The stars above us didn’t belong to any sky I remembered.

They shimmered in hues too soft, too silver, like the remnants of a memory I shouldn’t have held onto. The air was hushed, thick with the kind of silence that comes just before something breaks — or begins. I stood barefoot in a garden that shouldn’t exist, moonlight caught in the curve of marble archways and wild roses blooming from impossible cracks.

And Alec stood there too. Waiting. Watching me like he always did — like I was something he couldn’t name.

“This isn’t real,” I whispered. I didn’t mean it to come out so quiet. But even the dream didn’t dare echo.

Alec stepped closer. No armor, no firelight in his hands. Just him — in worn clothes, sun-drenched curls a little tousled, looking more like the boy I met on the road than the son of Vaelorth’s High Lady.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

I turned from him, but he followed. He always did. Even in dreams, he didn’t let me go.

“You hate me when you’re awake,” I said.

“No,” he murmured, his voice a shade too soft. “You hate me. I never said I hated you.”

I clenched my fists. “You should. You’re supposed to.”

“But I don’t,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

My heart stuttered.

He reached for me, slow and cautious, like he thought I might vanish if he touched me too soon. I should’ve stepped back. I didn’t.

His fingertips brushed mine. And gods, I felt it — that strange, unbearable warmth that lived between us. It sparked like it always did. It ached.

“You don’t get to look at me like that,” I said, trying to sound angry. It came out broken.

His hand slid up my wrist, resting over the pulse that betrayed me. “Like what?”

“Like you know me.”

“I’m trying to,” he said. “But every time I get close, you disappear.”

“Because it’s not real,” I whispered. “None of this is.”

He leaned in, his forehead resting lightly against mine. I could feel every breath, every war he’d never say out loud. I should’ve shoved him away. I didn’t.

“Then tell me what you want,” he said. “Tell me and I’ll stop.”

“I want to forget,” I said. “That you were ever kind to me. That you made me feel—”

I stopped. My throat tightened.

“That I made you feel what?” His voice was nothing but air.

I closed my eyes.

“Safe,” I said. “Like maybe the world wasn’t ending. Like maybe I wasn’t.”

For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. I heard the wind shift, smelled the crushed rose petals underfoot.

Then he kissed me.

And it was nothing like I imagined — softer, slower, filled with something that cracked straight through me. Not desperation. Not hunger. Just him. Just us. All the anger melted, all the grief suspended, all the reasons I should’ve walked away swallowed in starlight.

When I pulled back, I wasn’t shaking. I wasn’t even scared.

I opened my eyes and said the only truth I had left:

“It had felt so real, yet so magical.”

And the key word — the word I never said out loud — had.

Because it wouldn’t last.

Because dreams never do.