ink from another life. His thoughts turned inward—memories surfacing like flickers in a storm. A hand reaching for his in the dark. A vow neither of them remembered making, yet both bore the weight of.
✧ ✧ ✧
Elsewhere in the Capital—
Silas had not intended to take the mission.
He had intercepted the scroll by mistake, originally meant for another.
But fate had a strange way of confirming what should be done.
Later that night, the true assignment was handed to him directly.
He read the order under moonlight, his face unreadable:
Retrieve the Sigil.
Report everything from the bookshop.
Keep the girl close.
No questions. No delays.
Silas's jaw tightened.
He folded the letter, his voice low:
"If you make me use her as a pawn… then whatever trust remains between us will burn."
But there was no answer.
Only shadows. Only silence.
He stared at the mission scroll, the wax seal already cracked from how tightly he had gripped it.
The ink bled at the corner—just like the line between right and wrong.
And he wondered, briefly, if he'd already crossed it.
✧ ✧ ✧
Back at the bookshop, Caelum holds the fragment in hand.
Light pulses faintly across his palm. A warmth that should be comforting—but isn't. Not entirely.
There's something in it that tugs at memory, at sorrow. Something familiar and strange all at once.
Upstairs, Lhady suddenly exhales—a sharp, pained sound.
Her fingers twitch. Her lips part.
She says one name.
"Caelum…"
He's up the stairs in a flash, crashing into the room.
"I'm here," he breathes, kneeling beside her. "I'm here, Lhady—what is it?"
Her hand curls into his. Eyes flutter—but they don't open.
Her lashes tremble like wings against her cheeks. Her breath quickens.
"You carried it… even when I forgot"
Caelum's heart stumbles.
His fingers tighten around hers. The ache in his chest becomes unbearable. He wants to say yes, to say everything. But the words won't come. Not yet.
Before he can answer—the sigil fragment downstairs flares.
A ripple of light shivers through the air. The floor hums.
And far away, Silas rides under moonlight with the same symbol engraved in the hidden wax of his mission scroll.
One artifact.
Two paths.
Three hearts entangled.
And someone is watching from afar.
A figure cloaked in pale flame, whispering into the wind:
"They've begun to remember."