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His journal contained what little he could remember before the nautiloid. Glimpses that shed light on who he was, what he was, and what he had escaped. 6 years have passed since his rebirth at the temple. A man made new, godless, and with no kin left. Good. He has no need for them anymore; he has found his place among his companions. His friends. His family. Because of them, his writing is not limited to the grim but also flashes of his newfound peace. He writes of them often, draws them even. A talent he never knew he had till before the birth of his first. He glanced over to the candle at his side and speculated where his right hand learned to move the way it did with a pencil; he grimaced at the thought of his educated guess. Fel's words were echoing in his mind:
"You always did enjoy capturing perfection before and after destruction."
He slowly exhales through his nose before letting the thought pass. He looks back at this current sketch, her smile meeting his. Gods she was beautiful, but even his skilled work paled in comparison to the reference.
"Uthred? What are you doing?" she asks from behind him. "Couldn't sleep," he flatly says back. He can hear her shifting behind him on their bed. He didn't look, but he could sense that she was closing the distance between them. A warm hand positions itself on his shoulder, leading up to the rest of her figure, the blanket draped over her sleepy form. It takes a second, but her eyes settle on the notebook he was working on, eyes gazing over what he was doing. His eyes meet hers, with a tinge of embarrasment from being caught in the act.
"I didn't know you could draw." She says, a smirk evident in the way she spoke. "Neither did I." He says back with more glee in his voice from being praised. "You drew me." She states. "It seemed like a good subject." She bends to his level and wraps her arms around him. "It's beautiful...and sweet." He embraces her in return. "So was the model." He whispers back. She chuckles against him. "Thank you."
"Come back to bed with me?" She asks playfully. He kisses her forehead and tells her to lead the way.
***
On other days, when his mind is more focused in a particular direction, he tends to put his feelings to paper, as best as he can. This is one such day.
His chest feels tight. Against his better judgement to just let sleeping dogs lie, to just allow the past to fade into a distant dream, he couldn't help but write his thoughts down. He writes a letter addressed to someone who can no longer read it.
"Enver,
I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe I just need to see the words in front of me to confront what’s left of what we were, or what I think we were.
Sometimes, when the night is still, when the only sound is my children breathing upstairs, I find myself wondering… if I was wrong.
Not about stopping you. That much, I know, had to be done. Your ambition...You would’ve dragged the Sword Coast into chains to secure it all. I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t.
But even knowing that… why do I still feel like I betrayed you?
There are pieces of myself I still don’t fully understand, fragments of who I used to be before the amnesia, before the tadpole, before Bhaal carved me into something less than human. And every time one surfaces, your name is there, like a ghost burned into the edges of my memory.
I trusted you, didn’t I? We planned together. Fought together. Built something, a vision, terrible or not, I can’t deny we believed in it once. I remember the weight of your hand on my shoulder, your voice telling me we’d remake the world and carve our names into its bones. I believed you. I believed in you.
And then, when the moment came, I put a blade to your throat.
I can still see your face, Enver. That flicker of recognition and disappointment. Not anger, not hatred, not even surprise… just that hollow look, like you’d seen this coming and grieved it long before it happened.
Was that your way of forgiving me? Or was it contempt? I don’t know anymore.
I tell myself I had no choice, and maybe that’s true. The path we were on led to ruin, for you, for me, and for everyone we touched. But there’s another part of me, a quieter, uglier part, that whispers I turned my back on the only person who ever understood what I was. Who I was meant to be.
And here’s the truth I hate admitting: there are nights I miss you.
You bastard.
Do you know what you’ve left me with? These memories, sharp, jagged things that never fit together. I see flashes of us standing side by side, and I don’t know if I should hate you for what we did or hate myself for missing it.
You’re always in my head.
If I’d stood at your side instead of against you, would we have won? Would we have burned the world together and called it mercy? Would I have become the monster Bhaal wanted, and would you have smiled at me still when I killed you? Or perhaps if I could have saved you, or if you could have saved me.
I’ll never know. Because I made my choice, and you’re dead.
But there’s no undoing what’s been done. The city breathes freer now. The children sleep safely because you’re gone. That should be enough.
It isn’t.
