Chapter 7 #2
The air in the kitchen grew charged, tasting of copper and static. The light from the single bulb overhead wavered. The scorching heat in the muscle intensified, a drumming, insistent tremor that travelled down my arm, making my fingertips tingle with a terrifying energy.
It was a drumbeat I’d ignored my whole life, now growing to a deafening roar.
Eamon rose slowly from his chair, his gaze fixed on my shoulder.
“It’s waking up.”
The words hung in the space between us, heavy and absolute.
The sensation was no longer an ache. It was a presence. A current of raw, untamed energy thundered down my arm, flooding every vein with a terrifying, electric vibration.
My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a strike of lightning. The air crackled, thick with the scent of a coming storm. It was a caged thing inside me, rattling its bars.
“Why?” The word scraped my throat. My own voice sounded distant. “Why hide it? Why let me believe I was… this.” I gestured around the too-small kitchen, at the life that was now a lie. “Why lock it away?”
Eamon’s face was a portrait of grim resignation. The fear was still there, but it was an old, familiar friend.
“Because our kind isn’t gone, Selene.” He spoke in a low, urgent tone that cut through the roaring in my ears. “Liora and I… we were not the only Aetherkind. And not all of us who remain are like us.”
A cold dread coiled its way around the burgeoning power inside me, feeding the frantic energy beneath my skin.
“There are others,” he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that held the weight of millennia. “Ancient. Twisted. Their magic is a corruption, a hollow thing that only consumes. They don’t create; they take. They crave what we have. What you have.”
My mind raced, connecting threads I never knew existed. The dead zones across the city. The soulless husks of Calysteri victims. The empty-eyed horror on Talia Merrin’s face. A hunger for power.
“The Reaping,” I breathed. “The murders… it’s them.”
He gave a slow, pained nod. “They’ve been hunting for traces of our kind for centuries.
They search for a power they can’t forge themselves.
” He looked away, his gaze lost in a memory that chilled the room.
“Liora knew what they were capable of. She felt them stirring long before anyone else. She was terrified they would find you. That someone… specific… would sense you.”
Someone. The word dangled, a hook baited with a truth I wasn’t ready for.
The burning in my brand was no longer just a warning. It was an invitation. A sharp spike of heat radiated through my chest, forcing me to grip the edge of the table.
“So you’re telling me I’m in danger,” I said, the statement flat, stupidly obvious. “Now. Because this… this thing inside me is getting louder.”
“You have always been in danger.” His voice was bleak. “Liora’s seal was the only thing keeping you invisible. It was our only defence.”
“Then we need a new defence.” I shoved the panic down, forcing my voice to remain steady even as the air pressure in the room began to drop.
I looked at him—really looked at him—seeing not just my father, but the entity he claimed to be.
“You said you’re Aetherkind. Centuries old.
That means you have some sort of power. Real power.
If the seal is broken, reforge it. Wards, barriers—do whatever you have to do to lock this house down. ”
The look he gave me was hollow. “I can’t.”
A cold static prickled across my skin. “Why not?”
“Because my magic is not hers.” He held up his good hand. The air above his palm distorted—a massive warp in gravity that made my ears pop.
He closed his fist, extinguishing the force. “When the bond severed, it fractured my strength,” he whispered. “But even whole, I am not a catalyst. I manipulate gravity. I can crush, and I can break, but I cannot build a cage to hold the fire inside you. Only she could do that.”
He looked at me, his eyes bleak. “I have spent twenty years starving my magic, using just enough to keep the house wards alive. But if the seal breaks, I have no way to forge another.”
His words landed like stones. There was no tactical backup. No fortified safe house. The only shield was a dying woman’s sacrifice, a spell woven from love and grief. A spell my own emotions were now tearing apart.
My breath hitched. The fear, the rage, the betrayal—it all rushed at once, a deluge of feeling that fed the fire in my shoulder. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. The strain inside me hit a critical mass.
The mark ignited. It was a white-hot agony that made me gasp. The air around us warped, heavy with the scent of ozone. The lightbulb overhead buzzed violently, then popped, showering the table in sparks and plunging the kitchen into the pre-dawn gloom.
My pulse was a frantic storm, lightning arcing through my blood.
