Chapter Two
The portal opens in my old bedroom.
For a moment, I just stand there, suspended between past and present.
The hot-air-balloon wallpaper is peeling at the edges, curling like tired fingers.
I used to sit on this very floor and stare at those balloons for hours, imagining myself drifting high above the clouds.
High enough to find her. High enough to see my mother.
Gods, I was so sure she’d be waiting up there.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been back in the village. Longer still since I’ve faced my father. The room feels smaller than I remember, like it’s shrunk in my absence—or maybe I’ve just grown into someone who no longer fits inside it.
For a long while, I felt disconnected from him. Betrayed. Every unanswered question, every half-truth, cut deeper than he ever knew. But now… now I understand. He didn’t lie to hurt me. He lied to protect me. And that must have cost him everything.
He defended my mother long after she was gone, even after she broke the one rule we were drilled with from the moment we could speak.
Sun and Moon should not mix.
The words were repeated until they became law, until fear was as natural as breathing. The consequences were always clear. Always dire. And still—still—he stayed. He stood by her side while she carried me, knowing what the world would do if it ever found out. Knowing what it would cost him.
He didn’t have to love me like I was his own. He didn’t have to train me, guide me, or protect me… but he did. And standing here now, in this quiet room full of ghosts and peeling dreams, it hits me with a weight I can barely carry—
He is the only family I have.
“Flick.”
His voice wraps around me, years of quiet reassurance carried in a single word. It’s a sound I’ve been craving for so long that my knees almost buckle beneath me.
“Dad.”
My arms are around his neck before I can think, before I can stop myself. I breathe him in—woodsmoke, worn leather, something unmistakably him—and the world finally feels steady again. Safe.
“I was waiting for you to come see me,” he says, smiling so wide it reaches his eyes. He pulls back just enough to hold me at arm’s length, studying me like he’s afraid I might vanish if he looks away for too long. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
I let the question fall away. There’s too much pressing against my chest, too many words tangled together.
“Dad… I know everything,” I say quietly. “About Mum. About Luca. What he was.”
His shoulders sag, the tension draining out of him all at once. He exhales, breath hitching, like he’s been holding it for years and only now dares to let it go.
“Look… I’m sorry—”
“Stop.” I step forward and hug him again, tighter this time, like I can anchor us both in this moment. “I know why you didn’t tell me.” My voice breaks despite myself. “Thank you… for everything.”
He doesn’t speak. He just holds me. And for a moment, that’s all we do.
“What Gift did you get?” he finally asks, breaking the comfortable silence. “Your mum told me you might inherit both… but she was never sure.”
His eyes darken at the mention of her, sorrow flickering there before giving way to quiet intrigue.
“She was right,” I say softly, a small smile touching my lips.
Grief presses in on us, thick and tangible, like hands tightening around our throats.
I swallow, thinking of everything he carried alone—how much he hid, how fiercely he protected me.
I remember watching him in Oriah’s scales on the day of my Gifting, the way his face gave him away.
He had loved her endlessly. And he hadn’t even been allowed to mourn her properly, because no one knew he had been sheltering her at all.
“I’m so glad she came to me that day,” he says, his voice low, as if grief has a taste he can feel on his tongue. “That she trusted me.”
He looks at me then, really looks.
“You were… everything.”
A tear slips free, glistening as it trails down his cheek.
After a while wrapped in each other’s arms, he makes us chamomile tea and guides me to the sofa. He says he wants to hear everything—about the school, my Gifts, my life there—and for a moment, I don’t know where to begin.
Then the words start coming, unstoppable. Oriah. Nala. The elions. Stories tumble out of me like I’ve been holding them back for years.
At one point, he asks if I’ve met any boys I like at school.
I know what he really means—it’s his careful way of asking if I have a boyfriend without being too intrusive.
I hold my breath when I tell him about Ryder, half-expecting disapproval, afraid he’ll see history repeating itself, the same dangerous mistake my mother made.
But he doesn’t flinch.
He listens.
And when I finish, he simply nods, calm and accepting, and something in my chest finally loosens.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” I ask as he lifts his tea to his lips.
“More than anything,” he says. His eyes catch the low light, shining with a love that never really left.
I stare into the brown swirl of my mug. “If you knew something about her that could’ve hurt her… would you have told her? Or kept it to yourself?”
He pauses, cup hovering just short of the table. “Well,” he says carefully, brows knitting. “What’s this about?”
“N-nothing. It’s nothing,” I say too quickly, dunking the teabag again and again, watching the liquid darken. Ryder’s violet gaze flashes in my mind. I can’t tell him the truth—not that the person I love nearly killed me or that he might again. My father would never let me go back.
He exhales slowly. “I suppose it depends,” he says at last, setting his mug down on the coffee table. “On how big the aftermath would be.”
A soft orb of light blooms from his fingers and drifts across the room, igniting the fireplace with a low, steady glow.
“Some would say a single snowflake of truth isn’t worth the avalanche it could cause,” he continues quietly. “Though,” he adds, eyes fixed on the fire, “the avalanche tends to come whether you speak or not.”
The village feels different—louder somehow. For late afternoon, it’s far from its usual docile self. Normally, the brick walls of my father’s cottage seem to swallow sound whole, but today, noise seeps through, restless and sharp.
Our town is small. Dusty roads, a single convenience shop, one pub. Everyone knows everyone, and nothing ever really changes. My father is a welder—most lightworkers are. It’s an easy trade for them; they don’t need tools, only themselves.
As we pass the lake, I notice the looks on people’s faces. Hurried and focused, like they’re bracing for something unseen, a threat just around the corner.
“What’s going on with everyone?” I ask, sitting beside my father on the bench overlooking the water. The lake is unusually still, its surface stretched tight like glass.
“They’re preparing for the storm,” he says, though there’s a subtle tightness in his voice that betrays his words. “This town sees a few dark clouds in the distance and suddenly thinks the world’s going to end.” He lets out a soft chuckle, waving the worry away like smoke.
Across the path, our neighbour is already at work, hammering thick sheets of wood over her windows. Each strike echoes sharply, too loud in the late afternoon air. She pauses when she notices us watching and meets my gaze, her mouth set in a hard line.
“It’s going to be a bad one,” she calls out. Her eyes flick briefly to the sky, then back to us. “You should be doing the same, Leon.”
My father nudges my shoulder, suppressing another chuckle, but it sounds thinner this time. “We’ve seen worse, haven’t we?” he says, more to himself than to me.
He slips an arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer, grounding and familiar. I can feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing, warm and real against the growing chill in the air.
“I quite like the rain,” he says softly, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Because it washes away the dirt.”