Wherever you are, whatever fragments of you remain, I hope you understand why I did it. I hope, in some cruel, twisted way, you’d forgive me. Because gods know I don’t forgive myself.
Go to whatever hell waits for men like you. And if we ever meet there, I’ll kill you again.
— Uthred"
He closes the book shut and rubs his palms on his face. His hands moist with sweat, he hadn't even realized how intense he felt as he cobbled together the words. He sat in silence for what felt like an eternity before getting up and deciding to go get some fresh air.
***
Uthred taps his finger repeatedly on his head thinking of what to write. He looks out the window and sees his two little half-elves playing outside with Karlach and Wyll, Astarion is off under the shade of a tree pretending to not be amused at the sight of the large tiefling woman spinning in circles and screaming with the children. He smiles at the sight before turning his head back to the pages and begin to spill his thoughts once more.
"Enver,
I think I’ve run out of things to hate you for.
Or maybe I’ve just grown tired of carrying them. Anger’s a heavy thing, and I’ve been holding it so long my hands are numb.
I’ve spent nights trying to untangle us, what we were, what we almost became, and what we destroyed. But there’s no clean line to follow. No neat answer. Just blood and choices and consequences, the kind neither of us could escape.
Bhaal carved me hollow, and you were clever enough to fill the void.
That’s what made you dangerous. Not your machines. Not even your ambition. It was the way you made people believe you could give them meaning.
I’ve stopped asking myself if we could have been allies. If we might have ruled together. It doesn’t matter anymore. We’re both too far gone from the men we were before the blood, before the brain, before Baldur’s Gate became a wound neither of us could close.
I killed you because I had to.
You would have done the same.
That’s the only truth between us that still matters.
And maybe that’s why you still haunt me, not as a ghost, but as a reminder. That if I falter… if I let myself be consumed again… I’ll become the very thing I killed you to stop.
I live for my family now. My wife. My children. My friends. The life I swore I’d protect, no matter what. But some nights, I still wake up and wonder if that life is only borrowed, if men like us ever get to keep what we love, or if it’s just waiting to be taken away.
And when it’s finally taken… what’s left of me then?
Would I become like Kehteric? Would I go mad, clawing at the world until it burned? Or would I become something worse, something even you would have feared?
I don’t know. Maybe I never will. Gods willing, I’ll die an old man with my wife's hand in mine and my children’s laughter in my ears.
But if I don’t… if the worst comes…
I think we’ll meet again, Enver.
Not in Baldur’s Gate. Not on any battlefield.
In the hells.
And when we do, we’ll both finally pay for what we’ve done.
Together.
—Uthred"
***
Late at night in the cottage. Everyone is asleep. Moonlight filters through the curtains, silvering the wooden floorboards. The only sound is the soft crackle of the dying hearthfire.
Shadowheart sat at the edge of their shared desk, fingers idly tracing the spine of Uthred’s old sketchbook.
She’d only meant to look. Just one more glance at those drawings of her, the quiet ones he never showed her, the ones she only found by accident weeks ago. He always caught her off guard with them… the way he saw her, not just as she was, but as if she were something fragile and divine. There were no traces of Shar’s shadow in his strokes, no cruelty in his lines. Just warmth. Love.
But when she opened the wrong drawer, she didn’t find drawings. She found the letters.
Neatly folded. Stacked. Bound together with twine as though he meant to keep them safe. Some pages were wrinkled where ink had bled into them, the edges warped by fingerprints she realized had probably been wet.
She hesitated, thumb hovering over the first page.
She shouldn’t read them.
She knew she shouldn’t.
…And yet, she did.
Uthred had been carrying so much she never saw.
Shadowheart tightened her grip on the page, her knuckles pale in the moonlight. He had written about fear, not fear of death, not fear of Bhaal, not even fear of himself… but fear of losing them. Of losing her. Of failing to keep their family safe. And beneath it all, threaded between each deliberate stroke of ink, was something deeper: the quiet belief that maybe he didn’t deserve any of it in the first place.
Gods…he’d never said any of this to her.
Never even hinted at it.
She swallowed hard, her throat tight as she set the first letter down and unfolded another.
And it was worse.
