Chapter 19 Smoke with Teeth
Leo’s truck rumbled down quiet streets, the engine’s low hum the only sound. I sat in the back seat beside Luz, staring at my hands. They were still shaking.
My wrists were raw and bloody where the ropes had cut in, angry red welts already darkening to purple. My chest felt tight despite the oxygen they’d given me. Each breath came with effort, my lungs struggling to remember how to work properly.
“You okay back there, Mel?” Leo asked, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.
I managed a nod, though it was a lie. “I’m… getting there.”
Luz’s hand found mine, squeezing gently. Her touch was warm and comforting.
You’re safe now. It’s over. You’re safe.
I repeated it like a mantra, trying to make my body believe what my mind knew was true.
Leo leaned back, but his usual swagger was muted. “You can think of me as your safety net. Fair warning: I don’t shut up, and my jokes are worse than my advise.”
Despite everything, I smiled weakly. “Honestly, that sounds like exactly what I need right now.”
“Good. Because you’re stuck with me.” His voice was lighter than his expression. I could see how tense his shoulders were, barely holding back the flood of emotions he was clearly feeling.
When we got back to the dorm, everything looked exactly as I’d left it hours ago—my desk, my bed, Luz’s organized chaos on her side of the room.
But it all felt wrong somehow. Too normal, as if the world should have changed to reflect what had just happened to me, but it hadn’t. It just kept spinning, indifferent to the fact that I’d been bound and hunted and nearly—
I stopped that thought before it could finish.
I stood in the doorway, disoriented, before Luz guided me inside.
“Come on, amiga. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Luz began heating water for tea, her fingers trembling as she moved. She kept looking at me from over her shoulder, as if trying to convince herself I was real.
Leo hovered behind us, nervously pacing the small dorm room. He picked things up and put them down—a book, a mug, Luz’s stress ball—unable to stay still.
“You know, I could’ve totally taken him,” he said, forcing lightness into his tone. “One stern glare. Maybe a really intimidating TikTok dance. He would’ve crumbled.”
I huffed a small laugh.
“There it is,” Leo said, grinning. “That’s what I’m talking about. You’re gonna be okay, Mel. You’re tougher than you look.”
His humor was clumsy and forced, but it helped.
A fragile tether to normalcy when everything else felt like it was unraveling.
Luz brought me chamomile tea with valerian root and sat beside me, taking a damp cloth to my wrists.
She cleaned the rope burns with gentle fingers, as if afraid to cause me any further pain.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Not as much as it should,” I muttered, still in shock.
Luz’s eyes glistened. “I shouldn’t have left you at the hospital. Should have stayed, walked home with you. Should have—”
“Luz.” I caught her hand. “This isn’t your fault. You answered and got help.”
“I know.” But her voice said she didn’t believe it. “I just… I can’t lose you, too. Not you and Amy.”
Her voice cracked on Amy’s name, and guilt twisted in my stomach. Here they were stressing over me when it was Amy dying in the hospital.
Leo crouched down beside us, tucking a blanket around my shoulders. “You survived, Mel. Mostly unscathed, too. That’s what matters right now.”
“Leo, you said you wanted to meet,” I started, voice hoarse. “What did you find? At Ekklesia?”
Leo’s expression shuttered. “Later, Mel.”
“But—”
“No.” His voice was firm. Then softer: “Not now. Not tonight. Give yourself a minute to breathe before we pile more shit on you, okay?”
I wanted to argue and demand he tell me everything right now while the anger was still hot enough to burn through the fear. But exhaustion hit me in waves, and I knew he was right.
“Fine,” I whispered. “But you’re telling me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, meeting my eyes. “I promise.”
He stood, giving me one last pat on the shoulder. “Get some rest. We’ll figure this out together.”
He murmured something to Luz about calling if we needed anything, then left, the door clicking shut behind him.
I took the opportunity to shower, hoping the heat would bring some comfort.
It didn’t.
I turned the water as hot as it would go, hoping to scald away the memory of Xavier’s touch.
No luck.
I scrubbed at my skin, arms, shoulders, waist, everywhere he touched, until the flesh turned red.
But I could still feel his weight crushing me into the floor, his breath hot on my neck.
I could still feel the way his hands claimed ownership of my body like I was his property to mark and pass along.
The thought made rage flare hot in my chest, but it crumbled immediately into something closer to despair.
Tears came hot and furious. I pressed my forehead against the tile and let them fall, washing down the drain with soap and blood and the last remnants of my composure. My chest hitched as I sobbed, hand pressed over my mouth to muffle the sound, shoulders shaking violently.
I sank to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest, and let myself break where no one could see.
The scalding water beat down on my back almost painfully, but I didn’t move.
I sat there until the tears slowed, and the water ran cold.
I forced myself to stand and turn off the shower.
I wrapped myself in a towel and stood there, dripping, wiping my hand across the fogged mirror to stare at my reflection.
The girl looking back at me with hollow eyes and rope-burned wrists looked like a victim.
I hated her.
As I reached for my clothes, I heard Luz’s voice on the phone through the door. Low, intense. I froze, pressing my back against the wall, listening.
“Yes, I know,” Luz’s voice carried that calm authority she always wore like armor, but there was an edge beneath it. “But she deserves the truth, Kian. You know that.”
She fell quiet as she listened. My pulse raced.