In the half-light, I saw raw terror on Eamon’s face. “Selene… calm yourself.” His voice was a desperate plea. “You’re slipping.”
But I couldn’t. It was too late. The cage was breaking.
* * *
Radiant heat flooded my body. Skin prickling, I saw luminous patterns swirl beneath the surface of my arms, like ink dropped in water.
The scar on my flesh was a brand of pure fire, a focused agony that stole my breath.
My reflection warped in the dark glass of the oven door—a stranger stared back, her pupils not brown but swirling vortexes of gold, lit from within.
The cutlery in the drawer rattled. A mug on the counter skittered to the edge and shattered on the tile floor, the sound swallowed by the roar in my head.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. The energy inside me was a live thing, a tectonic strain grinding against the seams of my skin.
The sudden, shrill ring of my phone cracked the tension like a whip.
It sat on the countertop, a black rectangle of noise, vibrating against the wood.
Its screen lit up the gloom, casting long silhouettes that danced with the tremors running through my own hands, and the phone’s insistent cry was the sound of the lock breaking.
“Selene!” Eamon’s voice cut through the chaos. He was across the room in a second, his movements desperate but sure. He grabbed my arms, his grip a firm anchor in the storm. “Breathe. Just breathe. You have to control it.”
“I can’t!” The words ripped from my throat, a hoarse sob. The kitchen trembled around us. Another plate crashed.
He placed his hand flat over my chest, right over my hammering heart. His palm was warm, rough with callouses I knew by heart.
“I’ve got you, Little Sun,” he whispered, using the name he hadn’t spoken since I was a child. “I’ve got you.”
A whisper of his own hidden magic, cool and steady, met the inferno of mine. It was a plea. A grounding wire for a lightning strike.
The raging energy inside me didn’t vanish, but it found a channel, a release. The violent shaking of the room subsided. The glittering patterns under my skin retreated, and the burning on my shoulder dulled to a deep, throbbing ache.
I gasped, sucking in air, my body trembling with the aftershocks.
The phone stopped buzzing. The void it left behind was absolute, broken only by my ragged breaths. Slowly, shakily, I moved away from Eamon. He looked drained, his face grey, the effort costing him more than I could comprehend.
Then the mobile shrieked once more. That insistent, piercing electronic ring.
My legs finally obeyed me. I stumbled to the counter, my hand shaking so hard I nearly dropped the device. The small display blinked awake with a harsh little buzz. Five missed calls—all from Dane.
I hit the call button with an unsteady thumb and lifted the handset to my ear.
“Dane.” My voice was a ghost of itself.
“Selene, where are you? There’s another one.” His words were clipped, stripped of all warmth. Pure urgency. “A patrol unit found a body in the Lows. Calysteri. It’s a mess.”
The Low Warrens. Neutral ground for Varkyn mercs and Umbrakynn shadows—the sort of place where even magic kept its head down.
A cold dread spiked through the lingering heat in my veins. “ACD?”
“Not yet, but they’re on their way. We’ve got minutes, maybe. If we want a clean look, it’s now or never.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the spinning world to steady. A detective. That’s what I was. This was what I did. The lie was a comfortable armour. I pulled it on. “I’m on my way.”
My voice sounded almost normal.
I ended the call and shoved the phone into my pocket, turning to grab my jacket.
Eamon stood in my path, his face a mask of terror.
“You cannot go.” His voice was low, strained. “You’re not ready. You’re not stable. Out there, like this… you’re a beacon. They will feel you.”
“I have a job to do.” I tried to push past him, but he blocked my way.
“Your job just got you put on a centuries-old kill list! Liora gave her life to hide you. Don’t throw it away now!”
His panic fuelled my own. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t be this… this thing with sealed magic. Out there, on a case, I was Detective Rowan. Here, I was a live wire with no way to ground.
“I have to go.” The words were flat steel. I shoved past him, my arm bumping his, and wrenched the front door open.
The cool night air was a shock against my flushed skin.
“Selene, please!”
I slammed the door behind me, the sound final and damning. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.
I stood on the pavement, the familiar quiet of the Old Quarter pressing in. Inside me, everything roared. The newly awakened power buzzed just beneath my skin, a rising storm waiting for a sky to break.
A tremor of dread, or maybe something else—instinct—whispered through the chaos of my mind.
It was beginning.