Chapter 26 #2
Because there—just ahead—stands a child. Me. Seven years old, watching with violet eyes that already know too much.
“You came back,” child-me says, voice like breaking glass.
I step closer. “This isn’t memory.”
“No.” The child smiles with my mouth but not my expression. “It’s possibility.”
The knife in my hand grows heavier. My blood continues to rise from my palm, drawn toward the child like iron to a magnet.
The child flickers, features shifting. For a heartbeat, I see Faelan’s smile on that small face.
“You’ve been playing my game so well,” the child says, but the voice deepens, resonating with power that makes my ears ring. “Did you think you chose this path yourself?”
My magic flares in response—defensive, angry. Threads of violet light lash out, slicing through the child’s form.
The apparition dissolves, but laughter echoes around me—familiar, mocking, everywhere at once.
The Fade pulses. Colors shift from cool blues to angry reds. The path beneath my feet cracks, revealing swirling darkness.
Dane’s absence hits me like physical pain. I didn’t just leave him behind—I left his strength, his certainty, his stubborn refusal to yield. I thought I was protecting him by coming alone.
Maybe I was just proving I could.
My blood continues to rise from my palm, forming patterns in the air. Not random—deliberate. The droplets arrange themselves into familiar shapes: interlocking loops, fractured edges, silver threads weaving through crimson.
The same pattern that marks my wrist.
I watch the knotwork form in my own blood, understanding crashing through me. This isn’t the Fade creating something new. It’s reading Faelan’s signature—the one he branded into me. The mark I’ve been hiding from everyone.
The Fade is taking more than I anticipated, drawing not just blood but energy, memory, will.
I can’t turn back. The way behind me has vanished—there’s only forward now, deeper into this place that isn’t a place.
The darkness ahead opens like an eye.
The Fade grows teeth around me—not literal, but the darkness edges sharpen, hungry to consume whatever pieces of myself I leave unguarded. I push forward, each step taking me deeper into a place that shouldn’t exist.
The landscape dissolves and rebuilds itself with each breath.
One moment I’m walking through the fae-hunting lodge where I spent my thirteenth summer—crude wooden bunks, metal tools for skinning magic from bone.
The next second, I’m in Dane’s cabin, his scent so real I reach out, fingers closing on empty air.
“Nova.” His voice is behind me, warm and certain.
I turn, relief flooding my system—and freeze. It’s Dane’s face, Dane’s body, but the smile stretching his lips belongs to someone else. Too perfect. Too practiced.
“You always come when called,” he says, voice layering into something dual-toned. “Like the good little weapon you are.”
I back away. “You’re not him.”
“No? Are you sure?” The false-Dane moves closer, head tilting at an angle Dane would never use. “Maybe this is who he becomes when you’re not watching. Maybe this is who he’s always been.”
My magic flares defensively, violet light threading through my fingers. “Changing faces doesn’t make your lies any more convincing, Faelan.”
The illusion shifts—Dane’s features melting like wax, reforming into a perfect mirror of my own face. My mouth, my eyes, my scars—but the expression is wrong, calculating and cold in ways I’d never allow myself to be seen.
“Is this better?” my double asks, circling me. “Your own voice telling you what you already know? That you were created, Nova. Shaped. You didn’t just stumble into your abilities—you were designed.”
I laugh, harsh and sharp. “Bullshit. Nobody designed me.”
“Nobody?” The double’s skin ripples, and suddenly it’s Faelan standing before me—his hair perfect, his clothes immaculate despite the chaos around us.
“I’ve been guiding your path since before you took your first breath.
Your mother was chosen. Your father was placed.
Your birthright was written in blood I collected centuries before your conception.
“I spent centuries hunting royal bloodlines specifically,” Faelan continues, his voice taking on an almost nostalgic quality.
“The rarity, the power, the perfect combination of bloodlines that nature so carefully guards. Royal fae-wolf combinations, wolf-dragon hybrids from the outer realms. So few, so protected. I thought exclusivity was the key.” His eyes narrow on me. “Until you proved me wrong.”
