19 One Month
Luca
From the first look into her eyes, I was mesmerized.
I didn’t want to admit it but I swear my heart skipped a beat.
It was hard to follow Jace and think of her as “the enemy”.
But overtime, she wasn’t just some girl.
She was the flame and I was the moth. She stayed strong regardless of everything we threw at her.
She stood tall and threw it right back in our faces.
Now I keep searching for those eyes everywhere we look.
And nothing.
That night, Noah and I made it to the rendezvous point without too much trouble. We agreed that within five minutes, we would go and look for Isobel and Dakota.
When I saw Dakota walking up, disheveled and bleeding from a cut on her cheek, her brows furrowed with worry. My stomach dropped through my ass.
I swear it would’ve fallen out if it could’ve.
It’s been a month, and we have nothing. No sightings, no talks of Daniel moving. No taunts. No negotiations.
Noah throws his glasses onto his desk, running his hands through his hair again. He rubs his eyes, turning away from the screen.
“New blue light glasses aren’t helping?”
“No, nothing helps when you spend every moment looking at a screen.” His voice is hoarse. He reaches for the energy drink on his desk and chugs it, crushing the can and tossing it towards the overflowing trash can in the corner.
I sit up on the couch and sigh.
“What if we don’t find her?”
“Don’t you dare.” My head snaps up at him.
“She barely survived Daniel last time!” Noah stands up and begins to pace.
“Don’t you think I know that?” I grit my teeth. “We have to keep thinking positively. I refuse to think of any other alternative. We. Will. Find. Her.”
Noah exhales sharply, dragging both hands down his face before collapsing back into his chair. The light from the monitors washes over him, painting him in tired shades of blue and gray.
The silence that follows feels like punishment. The kind that lingers, gnaws, and makes you question every decision that brought you here.
I stare at the floor, my jaw tight. “She’s out there somewhere. Maybe she’s hurt, but she’s alive. I’d feel it if she wasn’t.”
Noah doesn’t answer. His fingers twitch over the keyboard, running another trace, another dead end.
I push myself up and walk to the window. The city below looks indifferent. Busy. Unmoved by the fact that someone like her could vanish into it.
“I keep thinking…” My voice cracks before I can stop it. “If I’d just gone with her instead of letting Dakota—”
“Don’t.” Noah’s voice is quiet, but enough to cut through my guilt.
I press my palm against the glass, watching the faint reflection of my own eyes staring back—hollow, haunted.
“Jace won’t stop,” Noah mutters after a beat. “He’s been working with Lucian’s contacts. If there’s a lead, he’ll find it.”
“Yeah, but how much longer before he breaks?” I glance over at Noah. “He’s barely sleeping. He’s running on rage and caffeine.”
“We all are.”
I huff out a laugh.
The world didn’t stop when she disappeared.
Classes kept running. The Guild kept sending assignments. The sky still had the nerve to turn blue in the mornings.
It’s almost funny—how quickly people move on. Except we can’t, we’re still stuck inside the night she disappeared.
Jace is the first one up every morning. I hear him before I see him—the scrape of the chair against the floor, the coffee maker, the sound of him pacing while the rest of the dorm still sleeps.
When I finally drag myself out of bed, he’s already by the window, one hand braced against the frame. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks.
“Guild briefing in ten.”
“Yeah,” I mumble, rubbing my eyes. “Can’t wait.”
He exhales through his nose, sharp and tired. “You didn’t sleep.”
“Neither did you.”
It’s not a fight, but it could be. Everything between us lately teeters on the edge of one. Two months of us both being too damn stubborn to admit what’s really clawing at us.
By the time we make it to the training hall, Noah’s already buried in data on his tablet. He looks up briefly, the dark circles under his eyes are worse than yesterday. “Another false lead from the docks. The camera’s timestamp was off by a week.”
Jace doesn’t even react. He just walks past him, shoulders stiff, and starts strapping on his gear like he’s going to war with the air itself.
I sit beside Noah and grab a protein bar from his desk. “You should eat something that doesn’t come in aluminum, man.”
He doesn’t look up.
We train. We study. We report to Lucian. We do what we’re supposed to do. But every night, when the lights go out, I see her face—defiant, terrified, bloodied—and I wonder if that was the last time I ever will.
When Jace finishes, he throws his gloves onto the table and mutters, “I’m heading out.”
“For what?” I ask.
He pauses in the doorway. “Leads.”
I stare at him for a long second. “Sure.” I cross my arms and mumble loud enough for him to hear. “Tex wouldn’t have let this happen.”
He doesn’t answer. Just walks out, the door slamming shut behind him.
Noah sighs and pushes his tablet away. “You should talk to him.”
“Yeah,” I say, leaning back against the wall. “I might as well talk to a wall for all the good that would do.”
Outside, the rain starts again. It’s been raining a lot lately. The kind of gray drizzle that never stops, like the sky forgot it was supposed to be blue.
And somewhere out there, she’s just…gone.