The greenhouse was bathed in the dim afterglow of the waning crimson moon. Moonflowers bloomed like silent sentinels, their petals trembling slightly in the cool air, as if aware that something ancient had shifted.
Juliette didn't move.
She remained still, Elias's hand still pressed gently to her chest, grounding them both.
It wasn't conscious, whatever passed between their skin. It was instinct, something deep in the bones, older than memory, older than language. Something that said: you know me.
But he didn't. Not in the way he used to.
He pulled away gently. Not in fear. Not in rejection.
Just… emptiness.
Juliette forced a smile. It felt like trying to hold water in her hands.
"You used to sit here," she whispered, her voice breaking the stillness. "Right in that chair. You told me the moonflowers looked like fallen stars that bloomed just for me."
Elias looked at her with polite confusion. "I did?"
"You did," she said, her throat tight.
He looked down, eyes flickering with something uncertain. "It sounds… true. Even if I don't remember it."
She swallowed hard. That was the closest thing to hope she'd heard in days.
That night, Juliette sat curled in the velvet armchair in the library, surrounded by silence and shadows. The letter from Odette lay on the table, alongside Vivienne's diary and a dozen ancient books. The fire had long since died, but she hadn't moved to rekindle it. The cold hasn't touched her now.
Not compared to the ache inside her.
"Love is not the weakness," Odette had written.
"Love is the weapon."
She read it again. And again.
Each time, it cuts deeper.
Love had been the reason she'd performed the ritual, to break the curse, to save them both.
But in doing so, she had severed the very thread that had bound them.
Was that really saving him?
Or just rewriting his fate?
She reached for another book, thick, red, and dust-covered. Something pulsed beneath its leather cover. It wasn't marked like the others. No title. No sigil. Just a silver clasp and a sense of dread.
Her fingers hovered over it. Then I opened it.
The ink moved.
Not figuratively, literally. Words swirled and reshaped themselves as she read, like the book was rewriting itself just for her eyes.
"To restore what was taken, one must step through the veil.
What was broken by sacrifice can only be mended by memory.
What love shatters, love must also heal."
Her eyes caught a phrase:
"The Veil of the Forgotten."
And below it:
"A soul once fractured can be whole again. But only if it chooses to remember."
Juliette sat back, the book heavy in her lap.
There was still a way.
The next morning, she found Elias in the music room.
Sunlight filtered through stained glass windows, painting the cracked floor with fractured colors. Elias was seated at the piano, his fingers hovering over the keys like they were fragile bones. His head tilted slightly as he played a hesitant, broken melody, one that sounded eerily familiar.
Juliette stepped into the room, her breath catching.
"You remember that song," she said softly.
He paused, startled. "Do I?"
"You used to play it for me," she said, coming closer. "After our long walks. You said it reminded you of the way my voice sounded when I said your name."
Elias blinked. "I don't remember your voice," he murmured. "But when I play this… it feels like I've lost something. Like my hands remember more than I do."
Juliette smiled through the sting in her eyes. "Will you come with me?"
He looked up. "Where?"
"To remember."
She led him through forgotten halls in the east wing, corridors sealed for decades, perhaps centuries. Dust blanketed the air like fog, and cobwebs shimmered like silk threads woven by ghosts.
They arrived at a grand iron door etched with the Armand sigil: a rose with thorns curling around a blood moon.
Juliette pressed her palm to the sigil. The door groaned open.
Beyond it lay a circular chamber. The Hall of Ancestors.
Portraits lined the stone walls, tall, regal women and solemn men, eyes painted too vividly to be lifeless. Each bore the same mark.
And at the center of the room stood a massive obsidian mirror, so dark it reflected nothing at all.
Elias shivered. "What is this place?"
"This is where they buried memory," Juliette said. "And this mirror… it's the Veil of the Forgotten."
He took a step back. "Why does it feel like it's looking at me?"
"Because it is."
She turned to him, eyes soft but unyielding.
"I need you to trust me. Just one more time."
He looked at her, truly looked and after a beat, nodded.
Juliette reached for his hand.
Together, they stepped into the glass.
They fell.
Not in body but in spirit.
They tumbled through shadows and broken pieces of time.
Laughter. Screams. Blood.
A garden in bloom. A kiss beneath a blood moon. Elias's whispered vows. Juliette's trembling hands. The night she nearly died. The night he chose to stay.
Flashes of memory, colliding like shattered glass.
And then, stillness.
They stood in a memory chamber, stone floors, walls etched in gold script. Candles lined the edges, and in the center stood someone Juliette knew before she even looked.
Elias.
But not the one beside her.
This one was whole. Real. Vibrant. Alive with every memory they had ever shared.
He turned to face them.
"You broke me," he said. His voice echoed, not angry, but wounded.
Juliette stepped forward. "I did it to save you. To break the curse."
"And what did you break in me?" he asked, voice heavy with pain.
"I thought the witch fed on our bond," she said. "But it was never just about us. It was about what we meant to each other. And when I served it… I tore you in half."
He looked to the present-day Elias, who stood quietly beside her.
"You are what remains," the memory said. "But you… you are the part that feels. And she is the one who remembers."
Juliette turned to Elias. "Touch him. Reclaim what was yours."
Elias hesitated, but Juliette nodded.
And he stepped forward.
When he touched the memory's chest, light erupted.
The chamber exploded in radiance.
A wind howled through the air, not wind, but voices. Ancestors. The witch. The bloodline. All screaming, chanting, resisting.
And then, it stopped.
They stood once more in the Hall of Ancestors.
Elias was on the floor, panting, clutching his chest.
Then he looked at her, eyes wide, terrified, whole.
"Juliette?" His voice broke. "Tell me… when did I first fall in love with you?"
She fell to her knees beside him.
"You told me it wasn't one moment. You said it was every time I opened a book you hadn't read yet. Every time I challenged you. Every time I stay."
He reached for her. "I remember. I remember everything."
They clung to each other, shaking.
But behind them, the mirror cracked.
Hairline fractures split through the obsidian, glowing red.
And from within those cracks, she watched.
The First Witch.
Her face emerged from the glass, skeletal and pale, with eyes like molten moons.
"You think memory is power?" she hissed. "You've only called me closer."
Juliette rose to her feet.
"I know what you are now," she said. "You feed on grief. On broken love. But not this time."
She held her hand out.
Fire sparked in her palm, gold and red and alive.
Elias stood beside her, his own power rising, silver and deep as moonlight.
Together, they faced the mirror.
Together, they struck.
The Veil shattered with a scream that wasn't sound, but soul.
Glass exploded outward, the witch's shriek fading into nothing.
The portraits on the walls dimmed.
The estate, for the first time in centuries, was quiet.
Not haunted.
Not cursed.
Just… free.
That evening, Juliette and Elias sat by the lake.
No fog. No whispers. Just water, still and calm.
"Do you think she's really gone?" Elias asked quietly.
Juliette took his hand. "Not forever. But now… we're not afraid."
He looked at her.
"Together?"
She smiled, resting her head on his shoulder.
"Always."