Not in anger, there was none. Just… guilt. A part of him felt like a traitor, as though killing Gortash had stripped him of some piece of himself. Shadowheart blinked, her green eyes catching the shimmer of candlelight as her gaze moved faster, devouring every word, until she reached the end:
“I think we’ll meet again, Enver.
Not in Baldur’s Gate. Not on any battlefield.
In the hells.
And when we do, we’ll both finally pay for what we’ve done.
Together.”
She stared at the last line for a long time, her heartbeat loud in the quiet.
Uthred thought he was damned.
Not once had he said that aloud. Not to her. Not to anyone.
She set the letter down with trembling hands, glancing over her shoulder toward the bed where he lay sprawled beneath the sheets, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. Peaceful. Unaware.
How many nights had he lain awake like this, bleeding into ink while she slept beside him? How many battles was he still fighting, alone, while pretending to be whole for her, for their children, for their friends?
Shadowheart pressed her palm against the letters as though trying to steady them…or herself.
She wanted to wake him. Gods, she wanted to shake him until he understood that he wasn’t alone, that there was nothing—nothing—he could carry that she wouldn’t carry with him.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she carefully stacked the pages again, tied them back in their twine, and slid them into the drawer exactly as she found them. Her fingers lingered on the wood for a moment longer before she shut it softly, the click muffled by the hush of the room.
She stood there, silent, looking at him across the room.
And for the first time in years, the fear wasn’t hers.
It was his.
***
Early morning. The first slant of dawn filters into the cottage, spilling across the floorboards. Outside, the forest hums with birdsong. The smell of baking bread drifts from the kitchen hearth. Uthred sat at the table, still bleary-eyed, fingers working idly at the ties of his clothes. His hair was messy from sleep, a few stubborn strands hanging in front of his face. Shadowheart leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, mug of tea in her hands. She studied him quietly for a moment, letting the warmth seep into her fingers, before finally breaking the silence. “You were restless again.” she said softly.
Uthred blinked, glancing up at her, caught off guard by the statement. “Was I?”
He reached for a piece of bread, tearing it with his teeth, talking around the bite. “Didn’t notice.” Shadowheart sipped her tea, green eyes fixed on him over the rim of the cup. “…I did.” There was no accusation in her voice, but Uthred paused mid-motion anyway, as though bracing for one.
“…Bad dreams?” she asked after a beat. He shook his head and set the bread down, wiping his hand against his thigh. “Not dreams. Just… thoughts, I guess.”
She hummed faintly, pretending to focus on her tea so she wouldn’t stare too hard. “You think a lot, lately.” Uthred smirked faintly at that, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Someone has to. These walls aren’t going to guard themselves.” But she heard it — the subtle edge in his tone, the weight under the joke. He was deflecting. He always deflected.
Shadowheart hesitated, then tried another angle. “You know,” she said carefully, “you don’t have to carry all of it alone.” That made him look at her properly. His brows furrowed, jaw working silently before he settled on a small shrug. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” she countered softly, gaze steady. “I can see it in you, Uthred. Every time you stare off too long, or sit awake at night, or…” Her voice faltered for half a beat. “…or write things you don’t say.”
Uthred froze at that. Subtle, but she caught it. The tension in his shoulders. The stillness in his hands. He recovered quickly, leaning back in his chair and exhaling through his nose. “…Not everything’s meant to be said out loud, Jen.” Shadowheart stepped further into the kitchen, setting her mug down beside him. “Maybe. But that doesn’t mean you should bleed onto paper while pretending you’re fine. That’s… not you.” Uthred looked down at his hands, tracing a faint scar across his knuckles. For a long moment, the silence stretched between them, thick and taut.
Then, finally, he said, low and quiet:
“I keep thinking about Gortash.”
Her chest tightened at the name. She said nothing, letting him speak. “I killed him,” Uthred went on, voice rougher than before. “I had to. Gods know what would’ve happened if I didn’t. But… every time I close my eyes, I see him standing next to me, like he’s supposed to be there. Like he belongs there. Like I betrayed him.” Shadowheart moved to stand behind him, resting a hand gently on his shoulder. “You didn’t,” she whispered. “You saved thousands.”
