The orange rays of the setting sun flowed through the wooden slats of the balcony, painting the room in rich gold and purple. Ava Harper stood there, pressed against the railing, letting the chilly breeze tug a few locks of her midnight-black hair from its knot. She closed her eyes and listened not just to the chorus of the nearby owls or the distant rush of the waterfall — but to something more delicate, more intimate. Her own beating heart seemed to be counting the seconds to a moment she hadn't yet lived.
Ava's hands trembled as she opened the small envelope she'd found pressed under her doorstep an hour earlier. Inside was a piece of parchment — heavy, rich in texture, a deep ivory — upon which flowed a script in shimmering ink. The words seemed to illuminate under her fingertips:
"Ava,
Meet me where the lavender grows wild under the midnight sky. There, love finds those who believe in it…
Yours, always, Theo."
Her pulse faltered. Theo Harper — the man who'd captured her soul years before and then disappeared without a trace — was alive. His note made promises without making promises; it opened a path forward without closing the chapters of their past.
As Ava pressed the parchment against her beating heart, memories rushed back to her — the first time their hands brushed in the market, the promises made under a purple heavenscape, the vow to find each other no matter what. There were stories in their past — stories of love, of sacrifice — that not a soul alive knew in their entirety. But this was a new page in their tale, a chance for renewal and reconciliation.
Ava turned back into her dimly lit room, filled with traces of their love — a pressed flower, a photo corner worn by years of touching and began to prepare for whatever midnight might bring. She chose her deep-blue shawl, the color of a rich night sky, and placed it over her shoulders. Whatever lay in the lavender field, whatever Theo meant by "always"—Ava was about to find it.