The Breath Between Prophecies

The silence that followed felt wrong—not peaceful but held, like the forest was afraid to breathe. We sat in the ruins of what had almost been, Ashara warm between us, and I couldn't stop my hands from trembling.

No birds sang. No wind moved. Even the leaves hung motionless, as if reality itself needed a moment to remember how to function after being stretched so thin.

I stared at the space where the second cabin had stood, where the other Lucien had worn perfection like armor. My throat felt raw though I hadn't screamed. Because underneath the relief, beneath the victory of choosing real over ideal, something shameful writhed.

"There was a part of me that wanted him to be real."

The confession escaped before I could swallow it back. Beside me, Lucien—Dorian, god, even I was getting confused now—went still. Not with hurt but with the careful attention of someone who'd learned to listen for the truths hidden in admissions.

"The perfect version?" His voice held no judgment, only patience.

"The one who wouldn't have broken me first." I couldn't look at him. "The one who chose right from the beginning. Who never made me feel like I wasn't enough to be worth choosing."

Ashara stirred against my chest, making soft sounds that might have been dreams or contentment. I focused on her weight, her warmth, the simple reality of her existence while shame burned through my chest.

"You don't owe me full healing," Dorian said finally. "But you owe yourself full truth."

The words cracked something open in me. Not breaking—releasing. Like pressure finally given permission to escape.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm holding someone else's child." The admission came out fractured, each word fighting its way free. "Like Ashara chose the wrong version of me to be her mother. The broken one. The angry one. The one who can't let go of what was done to her."

"Aria—"

"I look at her and think—what if she needed the me who never got rejected? Who never learned to hate? Who could have loved her without all this..." I gestured helplessly at myself, at the scars visible and invisible, at the mess of who I'd become.

Dorian shifted closer, not touching but present. "Can I tell you what I see?"

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

"I see the woman who fought reality itself to give her daughter a choice. Who refused to let prophecy swallow what mattered. Who broke herself into pieces rather than let Ashara become a vessel." His hand found mine, warm and calloused and real. "No other version of you would have fought like that. Could have fought like that. She didn't choose wrong—she chose the mother who'd already proven she'd burn the world for her freedom."

"But I'm so tired." The words came out small, exhausted. "Tired of fighting. Tired of being strong. Tired of pretending I'm not drowning in grief for lives I never got to live."

"Then stop pretending."

I looked at him then, found amber eyes full of understanding that went bone-deep. He'd seen me at my worst, my most fractured, my least deserving of gentleness. And still he stayed.

"You don't need to be healed to be held," he said softly.

The last wall crumbled. I leaned into him, let his arms come around us both, and for the first time in memory, I breathed without urgency. Without planning the next battle. Without scanning for threats. Just breathed, surrounded by warmth that asked nothing of me but presence.

Ashara chose that moment to nurse, her small mouth working against my breast with focused determination. But as she fed, something shifted in her breathing. Her brow twitched, lips moving between swallows as if speaking soundlessly.

I knew the signs by now—she was dreaming in prophecy again. But instead of the cold dread that usually accompanied her visions, warmth spilled from her small body. Comfort, not warning.

The dream pulled me under gently, like sinking into warm water.

A field of silver grass that chimed with each breeze. Ashara walked through it, older—maybe seven or eight—her hand small in Dorian's larger one. They moved with easy familiarity, daughter and father without question.

I watched from a hillside, apart but not abandoned. A scar I didn't recognize carved its way across my collarbone, silver-white and deliberate. But I was smiling. Whole in a way that had nothing to do with being unbroken.

Ashara turned, her face bright with joy that belonged to no prophecy. "You kept choosing me," she said, and the words held years of small choices, daily decisions to stay, to fight, to love through the exhaustion.

"Every day," dream-me confirmed. "Every single day."

I surfaced from the vision with tears on my cheeks—not grief but relief so profound it felt like another kind of breaking. Ashara had finished nursing, already drifting toward sleep with milk-drunk satisfaction.

"Good dream?" Dorian asked, thumbing away my tears.

"The best kind. The kind where we're boring. Where the biggest choice is what to make for dinner."

Night fell as we sat there, still holding each other in the strange peace that followed chaos. The sky cleared, stars emerging like shy visitors. And then—

The moon.

But wrong. Not cracked as it had been, not the cold silver witness to our struggles. This moon was whole, healed, but its light had warmed to gold-touched pearl. As if it too had chosen to be something different than prophecy demanded.

Ashara reached toward it from her blanket, cooing with delight at this new celestial friend. Her small hand opened and closed, trying to catch moonbeams that seemed almost willing to be caught.

"The prophecy is watching," I murmured, feeling the weight of that regard. "But this time... maybe it's listening too."

"To what?"

I looked at our daughter, at Dorian, at the moon that had learned to change. "To the radical idea that the future doesn't have to eat the present. That maybe, just maybe, we get to write our own ending."

The moon pulsed once, gently, like agreement or challenge. But for tonight, I chose to read it as blessing.

Tomorrow would bring new threats, new names trying to claim us, new echoes of choices unmade. But tonight we sat in the breath between prophecies, holding each other in the space where love had won its small victory.

And that, for now, was enough.