Uthred nodded faintly, but his gaze stayed on the table. “…Doesn’t feel like it.”
Neither of them spoke for a while after that.
She squeezed his shoulder, grounding him, but didn’t push further. Not today. He wasn’t ready, and she wasn’t ready to admit how much she knew. Instead, she leaned down, brushed her lips softly against his temple, and murmured, “Eat your breakfast, Uthred.”
He huffed a quiet laugh, not happy, but real, and picked his bread back up.
And that was enough for now.
***
Late at night. The cottage is silent except for the gentle crackle of the hearth. Outside, moonlight filters through the trees, painting pale silver across the floor. Shadowheart kneels before the small shrine she keeps tucked against the wall of their bedroom, a polished bowl of water, white flowers, and a single silver pendant resting atop the altar. Shadowheart clasped the pendant between her hands and closed her eyes, letting her forehead bow. The soft hum of the forest outside reminded her of quiet nights aboard the nautiloid, when she’d prayed to a goddess she thought she knew. Back then, the silence used to feel cold and hollow. Now, under Selûne’s light, it felt warmer… but heavier, too.
“…Lady of Silver,” she began softly, her voice barely above a whisper, “I come to you tonight because I don’t know who else to speak to.”
She hesitated, fingers tightening around the pendant.
“I saw his letters,” she confessed quietly, almost guiltily. “I shouldn’t have, I know I shouldn’t have but I did. And now I can’t stop thinking about them.”
Her breath caught faintly, chest tightening as she tried to put it into words.
“Uthred…” She swallowed hard. “He carries so much, Selûne. So much more than anyone should. And he won’t speak it, not even to me. He’s drowning, and all I can do is watch.”
She opened her eyes, staring into the shallow bowl of water. The reflection was fractured by ripples, distorting the pale shine of the moon overhead.
“Today, he said Gortash’s name,” she whispered. “He said it like a wound he still feels bleeding. He thinks he betrayed him. And I…I don’t know how to tell him he didn’t. That stopping him saved lives. That choosing us, choosing our future, wasn’t a crime.”
Her voice cracked at the edges, but she steadied it with a deep, careful breath.
“…I’m afraid,” she admitted finally, the words almost breaking free of her throat. “Afraid that one day, it’ll all be too much for him. That he’ll look back at everything we’ve built, everything we’ve fought for, and decide it isn’t enough to keep him here.”
Her hands trembled faintly around the pendant.
“I can’t lose him, Selûne,” she whispered. “Not after everything. Not after we clawed our way out of the darkness together.”
For a long moment, there was silence. No breeze stirred the room. No bird cried outside. Just her and the muted sound of her own heartbeat in her ears.
Then, slowly, the clouds outside shifted, and moonlight poured through the window, brighter, softer, spilling silver across her hands and the small shrine.
Shadowheart exhaled shakily, eyes falling shut as if leaning into the touch of something unseen.
“…Please,” she breathed, her voice breaking to the quietest murmur. “Keep him safe. Keep us safe. And if he can’t forgive himself, then… let me be strong enough to forgive him for both of us.”
The pendant warmed faintly in her hands. She stayed there for a long time, silent beneath Selûne’s light, until the weight in her chest felt a little less suffocating.
Uthred stirred in his sleep, his hand brushing against the cold space beside him. He reached out instinctively, expecting to find her warmth, but his fingers met only the rumpled blanket. His eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the faint silver glow spilling through the curtains. For a moment, he thought perhaps Shadowheart had gone downstairs for water. But then he caught the soft shape of her silhouette, kneeling near the far wall, head bowed before the tiny shrine.
Moonlight framed her in silver, threading through the loose strands of her dark hair, catching faintly on the delicate green of her eyes even from this distance. Her lips moved soundlessly, whispers meant only for Selûne’s ears. Uthred watched her for a long moment, chest tightening faintly. Something about her posture, the quiet tremor in her shoulders, the way her hands clasped the pendant like it was the last thing keeping her together, stirred a deep ache in him.
He pushed the blanket aside and rose quietly, careful not to startle her. His bare feet padded softly across the wooden floor until he stopped just behind her, not daring to break whatever fragile thread connected her to her goddess.
