Chapter Seventeen
The voice cut through the room, and I froze up entirely. Even blinking was wrong.
"Amber?" he said again. This time louder, firmer. Hard enough to make me flinch and not out of fear.
For a second the world seemed to narrow down to that single word. My name, spoken by a voice I hadn't heard in years, one that belonged to someone I'd genuinely believed was gone for good.
No. It couldn't be.
But then I turned, and there he was.
My dad.
He stepped out from a doorway on the far side of the room, a small stack of books balanced in his arms, his eyes going wide the second they landed on me.
He looked almost exactly as I remembered him — tall, lean, the same strong jaw I used to trace with my finger as a kid.
But the years had left their mark too. Silver threaded through the dark hair at his temples now, fine lines carved deep at the corners of his eyes, the kind that only came from years of worry.
The books slipped from his hands, hitting the floor. He didn't seem to notice.
"Amber?" he said again, softer this time, his voice cracking clean down the middle. "Is that really you?"
"Dad?" My own voice came out barely above a whisper.
Neither of us moved for a long moment. I could feel Rowan's hand still holding mine, but every part of my attention had narrowed down to the man standing across the room. Then something inside me gave way, and I ran.
"Daddy!"
I threw myself into his arms hard enough that he staggered half a step to catch me, a sob tearing loose from my throat as I collided against his chest. His arms wrapped around me instantly, and I buried my face against his shirt, breathing in the same warm, earthy smell I remembered from childhood.
"You're alive," I cried, the words muffled against his shirt. "I can't believe you're actually here."
"I'm here, sweetheart. I'm here." His voice cracked worse than mine had. When I pulled back far enough to see his face, tears were streaming down it.
We stood there a long moment, holding on. He cupped my face in both hands eventually, thumbs wiping at my tears.
"Amber, I—" He shook his head, like the sentence wouldn't hold still long enough to finish. "How are you here? How did you even find us?"
Before I could answer, another voice cut through the moment from a second doorway.
"Dad, what's all the racket?"
I tensed and turned to find a man stepping into the room, tall, broad-shouldered, unmistakably familiar in a way that stole the breath right out of my chest before I'd fully worked out why.
Black hair, cropped shorter and neater than either twin wore theirs.
The same striking bone structure. Ears tapering to the same sharp points I'd gotten used to seeing on Rowan and Orias.
His eyes swirled with color as he stepped further into the light, restless in a way I'd never seen on either twin. His color more orange than purple...
I glanced at Rowan, who'd gone completely still, mouth parted, staring at the newcomer like the floor had opened up under him.
"Cian?" Rowan's voice came out cracked, barely a breath.
Cian froze mid-step. The whole room went still. Then his face crumpled, disbelief giving way to something raw.
"Rowan?" His voice trembled around the name.
Rowan crossed the room in three strides and grabbed his brother by the shoulders, eyes wild in a way I'd genuinely never seen on him before. "Is it really you?"
Cian nodded, tears welling fast now. "It's me."
Rowan pulled him into a hug hard enough to knock the air out of both of them, and I felt every ounce of it travel down our bond, years of grief unraveling all at once.
"I thought you were dead," Rowan said against his shoulder, voice breaking apart.
"I almost was." Cian's hand fisted in the back of Rowan's jacket. "But I'm here."
A second crash sounded from behind us — Orias, one hand still braced against his bleeding ribs, frozen in the doorway.
"Cian." His voice came out rough.
Cian's head turned. "Orias."
Orias crossed the room fast despite the injury slowing him, and Cian caught him halfway, pulling him into the same fierce grip he'd given Rowan.
Cian pulled back first, studying both of their faces properly, something almost bewildered in his expression as he looked between them.
"You've both grown up so much. I missed watching it happen.
" A short, disbelieving laugh. "You look older than me now.
Actually older. That's a strange thing to say to your little brothers. "
"You don't look a day different," Orias said quietly. "Still ugly and loud."
"I don't feel a day different either." Something dark flickered behind Cian's eyes before he shook it off. "Which should probably worry all of us more than it apparently has."
