Epilogue Celeste
The air thins in a quiet surgical way panic has, like the whole room narrows to a single bright pinprick and everything else falls out of frame.
My good hand finds Lucian’s leg and clamps down, fabric bunching under my fingers.
Holding on to something solid is the only thing that keeps my body from bolting toward whatever’s happening.
Orion moves first; he’s across the room in a blur, and I barely register it. Lucian’s hand comes down over mine, a steadying press, a silent I’ve got you. Then he’s following Orion, turning back just long enough to pin the rest of us with that low, unarguable order to stay put.
They disappear into the kitchen, and the house seems to go still with the rest of us, like the walls and floorboards are holding their breath, tuned to the same thin frequency running under my skin.
I can hear their voices, the low rumble of them, but the words dissolve before they reach me, leaving only the shape of tension hanging in the air.
The tension bends, warping the air when their shapes reappear in the doorway.
Orion and Lucian flank Linkin like they’re guiding someone half-awake, and Linkin…
he looks hollowed out. His face is blank, tears track down his cheeks in these slow, stunned lines, like his body started crying before his mind caught up.
He drifts into the living room, not really walking so much as being carried forward by momentum, and his hand reaches for Shiloh’s without looking.
He pulls her up out of her chair, then crosses to me with that same sleepwalker gravity.
He drops onto the couch beside me and drags both of us into his arms, and that’s when the sound hits as raw, broken sobs tearing out of him like he’s been holding them back until he felt safe.
Something cold and sharp settles low in my stomach, tightening with every ragged breath he takes.
“Link?” My voice barely makes it out. “What happened?”
His throat works around the answer. He tries once, twice, breath catching like it’s snagged on something sharp inside him.
Lucian kneels in front of me, his hands warm and heavy on my thighs, grounding me in place.
“We just… got off the phone with Rowan,” he says, voice low and frayed at the edges.
The cold in my stomach twists, tightening into something darker.
Linkin’s fingers clamp onto my sleeve, hard enough to bite, and somehow he folds in on himself and sobs even harder.
“Korbyn has been missing,” Lucian finishes, barely above a whisper. “The police just found her body.”
The End