Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Selene
The key yielded with a hollow clunk.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the flat. The air inside was dense and still, a stagnant tomb.
I locked the door behind me and threw the deadbolt. The gesture seemed meaningless—a piece of metal would hardly stop whatever decided to come for me next.
I walked into the living room and placed the cloth-wrapped bundle on the coffee table—an unassuming piece of old fabric holding the gravity of my history.
I peeled off my coat. Underneath, I was still wearing my jumper and Riven’s shirt. The cotton dragged against my skin, the friction setting my nerves on edge. I should have taken it off. I should have burned it.
But I didn’t.
I sat on the floor in front of the table, legs crossed, and reached out to untie the knot of the blue cloth.
It fell open. Inside lay a single book bound in faded green leather, the spine cracked from decades of use.
The cover was worn smooth in places, as if it had been held and re-held a thousand times.
Liora’s journal.
My hands trembled so hard I could barely turn the cover. The paper inside was cream, covered in a neat, flowing script that looked like artwork. A breath rattled in my chest.
The first entry that caught my eye was dated Spring, 33 years ago.
We have walked this earth for thousands of years. We adapted. We faded into the background like ink into water. We were tasked only to protect, to be the silent sentinels of a sleeping power. But today, the stillness broke.
They have found it.
Somewhere deep in the ether, the lock has turned. The magic is alive again. It shivers in the air, a frequency that hasn’t been sung since the First Era. We are moving deeper into the shadows now. We must ensure the fragment entrusted to us is never found.
My fingertip traced the ink. Thousands of years.
My parents—the people who raised me—were ancient. They walked through history, hiding, waiting. Waiting for me.
I flipped through the pages, skipping years of silence, scanning for the moment everything changed. I stopped at a page where the handwriting enlarged, jagged with excitement. Winter, 28 years ago.
We couldn’t wait any longer. The decision was made.
Today, we awakened the Spark.
Oh, she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in any lifetime! I am weeping as I write this—tears of pure, terrifying joy. She is so tiny, so delicate, yet she holds the weight of a star.
We have named her Selene. It suits her perfectly—a light in the darkness.
We have sworn our lives to her today. We will keep her safe with our magic and hold her with our hearts. She is the best thing that has ever happened to us.
A sob broke from my throat, sudden and violent.
The best thing.
I had never been the burden I imagined. I was loved. The realisation settled, profound and absolute. They had chosen me, binding their lives to mine out of pure adoration rather than obligation.
I wiped my eyes, but the tears kept coming, spotting the old paper. I flipped forward. Summer, 27 years ago.
I know she is just a babe. I know she cannot yet understand the words I speak… I have decided to start now, in the only language a child knows.
I have written her a book. A simple story with magical characters and pretty pictures—a Sun and a Moon finding their way back to each other. She sat on my lap today while I read it, her eyes wide and curious, tracking the gold paint on the page. She doesn’t know it is a map. One day, she will.
I looked at the bag beside me, where the coverless children’s book rested. She had handed me the truth, disguised as a bedtime story, before I could even walk.
I turned the pages of the journal faster. The entries shifted; the elegant loops of the script became jagged and rushed. A sharp terror was etched into every frantic slant of the pen.
The next entry was written in a hurry. It was from Spring, 23 years ago.
I am so scared for her.
Last night, we all felt it. A rupture. Somewhere in the world, another power exploded—a dark, chaotic mirror to her own. Our own magic reacted instantly…
But Selene… she hasn’t settled. She is still buzzing. Her skin is hot to the touch, fever-bright. Her eyes have turned gold.
I am afraid of what will happen if we fail. I am afraid she will burn herself out. I love her so much, my Little Sun. I cannot let her fade.
I closed the book. The air in the flat felt suffocating. She didn’t. She let herself fade instead.
My hand found the scar on my shoulder. For the first time, the mark felt like a fingerprint—a final touch—rather than a brand. A final touch from a mother who chose death over letting me burn.
I stared at the last lines of my mother’s handwriting.
The ink was confident, sweeping—a picture of hope.
I turned the page, bracing for the void of the years she’d missed.
Instead, a new script met me—ragged and pressed so deep into the grain it had nearly torn the paper.
The elegant loops of my mother’s hand had vanished, replaced by a desperate, shaking scrawl that suggested a man fighting against a terrible weight.
I recognised the slant of every letter from a lifetime of birthday cards and grocery lists.
Dad.
He hadn’t started a fresh journal. He simply continued in the space she’d left behind, a quiet refusal to let her story end at the final page.
The first entry in his hand dated to five days after her last.
It is done.
The thread is cut. I am still breathing, and I do not know why.
The silence in this house feels like an amputation rather than peace.
Liora is gone. And she left me behind.
I know why she did it. I know the logic. Selene was burning alive from the inside out. The Awakening was too violent, too fast. There was no way to stop it, only to bury it—to dig a well so deep inside that child that the world would never see the light at the bottom.
Liora became the vessel. She drew that wild, screaming star into her own body to temper it.
She kept it from me, knowing I would have stopped her. I would have fought her. I would have grabbed that fire with my bare hands and pulled it into my own veins so we could burn together. I would have chosen death with her over life without her.
She knew that. So she didn’t give me the choice.
I felt it happen. One moment, she was there—the hum of her soul against mine, the constant presence I have known for a thousand years.
