My Family Forgot I Existed, So I Left Them Behind novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Her Desk

The shrine stood in a clearing at the top of the hill, a ring of grey stones around a flat altar.

In the center of the altar was a round hollow, empty.

That was where the moonstone had sat for three hundred years.

I knelt and put my fingertips in the hollow, and the stone chip in my coat pocket burned.

"It fit here," I said. "This was the whole stone, and I broke it."

"You said you took a chip."

"It cracked in my hand. I took the piece that fell. The rest went into the snow." I looked up. "That was three months ago, and the next morning my father stood in the kitchen and asked me who I was."

Torin stood on the far side of the altar with his hands in his pockets.

He had borrowed a jacket from a Brask guard, and it was too small across the shoulders.

"You haven't told me what you said," he said.

"I haven't told anyone."

"You don't have to tell me."

"I want to." My throat was tight. "Not yet."

"Then not yet."

The edge of the altar had names cut into it, one for every Harlan child blessed at that stone.

I found mine near the bottom, scratched in when I was nine.

*IMOGEN.* The letters were crooked.

I touched the *I* and felt the hound's nose bump my elbow.

"The name is still here," Torin said.

"It's carved in rock. It can't be erased."

"Maybe that's the whole trouble. Everyone forgot you except the things that can't forget."

I stared at him.

The hound whined and pressed against my leg.

At eight, with the sun well up over the ridge, we walked down to the Harlan clinic.

← Chapter 6 · All chapters · Chapter 8 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend