Chapter 8 Evie
Evie
Fog makes Harbor’s Edge look like it’s trying to forget itself.
Streetlights blur into soft halos. The festival lantern frames sway overhead. Confetti from the arena—silver and black and gold—sticks to wet pavement and gutters like the town tried to dress up for a night out and ended up looking hungover.
Kaia walks beside me like she belongs here.
That’s the first insult.
The second is that she’s quiet.
Not the onstage quiet. Not the interview quiet. A different kind—like she’s holding her breath so she doesn’t say the wrong thing and make me swing.
Or maybe she just has nothing to say.
Maybe she’s thinking the same thing I’ve been trying not to think since the moment she walked back into my life: that I’m in the way. That I always was.
She’s not clutching her sword anymore, thank god. If she’d kept that whole “angel-with-a-weapon” situation while we walked through town, I would’ve thrown her into the harbor out of civic duty.
She still looks… wrong for the sidewalk, though. Sparkly costume under a coat someone shoved at her. Stage makeup intact. Face perfect in a way that doesn’t belong in mist and street grime.
And I’m in clothes that smell like coffee and fear.
We make a pair.
Kaia breaks the silence first.
“I need you to listen,” she says, and there it is again, that tone she probably uses to get people to listen to her. “For your safety—”
“Okay,” I cut in. “Rule number one.”
Kaia glances at me, cautious. “Yeah?”
“You do not talk to me like you’re giving a briefing.”
“I—” She exhales, slow. “Okay. No briefing voice.”
I keep walking, keys digging into my palm hard enough to hurt.
“Rule number two,” I add, because if I stop talking I might start shaking again. “If you say ‘for your safety’ one more time, I’m going to walk into traffic.”
Kaia almost smiles, then thinks better of it. “Noted.”
“Rule number three,” I say. “You don’t get to act like this is normal.”
Kaia’s footsteps slow by half a beat. “It isn’t.”
“Okay, good,” I say, and it comes out meaner than I mean it to. “Because I’m having a really bad night, and I’m running out of what little patience I started with.”
Kaia doesn’t argue. She just walks beside me, shoulders tense under that borrowed coat, like she’s absorbing every word and letting it hit.
Which somehow makes it worse, because if she fought back, I could stay angry. And anger is easier than anything else.
I stop walking long enough to look at her properly.
Kaia immediately stops too, like her body is trained to respond to cues. Her eyes meet mine. There’s no stage light in them now, just exhaustion and something that looks like it’s been living under her ribs for years, waiting to be punished.
Good.
Kaia’s voice is careful. “You look like you have more to say.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “You came back with a magical sword and demons and magical contracts and—who knows what else. And of course, out of everywhere in Harbor’s Edge, that thing attacked the diner?”
Kaia swallows hard. The fog beads on her lashes, making her look almost unreal again, but her expression is painfully human.
“I didn’t bring them to you. I didn’t come here looking for you.” Then she adds, quieter, like she can’t help it, “I didn’t want you anywhere near this.”
She says it like it’s protection.
I hear it like it’s distance…
Because the last time we talked, we were shouting on a pier, words sharp enough to leave scars. We never fixed it. We just… stopped. And the silence has been sitting between us for years like a rusted fence neither of us dared climb.
I shake my head once, trying to shake the feeling loose, and start walking again. Kaia falls into step beside me without crowding.
We pass the corner where the diner sign is visible through fog if you squint. It buzzes faintly, stubborn as ever.
I don’t look at it.
If I look at it, I’ll see the broken window reflections and the table I crawled under and the way my throat wouldn’t work.
If I look at it, I’ll think about her standing there in my life like an avenging angel.
And I don’t know what to do with that yet. So I keep my eyes on the wet sidewalk. Kaia keeps her hands in her pockets, clearly trying to look normal.
It’s not working.
A group of fans stumbles past us, laughing too loud, cheeks flushed with cold and joy. One girl is crying into her friend’s shoulder and still smiling.
Kaia turns her head slightly, keeping her face angled away. I watch her do it. Even now, she’s trained. Even now, she’s hiding in plain sight.
And some stupid, traitorous part of my brain supplies the memory of teen Kaia doing the exact same thing in the diner when tourists wandered in and recognized her from the Harbor Lights stage.
Not famous then. Just… bright.
Too bright for this town.
She’d tug her hoodie up and duck behind the counter and grin at me like we had a secret.
The memory hits without permission, sharp as a flashbulb.
Gus in the kitchen. Kaia in the booth across from me, knees tucked up, hair falling in her face as she scribbles on a napkin like it’s a sacred text.
“You can’t put ‘burn the world down’ in a set list,” I tell her.
Kaia looks up, eyes gleaming. “Why not?”
“Because we’re trying to get you on the Harbor Lights stage, not exiled.”
She grins, then pushes a basket of leftover fries toward me like she’s bribing me into being on her side. “Okay. Fine. What do you think I should open with?”
I steal a fry. “Something that makes them tip.”
Kaia snorts. “You’re such a capitalist.”
“You’re singing for tourists,” I say, deadpan. “You’re literally the capitalist.”
Kaia leans over the napkin, writing song titles and little notes. Her handwriting is messy and alive.
I feel warm watching her. Like I’m sitting too close to a heater.
“What about that new one?” I ask, trying to sound casual. “The one you wrote after the storm?”
Kaia’s fingers pause. “That one’s… not for them.”
“For who, then?” I ask, still casual, still pretending I don’t know.
Her gaze flicks up to my face, and something in it goes soft.
“You,” she says, like it’s obvious.
A car honks somewhere nearby, and I blink myself back into the present so hard my eyes sting.
Kaia is still beside me.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I say, because I can’t stand the weight in her gaze.
Kaia’s head snaps slightly. “Like what?”
"Like you’re surprised I’m still… standing.”
She stops walking this time. I take two more steps before I realize and stop too, because I’m not letting her control the pace of this conversation. Not again.
Kaia stands in the fog with her shoulders tense, eyes fixed on me like she’s holding something back so hard it might crack her teeth.
Then, like clockwork, she reaches for the version of herself that knows how to sound calm.
“Look,” she says carefully, voice smoothing into something practiced, “I know we didn’t part on great terms. But we need to work together. Just until the festival’s over. For your safety.”
My jaw tightens. “There it is again. ‘For your safety.’”
“That’s not—” She exhales, frustrated. “Evie. I saw what it tried to do to you.”
“I’m fine,” I snap.
Kaia’s eyes darken. “You weren’t.”
Silence swells between us, thick as the fog.
Kaia’s gaze flicks toward the pier, and for a second I see teen Kaia in her face—the kind of look she’d get when she was about to do something stupid and brave.
I hate that I can still recognize her tells.
I hate that my brain still catalogs her like she’s mine.
Before she can say anything, a thought hits me, practical and sharp, the way I keep myself from falling apart. “Does your mom know about any of this?”
Kaia blinks. “What?”
“The demons,” I say. “The real swords. The Council. The fact you’re apparently a… magical girl demon-fighting pop star.”
Something flickers over her face, annoyance, regret, exhaustion. “No.”
“No?” I repeat. “She doesn’t know her daughter fights invisible monsters for a living?”
Kaia’s jaw tightens. “She could,” she admits, voice low. “Immediate family can be briefed. Bound. NDA’d.” A pause. “I didn’t.”
“Why?” I demand, even though I already know the answer is going to make me mad.
Kaia looks away for half a second. “Because there was no point in worrying her,” she says quietly. “It’s easier if she doesn’t know.”
Easier.
That's just like her.
I swallow the bitterness. “Right. Well. Congrats on keeping things easy.”
I start walking again before the quiet can trap me.
Kaia’s footsteps catch up, two quick strides.
“You’re doing the same thing,” she blurts. “With your grandma! It’s not as if you want her involved either!”
My stomach drops so hard it feels like gravity changes.
I turn on her. “That’s different.”
Kaia’s eyes flare. “Is it?”
“Yes,” I spit. “Because my grandma was diagnosed with dementia five years ago.”
The word lands between us like broken glass.
“Oh,” she says, and the sound is small. “Evie. I—”
She swallows hard. Her face changes—shock first, then guilt so immediate it’s almost painful to watch.
“I’m sorry,” she says, voice rough. “I didn’t know.”
I laugh once, bitter and hollow. “You wouldn’t.”
Kaia flinches like I hit her. She opens her mouth, closes it. Doesn’t argue.
I look away first, because if I look at her too long I’ll remember the girl she used to be. And I can’t afford that tonight.
“Look,” I say. “we’re fine. You went on and became a pop star and a demon hunter—great. You don’t need to pretend like you regret any of it. We were dumb kids.”
Kaia’s mouth tightens. “I’m not pretending.”
“You are,” I insist. “And it’s gross.”
Then her gaze drops—briefly—to my wrist. The place where the Council ribbon settled. It's invisible, but I can feel it. A faint cold itch under the surface, like someone drew a line in ink I can’t wash off.
Kaia’s face tightens. “Evie, I—”
“It’s fine," I say, cutting her off. "I won’t tell anyone. I can’t. I agreed to the whole NDA thing, didn’t I? Mostly because that creepy guy was two seconds from wiping my brain like a whiteboard, but hey.”