Chapter 33 The Fire She Left Behind #2
“I texted her last night,” he murmured, trailing his lips along my jaw. His teeth grazed my pulse point, and I gasped. “She’ll be prepping your friends today. I have all day to make you fall apart again, and again.”
I grinned, tangling my fingers in his hair. “Then we’d better not waste it.”
Hours dissolved into the afternoon. Tangled sheets, his hands learning every inch of me, my name a prayer on his lips. Time lost all meaning. There was only warmth and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my palms.
When we finally emerged from his bedroom, the light had shifted to that golden late-afternoon slant. We bathed together, his hands gentle as he washed my hair. There was a contentment between us that felt sacred.
I’d settled onto his couch, wearing one of his soft gray sweaters, Aunt Reenie’s journal across my lap, while he made coffee.
I checked my phone briefly. The podcast had gained an additional ten thousand followers overnight, and I was even getting voicemails from news stations asking for comments.
I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with it at the moment.
The weight of it all settled into a strange, bittersweet balance.
His lips curled into a gentle smile when he stepped back into the room. He came over, carrying two mugs of coffee, sinking beside me. He set the mugs aside, and his hand found my leg, thumb drawing lazy circles across my skin.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
I traced the edges of the page with my finger, following the loops of Reenie’s handwriting. My throat tightened the way it always did when I looked at her words.
“My Aunt Reenie’s journal. She was more like a second mother to me. When she got sick—” My voice cracked. “It was like someone ripped out a piece of me.”
Kian’s thumb paused, then resumed its soothing path. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Pancreatic cancer,” I explained, the words bitter on my tongue. “At least, that’s what they told us. They gave her six months. She lasted three weeks.”
His gaze was sympathetic as he stroked my skin.
“She wrote about everything,” I continued, managing a shaky laugh as I flipped through pages. “Dreams she had, theories that seemed crazy at the time, little sketches in the margins. Look—”
I turned the journal so he could see. “This one’s from about a year before she got sick. She wrote: ‘Dreamed of a hearth that burned without wood, without fuel. Just will and purpose. I was tending it, but it wasn’t mine alone. It belonged to everyone and no one. It felt like home.’”
I traced the words with my finger. “And here: ‘I keep feeling like I need to protect something, but I don’t know what. My family? My home? Something bigger? Why does it feel like I’m forgetting something important?’”
Kian leaned closer, studying the pages with genuine interest.
“She never said Hestia outright,” I admitted.
“But the pattern’s there once you know to look for it.
She started researching virgin goddesses before she was diagnosed, but Hestia kept coming up the most. She included all these passages about how Hestia gave up her Olympian seat, how she was everywhere and nowhere because every home was her temple. ”
The moment the name left my lips, he went very still.
His thumb froze mid-motion, and his breath caught, a sharp intake that sounded almost like pain. His eyes snapped to the journal.
“She sounds fierce,” he said, but the words were hollow now—a placeholder while he processed the magnitude of what I had told him.
“She was.” My voice caught. “When she heard about this study Ekklesia was running, how people were getting sick, she started asking questions nobody wanted to answer.”
I flipped to pages covered in notes—names, dates, connections drawn in various colored pens. “She documented everything. Participants who dropped out. Those who got worse. She was building a case, I think. Evidence that something was wrong.”
My hands trembled. “She went undercover in one of their trials. They said it was for early cancer screening and preventative treatment. Cutting-edge medicine.”
Kian’s expression darkened.
“Within weeks, she was sick. They told us the cancer had been there all along.” Angry tears blurred my vision. “But I don’t think it was cancer at all. I think they gave her the same drugs they gave Amy. The same thing they’ve been giving all the people they’re harvesting.”
I looked at him, fury and grief warring in my heart.
“They killed her. Ekklesia killed her because she was asking too many questions and getting too close to the truth. She was Hestia, and they wanted what was left of her power. They made us watch her die, thinking it was just bad luck, just fucking cancer.”
He combed his fingers through my hair, and I leaned into his touch.
“Do you want to see her?” I asked, my voice thick. He nodded, offering a reassuring smile despite the pensive look on his face. I fumbled for my new phone. “I don’t have many photos anymore since I lost my last phone. I had to pull this one from Instagram.”
I scrolled until I found the candid from before she got sick, taken at a neighborhood barbecue. She was laughing, gray-streaked hair catching sunlight, oversized glasses tilted askew, her whole face lit up with pure joy.
“This is her,” I said, holding the phone out.
He leaned in to look, and his eyes widened.For a moment, his entire body seemed to lock. I watched recognition flicker across his face, followed by shock, horror, and a kind of grief so profound it made my chest clench.
He took the phone from me, staring down at the image like he’d been struck. The color drained from his face, and his shoulders tensed.
“What is it?” I asked, heart pounding.
“I know her,” he said, voice rough with emotion.
I blinked. “What do you mean you know her?”
“She audited my classes about seven or eight years ago,” he explained. “Sat in the front row, left side, same seat every time. She was opinionated as hell—always challenging me, pushing back.”
His lips curved at the memory. “I remember one lecture about divine power hierarchies. She stood up mid-class and argued that power shouldn’t be measured by domains or combat ability.
She said Hestia was more powerful than Zeus because she held families together, kept homes sacred, and maintained the hearth that made civilization possible.
She said anyone could destroy, but only the strongest could protect without glory or recognition. ”
He shook his head. “Half the class thought she was crazy, but she didn’t care. She’d made her point. I told her she might be right, that maybe we’ve been measuring power wrong all along.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“‘Finally, someone with sense.’” He laughed. “She came to three other lectures. We’d debate after class sometimes. She’d stay late just to argue about obscure mythology, why certain gods were forgotten, and what it meant when stories changed over time.”
His voice softened. “There was one afternoon—one of my students had a panic attack right after class. The kid was hyperventilating, and couldn’t catch his breath. I was about to call campus security when Reenie just… stepped in.”
My breath hitched.
“She walked him through it,” Kian continued. “She used that 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique. She didn’t leave his side until he was steady again.”
Tears pricked my eyes.
A small smile tugged at his lips as his expression sobered. “I wondered what happened to her. One day, she just… stopped coming. I asked other students and checked to see if she’d enrolled in other classes. Nothing. I couldn’t exactly track down someone who was auditing.”
He looked at me, and his eyes were heavy with regret. “If I’d known she was sick, if I’d known she was your aunt, I would have…” He stopped, shook his head. “I don’t know what I could have done. But I would have tried something.”
A sob bubbled up in my throat before I could swallow it back. I sniffled, attempting to force them back. Kian set my phone carefully on the coffee table, then turned toward me. His hand came up to cradle my cheek, his thumb catching tears.
“Don’t hold them back,” he said gently. “Grief isn’t weakness, Tealeaf. It’s proof you loved her.”
The dam broke. I buried my face in my hands as the sobs wracked through me—years of holding it together, being strong for my Mom, unable to understand why someone so vibrant could just be gone.
Kian pulled me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me as though he could hold all my broken pieces together. I pressed my face into the crook of his neck.
“She should still be here,” I whispered. “She should’ve seen me graduate high school, and she should’ve been there when I got into college—”