Shadowheart didn’t notice him at first, still deep in her prayer. But as his shadow fell across the moonlight pooling on the floor, she finally stirred and turned slightly, startled to find him there.
Her lips parted, as though to explain, but no words came.
Uthred simply lowered himself onto the floor beside her, knees bending until he sat cross-legged, shoulder brushing lightly against hers. He didn’t ask what she was saying. He didn’t need to. For a while, they sat together in silence, the soft hum of the night around them. His hand, rough and warm, drifted over hers where she clutched the pendant, and without a word, he threaded his fingers through hers.
She let out a faint, trembling breath but didn’t pull away. Instead, her grip tightened slightly, grounding herself in his touch. The shrine’s water bowl reflected their joined hands, fractured by faint ripples that shimmered beneath the moonlight. Neither of them spoke, yet something unspoken passed between them, an acknowledgment of shared fears, shared burdens, and a promise neither needed to voice aloud.
When Shadowheart finally moved, it wasn’t to speak. She simply leaned into him, resting her forehead lightly against his shoulder, her pendant still caught between their entwined fingers.
Uthred turned his head slightly, pressing a soft kiss to her hair without breaking the quiet.
Eventually, she whispered, barely audible:
“…Stay with me.”
And he did.
The silence stretched between them, soft and delicate, like a fragile glass that neither wanted to break. Uthred stared at the shrine’s faint reflection in the water bowl, watching the ripples still from their earlier touch.
Finally, he exhaled slowly, his voice a low murmur that barely rose above the hush of the wind outside.
“I don’t feel anything for them,” he said, eyes fixed on the pendant in her hand rather than her face. “The ones I killed… before. When I was someone else. I couldn’t possibly. I don’t remember their faces. Not their names. Not even the sounds they made when they died.”
Shadowheart turned slightly, her green eyes soft in the dim glow, searching his expression. But she didn’t interrupt.
Uthred rubbed his thumb against her knuckles, grounding himself on her presence as though afraid of floating away into the weight of his own thoughts. “Sometimes I think about it,” he continued, quieter now. “How many there must’ve been. The lives I… ended. And I don’t remember any of it. It’s like it wasn’t even me. But if it wasn’t, then who was it?”
He shook his head faintly, jaw tightening.
“Doing good now doesn’t wash it away. It shouldn’t. That wouldn’t be fair. Not to them.”
The words hung there, heavy, but there was no bitterness in them. Just an aching acceptance. Shadowheart reached out and touched his arm gently, her thumb grazing the edge of his sleeve.
“Uthred…” she started softly, but he spoke before she could continue.
“I don’t want to burn.” he admitted, voice cracking in a way that startled even him. “When my time comes… I don’t want to burn. But where else would I go? What else could someone like me deserve? ”
He finally looked at her then, meeting her gaze—and what she saw there was not guilt, but exhaustion. A man who had made peace with his path, but not with his fate.
“I think…” he hesitated, fingers tightening around hers, “…I think I might be Jergal’s now. Or Withers’s. Chosen without ever asking for it.”
Shadowheart blinked, startled by the quiet weight of the statement.
“Withers?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Uthred muttered, shaking his head. “I suspect. He’s always watching, always knowing, always… there. But if I die, I don’t know if my soul would follow. I don’t belong to any god. I don’t worship any god. Not Bhaal. Not Selûne. Not anyone.”
There was a long pause. The only sound was the faint sigh of wind outside, threading through the cracks in the shutters. Shadowheart’s hand lingered on his, cool and steady against his warmth.
“Then perhaps it isn’t about where you’ll go,” she said quietly, “but what you make of the time you have here. The gods can sort out the rest. You’ve given enough of yourself to them already, one way or another.”
He didn’t respond right away, but his breathing eased, slow and measured. Her words didn’t erase the weight he carried—they couldn’t. But they anchored him, as she always did. After a long moment, Uthred turned his hand beneath hers, their fingers interlacing once more.
“I don’t know where my soul will wander,” he said softly, almost to himself. “But I know where I want myself to be… for now. Here. With you.”
Shadowheart didn’t reply, but she leaned against him, resting her head lightly on his shoulder. In the soft silver light of Selûne’s shrine, two fractured souls sat together—neither forgiven nor damned, simply existing in the fragile peace they had carved out of chaos.
