I Don't Forgive You But I Still Miss You

Before I ever knew your name...I knew you were going to die.

I used to wonder what it was like for those captured by the rebellion.

Where their thoughts went.

Whether hope disappeared before hunger...

Or if the darkness swallowed both whole.

Now I know.

The tunnels are colder than I imagined.

Damp enough that water drips endlessly from the stone ceiling, each drop echoing like a countdown. No sunlight reaches this place. No birds sing overhead.

Just chains scraping against rock.

They covered my eyes when they brought me here.

As if darkness could stop a seer from seeing.

If anything, it has only made the visions louder.

I curse my gift now.

There was a time I considered it sacred.

A blessing bestowed upon my bloodline, one entrusted only to those capable of carrying the weight of tomorrow.

Every vision had purpose. Every warning meant something.

Now it feels like punishment.

If I hadn't been so consumed with protecting you

Saving you

I never would've ended up here.

Of that, I have no doubt.

I tell myself this prison is your doing.

That every ache in my wrists from these shackles

Every bruise forming beneath my skin

Can be traced back to you.

It should make hating you easy.

But my mind betrays me.

It refuses to remember the guards dragging me from my bed in the middle of the night.

The blindfold.

The blows.

Instead it insists on replaying the way you laughed.

The way your fingers brushed over wilted flowers until life poured back into them as though death had merely been an inconvenience.

You always smiled when something bloomed beneath your hands.

As if growing things was enough to make the world feel right again.

Perhaps that's why I fell in love with you.

Or perhaps why I never stood a chance.

Because as I said-

I knew you were going to die.

That was the first vision.

Not your smile.

Not your voice.

Not the way moonlight would settle across your skin.

Your death.

Again.

And again.

And again.

For weeks it came to me.

Violent.

Unavoidable.

You lying motionless while your gift faded from the forest around you.

A daughter murdered by the man who was supposed to protect her.

I should've ignored it.

The future isn't always ours to interfere with.

That is the first lesson every seer learns.

We observe.

We guide when we are called upon.

We do not alter fate simply because it would hurt us.

Especially not for the daughter of the man trying to tear our kingdom apart.

Your father wanted more than freedom.

That's what he told his followers.

That the peace keepers had weakened our kind.

That fae should answer to no one.

That mortals were never meant to stand beside us as equals.

But I had seen enough futures to know freedom was never the end of his story.

Power was.

Absolute power.

The kind that leaves kingdoms in ruins.

The kind that buries innocent people beneath someone else's ambition.

Which meant you were forbidden in every imaginable way.

You were his daughter.

I was sworn to protect those that stood against him.

Every instinct told me to let fate unfold exactly as I had seen it.

Instead...

I crossed the border.

I told myself it was duty.

That I only needed to confirm the vision.

Warn you if I could.

Then leave before anyone knew I'd been there.

I believed that right up until the moment I saw you.

You weren't standing in a palace.

Or surrounded by guards.

You were barefoot beneath the moonlight, laughing to yourself as you wandered through an overgrown clearing, trailing your fingertips across dying vines.

Everywhere your skin touched

Life followed.

Ancient branches stretched toward the sky.

The entire forest seemed to exhale around you.

And just like that

The vision changed.

For the first time since I'd been given my gift-

The future rewrote itself before my eyes.

You went from being dead-

To being mine.

I should've left that night.

Every instinct I'd spent my life trusting begged me to disappear before you ever noticed.

A seer has no business becoming part of his own vision.

But I kept finding reasons to return.

Sometimes I'd convince myself I needed to make sure the vision hadn't changed again.