As the memories of that day came back, moisture gathered in my eyes and tears rolled down my cheeks. When I looked at Adrian, his face was haunted.

“Why did you choose this place?” I asked again, not understanding how he could come here when the terror had gone so deep.

“Because when I am here, I remember our final night together,” he said, holding my face between his hands, thumbs brushing away my tears. “Do you remember the details of that night?”

I shook my head, and he smiled, though it was faint, and it quickly disappeared.

“We made love,” he said. “It was different from all the other times…and it has never been that way since. I never want it to be because I knew that you were only saying goodbye. I knew it even when you spoke of our future.”

“What did I say?” I asked.

I had no vivid memories of this night, but that was likely because it had been drowned in the trauma that had followed.

Adrian held me so close, I could no longer feel the cold around us, only the heat between us.

“You wanted a quiet life with me at the base of this mountain,” he said. “We would have a farm and you would teach magic the way it was meant to be taught.”

“How quaint,” I said, managing to laugh despite how much I cried. The irony wasn’t lost on me—the life I had wanted then and the life I had now.

“You named our children,” he said, and the silence that followed his statement shattered my heart. They were the children we would never have.

“What were their names?” I whispered.

I knew he remembered, knew he clung to the memory of them though they never existed.

“Cora, for a girl,” he said, and I swallowed something sharp and jagged in my throat, only to have it land uneasily in my stomach.

Cora. I thought the name was so buried, I could hardly recall where I had heard it, but once the seed was planted, a woman formed around the name. She had a proud face and stood stoic and still. Her eyes were dark, both humble and fierce. She was beautiful, and an ache settled deep inside me at the fact that I did not know what had happened to her in the aftermath of my death.

This was Yesenia’s mother.

My mother.

“Cora,” I repeated, and my brows lowered as I searched for the other name. Finally, I met Adrian’s gaze. “Alek. For a boy,” I said. “After you.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips but could not dim the pain in his eyes, and after a moment, he spoke. “I am sorry I could not give you what you wanted,” he said.