***
He sets his hands down on the parchment, shaking, tears threatening well up in his eyes as he begins to write.
"The cottage is quiet tonight. I can hear the soft creak of the rafters in the wind, the settling of the stone, and the whisper of the forest outside our walls. Shadowheart sleeps upstairs. I should be beside her, but my mind won’t let me rest. Not tonight.
I’ve been thinking about time. About mine. About theirs.
Among my friends, I might be the first to go. Excluding Jaheira and Minsc, of course, they’ve already seen more decades than I can imagine carrying on my shoulders. But me? I’m just human. Entirely so. No lingering elven grace, no infernal bargain, no githyanki blood to stretch the years thin. If I’m lucky, I’ll see seventy. Perhaps eighty, if Selûne decides to be kind.
I’m already in my mid-thirties. How many years does that leave me? Forty? Fifty, if fate has a gentle hand? It’s a strange thing to count your life in decades instead of stories.
I see them sometimes—my friends, and it strikes me in ways I wish it didn’t. Lae’zel could live for centuries if her people don’t eat her alive first. Wyll’s infernal ties are severed now, but he’s still younger than me by about half a decade; he’ll stand tall long after my back bends. Karlach… gods, if that smith’s work holds, she’ll outlast us all. Gods, even Astarion, freed from the curse, has his elven blood to carry him far beyond my years. I pity the next few generations that will be stuck with him.
And Jen…half-elven. She’ll still have decades after I’m gone. That thought cuts deeper than any blade I’ve ever faced.
I wonder sometimes what it’ll do to her when I’m no longer here. What will it do to Lucan? To Elaris. Will they hate me for leaving? Will they even remember me when they’re grown and gone?
I’ve never feared death itself. Not when the nautiloid crashed. Not when Bhaal whispered in my ear and pulled me toward his call. I stared death in the face more times than I can count, I've died once already, and never once did my legs give way. But this—this slow march toward an end I cannot fight, cannot outwit, cannot carve a way through, this frightens me more than I’ll ever admit aloud.
And yet… part of me feels I should welcome it. With all I’ve done, with the blood on my hands, even if my memories of it are shadows at best—maybe I was never meant to grow old. Maybe my punishment has already been written.
Still, I want to try. I want to grow old. I want to see Lucan become a man, Elaris grow into her smile, and Jen's hair turn silver for reasons far kinder than Shar's cruelty. I want another forty years. Maybe fifty, if I can wrestle them from fate’s grasp.
But I know better than most that the gods rarely care what we want.
If Withers really is watching me, and I feel in my bones that he is, perhaps he knows where my soul will go when all this is over. If it goes anywhere at all. I used to think the Nine Hells waited for me, and maybe they still do. I’ve earned no paradise. But lately…lately, I’ve wondered if the skeleton will take me. The Scribe of the Doomed, the quiet hand that measures all endings.
Perhaps that’s why Withers lingers.
I don’t know how much time I have. No one ever truly does. But when I watch my children sleep, when I see Shadowheart laugh in the sunlight, when I hear Karlach’s roaring jokes or see Astarion’s shit-eating smirk, I feel… grateful.
I’ve cheated death more times than most mortals ever will. I should be bones in the dirt a dozen times over. And yet here I am.
For however long I have left, I will make it enough.
If I meet Gortash in the Hells one day, so be it. If Bhaal claims my soul, so be it. If Jergal writes my name into the ledger of forgotten kings and cursed sons, so be it. But while I live, I’ll fight for every moment. Every smile. Every memory is worth leaving behind.
And maybe, just maybe, that will be enough to keep the fear quiet when the time finally comes.
—Uthred"
He leaves the book open without turning back, too emotional to go through his usual routine after writing. He leaves to go find the embrace of a dreamless slumber.
Minutes after he has left, shadowheart comes accross his open journal. The worrying curiosity of what she might find tugs at her once more, this time it seemed like the object was freshly tampered with, the the page where it left off stained with a few tears.