I keep my expression neutral, but inside, doubt gnaws. How much does he actually know about my origins? How much is fabrication meant to destabilize me?
“Every other attempt was messy, imperfect,” Faelan continues matter-of-factly.
“But you—crafted from the precise bloodlines, awakened at exactly the right moment, bonded to exactly the right Alpha. You proved that engineered connections can be more powerful than anything nature provides. My perfect prototype for what comes next.”
The world shifts again. We stand in a laboratory I’ve never seen—glass vials of dark liquid lined neatly on shelves, strange symbols etched into the stone floor. Faelan moves between tables, touching instruments that look more like torture devices than scientific equipment.
“Your blood,” he says casually, “responds to my call. Always has.”
As if to prove his point, the cut on my palm throbs. Blood seeps out faster, rising through the air in dancing droplets that orbit me like tiny moons. My magic follows—violet threads spinning outward without my command.
“Stop.” My voice cracks.
“I’m not doing anything.” Faelan spreads his hands. “Your power knows its creator.”
Rage builds in my chest. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
“Don’t you?” He walks closer, and the laboratory transforms into the forest clearing where I first met Dane. “You ran straight to Ash Hollow—exactly where I needed you. You bonded with the Alpha—exactly as planned. You opened doorways with your blood—just as you were designed to do.
“My strategy has evolved from exclusive targeting to a broader net,” Faelan admits with something like pride.
“Why limit myself to the handful of royal hybrids when I can pursue quantity over exclusivity? Every angelic bloodline has potential. Every bond creates energy. And every connection can be harvested.”
My magic lashes out—not at my command but in response to my anger. Violet light slices through Faelan’s image, cutting him into fragments that reform like smoke.
“Temper, temper,” he chides, his voice coming from everywhere at once. “You’re just proving my point. That wild energy of yours—half fae, half wolf—it’s unstable by design. A key needs teeth to turn the lock.
“And now I know exactly what to look for,” Faelan says with cold satisfaction.
“Not just you, but others like you. That pack of yours is full of angelic bloodlines—most of them completely unaware of what they carry. Dane, Ben, Harper, Callum. A concentrated collection where I expected to find one isolated specimen.”
My blood continues to rise, the knotwork patterns growing more complex. I feel myself weakening, memories slipping away like water through fingers.
“What did you take from me?” I demand, struggling to recall the faces of people I know I should remember.
“Nothing you’ll miss,” Faelan’s voice whispers. “Just enough to ensure you’ll complete your purpose.”
Something snaps inside me. I reach out with both hands, calling back my blood. It hesitates, caught between Faelan’s pull and my command.
“I don’t care what you planned,” I spit. “I don’t care what you designed. You don’t own me.”
“I made you,” he counters, his form stabilizing before me. “Your power is my signature.”
“My power,” I say, feeling it surge within me, “is mine.”
I pull harder, drawing my blood back toward my palms. It resists, then yields, gathering between my hands in a spinning crimson sphere. My magic follows, violet light wrapping around the blood, containing and transforming it.
The Fade reacts violently—the void churns, reality fracturing around us. Faelan’s projection flickers, his perfect appearance disrupting into something ancient and terrible. For just an instant, I see what lies beneath the glamour—hunger, rage, obsession.
“You cannot sever what you are,” he hisses, voice distorting. “The tether lines run through your bones.”
I center myself in the chaos. The sphere between my palms pulses with my heartbeat. This is my blood. My magic. My life.
“Watch me,” I whisper.
I lift my hands, the sphere of blood and light hovering between them. I can see it now—the fine silver thread connecting it to something beyond my sight. The tether Faelan uses to pull my strings.
The Fade howls—not with a voice, but with presence. The void presses in. My memories blur further. I can barely remember Dane’s face. Ash Hollow feels like a dream I once had.
But I know myself. That can’t be taken.
I stand alone in a circle of burning violet light, the last of my blood hovering between my palms.
“You don’t own me.”
I slash downward with both hands, cutting through the silver thread with blood and will and rage.