CELESTE
When a magick lineage is erased, the element it’s tied to keeps record.
—Principles of Arcanarchaeology: Resonant Sites
Isomehow find myself at the Lakehouse, staring at that expanse of blue that’s just starting to shake off winter’s cold fingers.
Once again I’m drawn to the fountain in the courtyard. Three mermaids, all facing different directions.
The first holds a tilted vase, from which a stream of water pours in a graceful arc—endless, steady. Her hair flows like kelp, wild and soft, the very image of calm and continuity.
The second wears a coral hood that shadows her smiling face, her fingers wrapped around a mirror so dark it seems to swallow light. Water trickles from its edges, as if secrets themselves could weep.
The third is turned toward where the sun rises, her features fierce and resolute. In her cupped hands, a flame dances atop a shell, encircled by falling water—a contradiction held in perfect balance.
I stare at them, caught in the pull of their silent myth. Three mermaids, three facets of the arcane, and something more—something personal.
Water, shadow, fire.
Me and Gavrail. Me and Noa. Me and myself.
A breeze lifts fine spray from the fountain so that it kisses my cheeks, cold as a warning. And for a moment, I’m not just Celeste. I’m all of them—the girl, the heir, the echo of something older, something I’m only just beginning to grasp, to feel. To understand.
A trinity not unlike the sculpture: flowing and fierce, luminous and hidden, entwined in ways I haven’t yet dared name.
For a breathless moment, I feel the world narrow to moonstone and water, to the subtle weight of meaning carved into silence.
When their world begins is when the rest of the world ends. The ghosts of my father’s words echo around me in the breeze.
He was a Thalrien. I am a Thalrien. Possibly the last one left in this world.
Water remembers.
I should have known. And part of me feels like maybe I always have.
It wasn’t the world of magick he was warning me about. It was the ones who took so much from him—from both of us. The ones who tried to control him, to use him. And killed when others refused to fall into line.
I remember our fights. How he’d rage when I got too close to magick. When I asked too many questions.
“The ones who look to rewrite the rules are never written into them!” he once yelled. I thought it was bitterness. Now I know it was fear.
And truth.
I thought he was referring to all Magicks. But he was talking about the ones who killed his parents, the ones who took his family. The ones I realize he was terrified would one day take me too.
I think back to the day I found him in the lake, my body curled around his, holding him in the shallow waters of the shoreline, his lips blue, his body cold.
I almost forgot the reason I went out to look at the lake in the first place, but I felt it—the call, the pull toward the water, as if my very blood were being drawn to him and to the water in which he lay. Now I knew why.
Coveted. Hunted.
A sudden surge flows within me. A truth flickering in the depths of the lake.
My father’s death may not have been an accident.
And I am no longer hiding.
I am a Thalrien.
And if they took him from me—I will make them fucking pay.