The silence is loudest in here.

My boots scuff against the cracked marble, the sound echoing through the vast, abandoned ballroom. This place used to glitter—laughter, light, silk swirling across polished floors. Now, ivy snakes in through shattered windows, curling around the gilded frame of a mirror that no longer reflects anything worth remembering.

I stand beneath the grand chandelier, arms folded, staring up at it like it might collapse if I look hard enough.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” I say without turning.

His voice answers, low and rough. “And yet here I am.”

Alec’s footsteps are careful. Controlled. Like always. Like he’s afraid to break something—me, maybe. Or himself.

I finally glance back. He’s leaning in the doorway, dressed in plain clothes for once, no gold, no fire. Just a boy pretending he’s not the son of the woman who ruined my life.

“I almost didn’t,” I admit. “But I wanted to see it again. One last time.”

He walks in slowly, hands in his pockets, gaze sweeping the room. “It’s strange. I grew up hearing about this place. The royal ballroom of Solmyr. The way my mother spoke of it, it sounded like a temple. Sacred. Untouchable.”

“Now it’s just hollow.” I run my fingers over a pillar, stone flaking like old parchment. “Like everything else.”

Alec doesn’t respond. Not right away. He moves closer instead, silent until he’s standing across from me, close enough that I can see the faint scar along his jaw—the one he got trying to protect me, not that I ever asked him to.

“I don’t want to fight,” he says.

I raise a brow. “Then why are you here?”

He hesitates. “Because I think… part of you still wants me to be.”

That strikes too close. I look away.

“You’re wrong,” I say softly. “You were always wrong about me.”

“And you were always running,” he replies, his voice sharpened by something that might be pain. “Even now.”

I whirl on him. “Don’t you dare—”

“I trusted you.” His voice cracks, just for a second. “Even when I shouldn’t have. Even when my mother called you a threat. Even when the Hollow Twin looked through your eyes and promised to end me.”

I flinch.

There it is—the truth. The one we never say aloud. Not during the missions. Not during the nights we almost touched. Not when I watched him bleed for me.

A shadow flickers in the glass behind him—my shadow. No. Her.

Alec sees it too.

“I don’t care what she is,” he says, stepping forward. “I care who you are.”

“I’m both,” I breathe. “You don’t get to choose one and pretend the other doesn’t exist.”

“Then let me choose both.”

The words hit harder than a blade.

Silence stretches, thick and trembling. Dust drifts between us like falling ash.

I step back. “There’s nothing left for us here, Alec.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You should.”

We stare at each other across the ghost of a dance floor. No music. No movement. Just history between us, broken and still.

And maybe, in another life, this room would’ve seen our first dance.

Instead, it will only remember our last words.