Chapter 36
To pull one thread is to risk unraveling the whole.
—Tapestries of Power: A Study of Magickal Bloodlines and Lineage
Ifeel scattered after what happened in the Cavern, even two days later.
It’s like pieces of me are still floating in the steam of that cave.
My body is whole, but my magick is stretched thin and humming with aftershock.
What we did—it changed something. It marked us.
And for the first time, I realize that Noa is now just as entangled in my secrets as Gavrail.
I turn the thought over and over, torn between truth and safety, love and protection, knowledge and trust, and something deeper—something I can’t name that feels ingrained in my very bones.
Because secrets are heavy. They cost you. And once spoken, they can’t be unspoken.
But Noa deserves the truth. The real one. And the truth is—I want him to know me. All of me. The shadows and the storms. The worry I carry. The fear I try to swallow. Even the parts I still don’t fully understand myself.
I don’t dare tell Gavrail what I’m considering—I already know he’ll try to stop me. The risk. The danger. Letting anyone else see what I am. But it’s not just the two of us anymore. It’s the three of us. And Gavrail doesn’t get to be the only one who decides what risks are worth taking.
I walk into Noa’s bedroom and find him studying at his desk, books and papers spread out around him haphazardly. He’s leaning over, lips pressed against the end of a pen, knuckles tapping against the smooth wood surface.
“I need to show you something,” I say as I shut his door behind me and cross to the center of the room.
Noa looks me up and down, a slow smirk tugging at his lips. “Cel, anything you want to show me, I’m always ready for,” he says, voice low, eyes gleaming with that familiar seductive tilt.
I take a step back.
Noa stops, a brow arching in silent question. He studies me now, cocking his head in that way he does before a duel—calculating, trying to read the terrain before he moves.
“If I show you this… you have to promise me that it stays between us.”
“Okay…” There’s hesitation. He hears the weight behind my words. And we both know—Noa doesn’t do well with secrets. We don’t do well with secrets. They’ve tried to break us before.
“No—I need you to promise me. This… this is important.”
He stands up from his chair and leans back against his desk, hands at the edge behind him. The teasing slips away. His voice softens. “Cel, I promise. You can trust me. You can always trust me.” He looks at me—through me—before nodding just once. “Show me.”
I cross the room to the slightly raised platform in the back, my steps slower now, heavy with uncertainty.
I stand beside his bed. And suddenly—I’m terrified.
Terrified of what he might think. Of what this will mean.
Terrified that, once again, there’s something I’ve hidden. Something I’ve kept from him.
He steps toward me, concern etched on his face.
I take a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm the riot of my heart.
Just breathe, Celeste.
Except it’s Gavrail’s voice that flashes in my head at that moment.
I close my eyes, and just like I did ten years ago, the first time it happened, I let my thoughts slow… let the water within me rise and take hold. I feel my body begin to soften—my edges blurring. Mist under sunlight.
Until I am no longer flesh and bone, but a thousand glistening droplets suspended in midair.
They hover, holding the shape of me—a shimmering echo, translucent and fluid. Light refracts through me, casting ribbons of color across the room. In this moment, I exist somewhere between seen and unseen.
Noa stumbles back.
His stance shifts in an instant—shoulders squared, feet braced, muscles taut like a coiled spring. Ready to defend. He’s not seeing me. He’s seeing something unknown. Something impossible. Something that shouldn’t exist. Instinct overriding recognition.
Because he’s right. I shouldn’t exist.
But I do.
His chest rises and falls in sharp breaths, his eyes wide, searching. “You… You’re… Celeste?” The name chokes out of him like a prayer—like a curse. As if saying it aloud might anchor him, might make sense of what he just witnessed. But even he doesn’t believe it. Not yet.
I begin pulling myself back together. Every droplet is drawn inward, cells aligning, my form returning. It’s slow, and it costs me. Like it always does. I feel drained. Hollowed out. Just a little… less.
He stares at me, panic in his eyes. Worry. But also—curiosity. Awe.
I finally speak again, my words slow and measured. “You know that I’m capable of elemental fusion. That we are. But this… this is something different. I’ve been able to do this since I was a child.”
I pause, the past a pathway leading me to the present. And suddenly I’m thirteen again—pine needles under my feet, cold air in my lungs, Gavrail’s voice counting by an old oak tree.
“One… two… three…”
I run away to hide, desperate to win this time. Not the boulder—too obvious. Not the orchard—he always finds me there. I panic. Not fast enough. Not clever enough. Then I see the old hunter’s blind—just two crumbling walls and a thatched roof. I run barefoot across the forest floor, heart pounding.