I stood there watching them, my own eyes stinging. Cian's gaze finally landed on me, curious, though something in the way he studied my face told me he already had a good idea who I was before either twin said a word.
"You're Amber, then." A small smile broke through. "I heard a lot about you, growing up."
"Nice to see you again," I managed. I'd been small enough the last time, barely old enough to remember more than memory of him.
"Come." My dad's voice cut gently through the moment, gesturing toward a cluster of worn leather couches near the cold fireplace. "Sit. There's a lot to catch up on."
We settled in — my dad and Cian on one couch, Orias dropping down on my right and taking my hand without either of us discussing it, thumb tracing slow, steady circles against my knuckles.
Rowan sat on my left, close enough that his knee pressed against mine the second he sat, a small point of contact that shouldn't have felt like anything and somehow felt like lightning anyway.
"How are you here, Amber?" my dad asked, eyes moving over my face like he was trying to memorize every year he'd missed. "How did you find this place?"
I told them everything — the whispers, the dreams, the shadow-things, the tree. Rowan filled in the parts I skimmed over too fast, Orias adding a dry comment here and there that eased some of the tension sitting thick in the room.
"Same tree found us too," my dad said quietly, once we'd finished. "We thought it was leading us to the source of the imbalance. Somewhere we could fix things properly." He glanced at Cian. "Instead we ended up here."
"That's the problem," Cian said. "This was never the safe hiding place we thought we'd found."
Before I could ask what he meant, my dad's expression shifted, something softer and more hesitant creeping in.
"Amber," he started, glancing toward me, "your mother. Is she—"
"I'm sorry, daddy," My eyes instantly burned. "She... she..."
Something in my chest went tight and cold at once. I felt Orias's hand tighten around mine, felt Rowan's knee press harder against mine like he already knew what was coming and wanted to be close enough to catch me through it.
"She and our mother died three years ago." Rowan said softly.
"Both of them?" Cian and my father stilled, as Cian's words came out rough.
"They were married," I said carefully. "It happened a few years after you both disappeared."
My dad blinked, surprised, something almost pleased flickering behind his eyes. "Married."
"They fell for each other," Rowan added quietly. "They were happy. Genuinely happy, the whole time they were together."
"What happened to them," my dad asked, his face going pale in the low firelight.
My throat closed up. "There was an accident. A car crash." My voice cracked on the last word.
The silence that followed felt like it swallowed the whole room.
My dad's eyes filled fast, and for a second he didn't try to hide it, tears slipping free before he scrubbed a hand roughly over his face, jaw working like he was fighting to hold something back together that had just come apart all over again.
"I'm glad," he said finally, voice thick, once he'd gotten himself steady enough to speak. "I'm glad she wasn't alone. That she had someone who loved her, right up until the end." He reached over and squeezed my hand, hard, like he needed the contact as much as I did. "That's all I ever wanted."
Cian sat quiet beside him, jaw tight, grief moving plainly across his face even though he didn't say anything more about it. Orias's thumb kept tracing slow circles against my knuckles the whole time, grounding in a way I didn't have words for yet.
Nobody spoke for a while. Eventually my dad cleared his throat, visibly steering us toward something a little easier to hold.
"Tell me the bakery's still standing," he said, a small, watery smile finding its way back onto his face. "Please tell me nobody's touched the cinnamon roll recipe."
"Untouched," I said, my own voice wobbling into something closer to a laugh. "I'd disown anyone who tried."
"Good girl." He squeezed my hand again, some of the color returning to his face.
We stayed there a few minutes longer, trading small pieces of the years apart — the festival, the town, nothing heavier than what any of us could carry right then.
But it didn't last. Cian's jaw had stayed tight the whole time, like he'd been waiting for a gap to say what he actually needed to say, and eventually he took it.
"There's something you all need to understand," he said, voice dropping, all the warmth draining back out of it. "This place. It's not what we thought when we first found it."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Cian's eyes darkened, jaw setting hard as he looked between me and Rowan. "I mean once you're in here, you don't get back out."
A cold chill dropped straight down my spine.
"We've been trying to leave since the day we arrived," he said, low and grim. "It's impossible. We're trapped down here. All of us. And now, so are you."