***
Once the day had began to settle, Uthred went back to where he last left his journal. He’d been meaning to add another passage tonight, something about Lucan’s latest attempt at sword forms or Elaris’ habit of pulling his braids when she wanted attention. Something simple. Something light. The house was quiet, save for the soft ticking of the old clock on the mantle and the distant croak of night insects beyond the window. He sat alone by the low-burning fire, the book resting on his lap, his thumb absently tracing the worn leather of its cover.
But when he flipped through the pages, his fingers paused on something unfamiliar, a folded slip of parchment, tucked between entries he knew he hadn’t left space for. He unfolded it, and the world stilled.
It was her handwriting.
"Uthred,
I shouldn’t be reading this. I know this journal is yours, meant for your thoughts alone. But tonight, my worry for you won over your right to privacy, I wanted to see see more of your mind—I…I had found what I had feared.
I couldn’t stop myself from reading. And now I can’t stop shaking.
You think I don’t notice the way your eyes linger on our children when they’re sleeping, as though memorizing every line of their faces in case tomorrow doesn’t come. I see you when your hand brushes against the scar on your temple, or when you stare into the fire longer than the others, lost in places you don’t speak of. I’ve seen the weight you carry, even when you think you hide it well.
But this? Knowing you believe your time is so short—knowing you’ve already started counting the days before they’ve passed—it feels like someone reached inside my chest and pulled the air from me.
You foolish, wonderful, maddening man…I am not ready to think about a life without you in it.
I don’t know what’s waiting for your soul when your time comes. Maybe it’s Withers, maybe it’s Bhaal, maybe it’s nothing at all. But I do know this: you are not defined by what you’ve done, Uthred. Not anymore. You say you don’t feel remorse for those you killed before, and maybe you never will—but I’ve seen you as you are now. I’ve seen the man who held me when nightmares clawed at me, who stood between our friends and death more times than anyone had the right to ask. I’ve seen you choose kindness when cruelty would’ve been easier.
That is who you are. That is the man I love.
I wish I could promise you that Selûne would grant you another fifty years. A hundred. A thousand. I wish I could swear to you that I’ll never have to stand by your grave and pretend to be strong for our children. But I can’t make promises the gods won’t keep.
What I can promise is this: no matter where you go when your story ends, you won’t go there unloved. You will not leave this world forgotten, Uthred. Not by me. Not by Lucan. Not by Elaris. Not by any soul you’ve touched since the day we crawled from that cursed wreck together.
And if Selûne is kind, and I think, maybe, she has been, though neither of us are the praying sort—then I’ll see you again, wherever we’re sent when all of this is done. I’ll find you, even if I have to claw through the Hells themselves to do it.
But for now, you are here. You are mine, and I am yours, and I will fight tooth and nail for every day we have left. So you can stop counting the years, my love. I will count them for us.
I love you more than words can hold.
And that will never change."
(A small symbol of Selûne is drawn beneath her signature—messy, rushed, as though she hesitated over it. A single teardrop has smudged part of the ink, leaving the mark imperfect.)
By the time he reached the last line—“I will count them for us.”—his chest felt tight, too tight to breathe.
Uthred closed the parchment slowly, as though afraid the ink might fade if he moved too quickly. He slipped it back where he found it, but the words clung to him like iron chains.
He leaned back in his chair, tilting his head until he was staring up at the wooden beams of the cottage ceiling. He focused on their imperfections—the uneven edges, the little scars from where he’d missed nails—anything to keep his mind from unraveling. His jaw tightened. His throat ached. He tried, gods, he tried to keep his breathing steady. Tried to bury the sound before it reached his chest.
But his vision blurred anyway. Not in sobs, not in brokenness—but in that quiet, crushing way grief and love intertwined when there were no words left for either.
A single tear slid into his hairline, hidden by shadow. He didn’t wipe it away.
Instead, he whispered, almost too softly to hear,
“I don’t deserve you.”
The fire popped in response, indifferent and small. Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked, probably Shadowheart shifting in her sleep, and Uthred forced himself to breathe deep, steadying the weight in his chest.
He closed the memoir and set it on the table, his hand lingering on its cover. One day, he’d tell her. One day, he’d find the right words.
But not tonight. Tonight, he sat in silence beneath the ceiling beams, carrying her love like a blade sheathed against his ribs.