“Ten!” Gavrail calls out.
I duck into the blind, splinters scratching my arms.
His footsteps draw closer. “Celeeeessste…”
He’s close, and I smile, thinking I might be able to scare him if I jump out. “Boo!” I shout.
He turns toward me and stumbles backward.
“Celeste, your skin… You… Your body…” He sounds horrified as he points at me with a shaking hand.
I look down to see what he’s pointing at. But I see nothing but droplets of water. And I start to scream.
“I’ve been researching—we’ve been researching, Gavrail and I, trying to find answers. Any answers.” The words tumble out of me faster than I mean them to, but I don’t dare stop. Not now. “But as far as I know, it’s never been documented before—a Magick actually being able to become their element.”
His expression is a perfect storm of fear and wonder—like he’s watching something impossible yet undeniably extraordinary unfold before him.
Disbelief melts into something deeper. “This is…” He runs a hand through his hair, breathless.
“Shit, Cel… This is incredible. Why would you hide this? Why would you want to?” Then he pauses, stepping toward me slowly, eyes soft and steady—like I’m something fragile and wild that might vanish.
“You are incredible, Celeste. There’s nothing you could ever show me that would change how I see you,” he says quietly, reaching for me.
The way he’s looking at me mends something inside me I didn’t know was broken.
“Thank you.” His hand is at my waist, the other arm pulling me closer, his voice low and reverent. “For trusting me with this. For telling me.”
There’s a knock at the bedroom door.
“We’re busy!” Noa growls at the interruption.
The knock comes again—more persistent this time, impatient.
Noa exhales hard through his nose. “Just… stay here, Cel. I’ll tell them to go away.”
He strides to the door, and I don’t miss the way his posture changes—protective, edged—before he wrenches it open. “Finn, go awa—”
He stops.
Gavrail stands on the threshold, glaring back at him.
The tension is immediate.
Gavrail’s storm-gray eyes lock on Noa with barely disguised disdain.
“Is this a bad time?” he says, his voice sharp enough to draw blood, slicing through the air.
“I’m looking for Cel—” He looks past Noa, sees me, and whatever expression I wear makes something crack in his composure.
He barges in without waiting for an invitation.
His eyes flick between us—the remnants of Noa’s shock, the guilt painted on my face, the shimmer of my magick still in the air—and his face falls.
“You told him?” The words are laced with betrayal, bitter and rumbling with unseen thunder. His voice is low, but I see it in his eyes—anger. And there, right behind his lethal gaze, a flicker of fear. Not for himself. But for me.
Noa stiffens. The air crackles between them like static.
And then Gavrail moves.
He slams Noa into the wall, forearm pressing hard across his throat. The impact echoes, shaking books loose from the shelf.
“If you tell a soul—if you betray her—if she ends up on someone else’s leash because of you,” he snarls, eyes brimming with restrained fury, “I will fucking end you.”
The shadows in the room start to stretch toward them.
“Gavrail, stop! This was my choice!” I shout, throwing myself between them, hands on both chests, trying to pry them apart.
Noa yanks Gavrail’s arm down—but I see his other hand twitch, fire blooming over his knuckles.
“No—Noa! Gavrail! Stop, please!” My voice cracks, raw and desperate.
This isn’t how I imagined it would happen—the two men I’ve loved, past and present, now both knowing what I’ve kept hidden for so long. On the brink of killing each other.
I thought telling Noa would feel like a release. A weight lifted. But instead, panic coils tight in my chest and fear floods in like water with no drain, the magick I’ve spent already weakening me.
Tears sting the corners of my eyes.
I start to collapse between them.
Both men reach for me. Tension still rides their frames like a second skin, but once Noa’s arms are around me, holding me up, Gavrail steps back. His eyes shift between concern for me and violence toward the arms that are daring to touch me.
It’s Gavrail who speaks first. His eyes flick to Noa for a heartbeat. “If he betrays you, if he puts you in danger—”
“He won’t,” I interrupt.
“I won’t,” Noa echoes, quiet but steady.
“Celeste isn’t just someone I care about—she’s everything to me.
Why would I ever hurt her or betray her trust?
” His arm curls around me protectively, drawing me close.
His body is still taut with tension. He doesn’t look away from Gavrail.
“If you ask me,” he says, voice rising, “it’s you who’s betrayed her from the beginning. ”
Gavrail stiffens.