“Protecting her isn’t the same as keeping her in the dark.” Her voice hardened. “And you can’t always be there to save her. What happens next time? What if you don’t make it?”
Another pause. I held my breath, straining to hear.
“She’s remembering, Kian. The dreams are getting stronger.
The coin keeps coming back no matter how many times we throw it away.
How much longer do you think you can keep this from her?
” Luz’s voice dropped lower. “It’s going to claim her whether you tell her or not.
At least if she knows, she can prepare. She can fight back. ”
My stomach dropped. What was going to claim me?
“I understand you’re scared,” Luz said, softer now. “I’m scared too. But she needs to know who she is, who she was, what’s coming for her. She’s ready to know.”
Who she was. Past tense, like I’d been someone else before.
The dreams flashed through my mind. Running through the burning Library of Alexandria. The noose at my throat in Salem. The feel of the blade going through my neck under that guillotine. Standing in a meadow of wildflowers, my mother’s voice is calling me inside.
More silence. I could almost hear Kian’s voice through the phone, though the words were too muffled to make out.
“Yeah. I’ll keep you posted. She’s okay—physically at least.” A pause. “Kian? Thank you for saving her. I know it was costly for you to reveal as much as you did.”
Reveal? The shadows. She meant the shadows.
“Try to get some sleep. We all need it.” Luz’s voice gentled even further. “She’s alive because of you. Remember that.”
The call ended with a soft beep.
I stood frozen outside the door, mind racing.
She’s remembering. It’s going to claim her. Who she was.
What did that mean? What was going to claim me? And how did Luz know things about me that I didn’t know about myself?
I pressed a hand to my chest to steady myself.
By the time I finally stepped into the room, dressed in my softest pajamas, Luz was busying herself with tidying up.
She reorganized books that didn’t need organizing and folded clothes that were already folded.
Nervous energy, trying to process her own fear by staying busy.
She perked, offering me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Feel any better?” she asked, concern still raging beneath the forced cheerfulness.
“I’m fine,” I said, working to keep my voice neutral. “No need to keep fussing.”
“Like hell I don’t!” Luz moved toward me, hands reaching out before stopping herself. “I almost lost you, Mel. Do you have any idea what that would have done to me?”
The genuine fear in her voice made my anger falter. Whatever secrets she was keeping, she was keeping them because she thought it would protect me.
Just like Kian.
“I’m here,” I murmured. “I’m okay. You didn’t lose me.”
Luz let out a shaky breath and pulled me into a gentle hug, mindful of my bruises. “Don’t scare me like that again. Please.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said into her shoulder. “But considering how this month has been going, I can’t make any promises.”
She let out a wet laugh. “Fair enough.”
I sat on my bed, suddenly exhausted down to my bones. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Lie down,” she coaxed. “You need rest.”
I didn’t argue. I slid under the covers, and Luz immediately began smoothing the blankets around me.
“Luz…” I started, not even sure what I wanted to ask.
“Shh.” She pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. “Sleep now. Tomorrow will be complicated enough.”
Tomorrow will be complicated enough. What did that mean?
But I couldn’t fight the weariness anymore.
Luz turned off the light and moved to her own bed. I heard her settle in, the rustle of blankets, her breathing evening out.
But I didn’t sleep.
Lying in the dark, I couldn’t stop replaying the fight.
I’d seen the shadows move around Kian before; little flickers at the edge of my vision, always dismissed as tricks of light or exhaustion or stress.
But tonight there was no dismissing it.
They hadn’t been shadows cast by his body. They’d responded to his body, to his will. I remembered them curling at his feet like smoke, catching Xavier’s wrist when he swung. Pooling at his feet when he tried to run.
Alive and moving with intent.
And Kian’s eyes reflecting light wrong, his speed inhuman, his strength far beyond what any normal person should possess. The way he’d ripped Xavier off me like the man weighed nothing.
He wasn’t human. Or at least, not entirely human.
The thought should have terrified me. But instead, all I felt was a strange sort of recognition, like some buried part of myself had always known. He’d let me see his shadows because saving me had mattered more than keeping his secret.
He had saved me four times now. Always in the right place at the right time. He’d been protecting me even when I didn’t know I needed protection.
The thought should have creeped me out.
But I remembered his face when he found me gasping for air. The way the fury had melted into tender concern. The way he anchored me through the panic attack with nothing but his heartbeat and his voice.
I didn’t trust him. How could I, when he clearly had secrets coiled around him like those shadows? When he refused to tell me the truth even after I nearly died? And yet I trusted him with my life. My body trusted him even when my mind didn’t, and that was what scared me most.
Because that instinctive, bone-deep kind of trust felt dangerous.
It felt like something I’d carried across lifetimes and couldn’t shake even when I tried.
When he looked at me, I felt seen. Not Melanie the student, or the victim, or the small, fragile girl everyone wanted to protect.
He saw something in me I didn’t even see in myself yet.
Your fire is barely contained, he’d said. Steel wrapped in silk.
The shadows unsettled me, his silence frustrated me, but Kian himself was a mystery I couldn’t look away from, no matter how much I told myself I should.
I closed my eyes, torn between the warmth of safety and the sting of distrust, between anger and something deeper I couldn’t bring myself to define. In the darkness, even with my eyes closed, the shadows twisted and moved like they were alive.
Whatever was coming for me was running out of patience. And the shadows were just the beginning.