Chapter 23
KALEIGH
It’s barely past five when I hear the low, broken call. Not the kind of sound that comes from a regular animal. No rustling feathers or flapping wings. Just pain—soft, aching pain—dragging across the stillness of the courtyard.
Rafe’s still asleep, one arm heavy across my hips, breath warm against the back of my neck. I ease out from under him slowly, moving like if I’m too fast, I’ll wake something that should stay resting. The air outside is cool, almost damp, smelling of olive trees and the faint dust of the dry hills.
I don’t know what pulls me exactly. I just follow the ache in the air, like some old instinct has woken before my brain fully catches up. And then I see it.
Crushed near the broken fountain, body contorted, wings crooked in the stone basin like some creature dropped from the sky and forgot how to land. A falcon. Blood-matted feathers streaked black down one side, talons curling weakly into the cracked stone.
Only it’s not just a falcon.
There’s something more to the way its eyes shift when they land on me. Not animal. Not completely. The gold behind its pupils blinks once and holds. And I feel it—deep and instant—that this isn’t just a bird. This is someone.
A shifter. Half-shifted. Stuck.
I kneel slow, careful not to make the wrong move. The falcon jerks a little when I get close, flapping one wing feebly, but the other’s useless, bent out at a sick angle. There’s a deep gash across its belly, one leg twisted unnaturally under its own weight.
“You poor thing,” I whisper. “What happened to you?”
Its eyes flicker again. Something in them pleads. It’s not afraid of me. It's waiting.
I reach out with one hand, hovering just over the torn side where muscle pulses faintly under broken plumage.
Warmth rises in my palm, not just body heat, something internal.
Deep. A hum I’ve felt since the rooftop in Seville but never like this.
This is stronger. Brighter. And not just reactive—it’s alive.
Behind me, I hear the door creak open. Bare feet on tile. Then Rafe’s low voice, tight with worry.
“Kaleigh? What the hell are you doing?”
I don’t answer. I’m focused. The heat in my hand starts to push outward, pulsing into the wound like light knows where it’s needed.
The falcon gasps—yes, gasps—and I feel the shift like a ripple under the surface. Its form pulses, feathers shifting as though unsure of which body to stay in. But I don’t let go. I keep my hand steady, keep the energy flowing, and the light in my palm ignites.
It’s golden. Not fire, not blinding. Just pure and steady, like sunrise through a windowpane.
The wound starts closing before my eyes. Bone grinds back into place. Feathers regrow in tight waves. The leg straightens, talons flexing. The light threads deeper, and I feel it—every nerve, every sinew, every cell mending, as if my hands were built for this.
And when it’s done, the falcon doesn’t collapse. It rises.
Wings stretch wide, impossibly wide, powerful now, not shaking. Its gaze locks onto mine one last time before it pushes off the edge of the fountain and soars, strong and clean, toward the open sky. A whisper of wind trails behind it like a goodbye.
I collapse to my knees.
Rafe’s beside me in an instant, one hand braced against my back, the other gripping my shoulder like I might fall right through the stone.
“You... what the fuck was that?” His voice is hoarse, shocked.
“I don’t know.” I breathe hard, blinking against the pulsing glow still flickering under my skin. “I didn’t plan it. I just... felt it.”
He stares at my hands like he’s seeing them for the first time. “Your hands were glowing. And not like they did before. That was focused. Direct. You fixed him.”
I nod slowly, heart pounding. “That wasn’t shifter healing. That was magic.”
“Which means...” He trails off, his expression darkening. Not out of anger. Something deeper. A realization settling in his bones.
I finish it for him, whispering like saying it too loud might break something sacred.
“I’m a witch.”
His jaw flexes. He’s trying to stay calm for me, but the weight of it hits both of us.
Not a seer. Not just an empath. Not just the girl the Seal glowed around. I healed a falcon shifter with nothing but my hands and some old power in my blood I’ve never known how to name.
Rafe helps me to my feet, but I keep staring at my fingers like they’re foreign.
“I need to know more,” I say. “I need to understand what this is.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Then we find answers.”
We spend the rest of the morning in the library tucked into the north end of the villa, the one no one’s opened in years.
Rafe digs out books with cracked spines and loose bindings.
Texts from the Pact era, scrawled notes, journals half-burned at the edges.
The room smells like dust and dry wood and long-buried secrets.
I comb through page after page, searching for names, bloodlines, anything about healer witches or latent magic.
There are dozens of accounts about the first Seal-born, the covens that served beside shifters during the early rebellions, and most importantly—ancient lines of witches whose power only activated under specific stress or exposure to Seal magic.
One name appears again and again in the oldest scrolls: Althea the Lightbearer.
She was one of the first healers known to work alongside shifters.
Some claimed she could mend bones with a glance.
Others said her touch brought back the dead, though the latter reads more like myth than history.
But what grabs me is the sigil next to her name: three crescents surrounding a flame.
That same sigil is etched into the cover of one of the tomes I found on my first day here, the one I thought was just decorative.
As I follow the family trees branching off Althea’s name, my breath catches.
There, on a lower limb, nearly faded into nothing: Seren Vale. My grandmother’s name. Connected by a thin line, barely inked.
I freeze.
“Kaleigh?” Rafe moves beside me, peering over my shoulder. “What is it?”
I point. “That’s my bloodline.”
He looks hard. Then slowly, he lets out a long breath. “You’re directly linked to her.”
I lean back in the chair, pulse pounding in my throat. “All this time... my grandmother used to talk about old stories. Called them myths. Said the women in our line carried light. I thought she meant kindness. Strength. I didn’t know she meant this.”
Rafe crouches beside me, his hand slipping into mine.
“She knew,” he says. “Maybe not all of it. But enough.”
I nod slowly, processing everything. The healing. The glow. The call I’ve been feeling—not just from the Seal, but from something older. Something waking up.
“Darius needs to know,” I say. “Mary needs to see this. If they’re building something, if witches and shifters are finally working together, I need to be part of it. Not just as someone touched by the Seal. As a witch with real bloodline power.”
Rafe looks at me for a long time. His eyes are full of conflict, protectiveness, maybe fear—but beneath all of that, I see something else now.
Pride.
“You’re stronger than any of us ever realized,” he says softly. “And you’re still growing.”
I grip his hand tighter. “So are you.”
The sun climbs higher through the windows, light spilling over the scrolls and papers, bathing us in that same soft glow I’ve come to associate with awakening.
I don’t feel like something strange is happening to me.
I feel like I’m becoming who I was always meant to be.