And then… snap.
A physical tearing in the centre of my chest replaced the sound. Like a rib being torn free.
She looked at me. Her eyes were already fading, but she was smiling. She surrendered the last spark of her life to break the bond. She severed the connection so the death of her soul wouldn’t drag mine into the dark with her.
She forced me to live.
Now I am holding Selene. She is sleeping. She is cool to the touch, the fever gone, the mark on her shoulder cooling to a scar.
She is safe. Liora bought this child’s life with everything she had.
I look at Selene, and I see the cost. I see the hole in the world where my wife used to be.
But I also see the Spark.
I will not let it be for nothing. I will stand in front of this child until the mountains crumble. I will lie to her. I will hide her. I will be the wall between her and the dark.
I am half a soul now. But for her… I will be a whole father.
I lowered the book to my lap.
The room blurred. A tear hit the back of my hand, hot and stinging.
He wanted to die. He wanted to go with her. But he stayed. He stayed for twenty-three years, cooking toast and checking the locks, asking about my day while carrying a wound that never healed.
I turned the pages, faster now.
The rest of the journal was a timeline of my life, written by a man terrified every single day that he would fail.
She asked about the scar today. I told her it was the barbecue. She believed me. I hate lying to her.
Nightmares again. The magic is restless. I held her hand until she slept. I think she felt the seal weakening.
She graduated today. Top of her class. She wants to be a detective. It’s too dangerous. Liora would be so proud. I am terrified.
He watched me. He watched for the cracks. He watched for the monsters.
And at the station, he finally saw one. He walked out of that station and went back to the house knowing the safety he built had finally fractured.
I reached the end of the written pages, the rest of the book blank. But tucked inside the back cover sat a single folded sheet of paper. It wasn’t yellowed like the rest; it was crisp and fresh.
My pulse kicked as I picked it up and unfolded the letter.
The crease was sharp, the page torn from the back of a notebook in a hurry.
My hands shook, blurring the words until I pressed the paper flat against the coffee table to steady them.
Dear Selene,
I am writing this because the silence I built around us is breaking. I saw it today at the station. I saw her.
Varessia Quinn. She hasn’t aged a day in hundreds of years.
She looked at me, and hunger burned in her eyes.
She sensed the power in the room, Selene.
I tried to draw her focus, to let her think it was only me, but I don’t know if it worked.
I don’t know if I can keep the shadows away from this house much longer.
But I saw something else today, too.
I saw the man standing beside you.
I realised then that I had felt him before I ever saw his face. When you came to the house a few days ago and collected your mother’s books, you were different. The restless fire that has always burned inside you… it was quiet. Settled.
I told you then that you looked better, and I meant it. He has changed you, Selene. He has given you the one thing I never could: balance.
Seeing you together at the station only confirmed it. The energy in the room… it was already connected. It is running strong between your bodies. I was terrified he would be like Varessia—a creature of hunger. But I felt his shadows. They hold your light. They protect it.
If the worst happens—if they come for me—you must not run. You must fight. And you must trust him.
Whatever happens next, trust the bond. Magic is stronger than anything else in this world, and yours has already chosen him.
Never lower your guard around Varessia. She is the hunger that never sleeps.
I love you, my Little Sun.
Dad.
I stared at the page.
Trust him.
I stopped breathing. The nightmare crashed back: the lab, Eamon’s face behind the glass, lips moving against the roar of the water and the screaming alarm. I couldn’t hear him then. I thought he was saying goodbye. I thought he was panicking.
But looking at the ink on the page, the memory sharpened. I saw the shape of his mouth perfectly.
Trust him.
He used his last breath to give me an order.
I stared at the green leather journal in my lap. He wanted you to have this. He made me promise.
My mind raced, fitting the jagged pieces together. Eamon wrote this letter two days ago. After the station. Before he was taken.
The letter backed up Riven’s story. Eamon told me to trust him, meaning my father handed the books over by choice. Riven went to the house. He spoke to my father while I slept in my bed.
Why?
Why take the books but leave Eamon behind? Why stand next to Varessia in that lab and watch him die, only to hand me my inheritance an hour later?
He accepted my anger, simply telling me to burn them all down before walking back to them. He went back to Highspire. To Varessia. To the people who killed Eamon.
He was alone, surrounded by the monsters he had warned me against.
I gripped the letter, crumpling the edge.
I had so many questions. I held a lifetime of secrets in my lap, and the only person who knew the truth was walking straight into a trap. I still didn't know whose side he was really on.
But I knew one thing. I wasn’t going to let him die before he answered me.
My phone buzzed against the hard wood of the coffee table—a harsh, mechanical intrusion in the quiet flat.
I looked at the screen. A message notification cut through the gloom.
Dane: Checked myself out. Against medical advice.
Another buzz. Dane: Meet me at my flat 0700. We do this right.
I stared at the glowing text, the breath catching in my chest.
Dane was out. Less than three weeks after his spine was snapped in half, he had forced his way out of the hospital to keep me from tearing myself apart.
The reckless impulse to go after Highspire burned away. I didn't require a bodyguard; I required an equal. Someone with the mind to help me dissect the trap Riven had walked into and pull him out alive.
We could figure this out. Together.
I looked back at the green leather journal on the table. The ink was dry, but the secrets were still fresh.
I would wait for dawn. And then, I was coming for him.