Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
EDEN
For a long time, I just stare at the plate.
It shouldn’t be glowing. It shouldn’t even be here.
Every other detail grounds me. Just a quiet small-town apartment, vanilla lingering from Halloween cookies, not proof that dreams can follow you home.
I blink hard, shake my head, and push the revelation aside. “Too much caffeine,” I mutter, though I haven’t finished my first cup.
Morning light filters through the curtains, painting gold across the kitchen tile. Everything should feel normal—quiet Sunday, no customers, no alarms—but beneath the silence runs a low vibration, faint as a radio left on in another room.
When I step onto the balcony with my coffee, the world smells like wet pine and sugar. The street below is still. The world feels paused—no wind, no engines, only the tick of cooling metal somewhere far below. Then, a shimmer catches the corner of my eye.
A dragonfly hovers near the railing—large, iridescent, its body a mosaic of turquoise and bronze. Its wings move too slowly to fly, yet somehow stay aloft, the air around them rippling with each beat—too mechanical to belong in nature, too unthinkable to be anything else.
“Hey there, gorgeous,” I whisper, leaning closer.
It doesn’t flinch. It just watches me. Its faceted eyes glow faintly, reflecting back my own outline. Then, a soft metallic click breaks the stillness.
I freeze. The sound isn’t right. Too precise, too deliberate.
The dragonfly darts forward, the downdraft stirring my hair, and lands on the railing inches from my hand. Heat pulses from it—barely there but unmistakable.
My breath catches. “You’re … warm?” My thoughts flicker back to Everett.
Another click, and it lifts away, gliding toward the sunlight until it vanishes in a quick flash of iridescence.
I exhale slowly, pressing a hand to my chest. My laugh sounds too thin, like it doesn’t belong to me. “Okay, Eden. New rule. No more glowing honey before bed.”
Down on the street, a dog barks once and refuses to cross the intersection. Birds wheel overhead, circling the same patch of sky as if caught in invisible currents.
Inside, my phone buzzes, Mallory Denver, a reporter from the Starborn Range Chronicle. She’s been coordinating with me about a feature on the bakery. I sit back down in front of the plate I’m trying to ignore.
MALLORY
Morning, Eden. Random question. Any trouble with your lights or ovens?
I glance toward the kitchen. The fluorescent bulb hums louder than usual.
ME
Bakery closed today. Define weird?
MALLORY
Town’s getting radio static again. Could be another magnetic flare from the mountain. Just keep an eye out today, alright?
Okay
If you notice anything strange, mind texting me? I’m working on a front-page story about last night
Last night. The words press against me like a touch—like him.
I could give Mallory enough to fill a whole issue. But would she believe a word of it?
And how real was it anyway? The result of drug-laced treats and a very inventive cosplayer …. or something else?
The apartment feels cavernous all of a sudden, like the quiet itself is waiting for someone else to breathe.
I slide the plate closer, pop a glossy piece of Star-honey into my mouth, and moan. Even better than I remembered. But instead of satisfying a craving, it cracks something open—an ache that hums low and deep, like I’m missing a piece of myself.
“Everett,” I whisper, fingers brushing my lips, feeling the faint pulse behind my breastbone.
Maybe I’m losing it. But if this is madness, it’s the kind that tastes like sugar and light.
I sit listening—to the wild beat in my ears, the fridge hum, the faint vibration threading through the walls. No hallucinations, no dizziness. Maybe if I ate a few more, I’d feel something else, but—
I can’t entertain the alternative. Because it would make everything I believe a lie.
Even worse, something unseen hums through the air, steady, protective, almost … watchful.
I try to shake it off—chalk it up to sleep deprivation and sweets—but the hum comes inside. It slides under my skin, a low current tracing my ribs, intimate as breath.
It’s faint, more sensation than sound, like the vibration of a cello string after the note fades.
I pour another cup of coffee and turn on the kitchen radio for company. It crackles, jumps, then goes silent. Great.
I text Mallory back:
Radio static. Lights flickering. Hope this isn’t the norm here?
Maybe…
When I move toward the table, something flickers in my peripheral vision.
The dragonfly is back.
It drifts through the open balcony door as if it belongs here, wings whispering against the air. It hovers near the ceiling light, tracing lazy circles, then lands lightly on the back of a chair.
“Persistent little thing,” I murmur, half smiling.
It tilts its head—or whatever the insect equivalent is—and the faint metallic click comes again. Up close, its wings shimmer with color I can’t name: not blue, not green, but something in between, a hue that feels alive.
The hum under my skin rises to meet it, matching pitch for pitch until my pulse aligns.
When I reach out, it doesn’t retreat.
It lands on my wrist, delicate feet cool against my skin. The pulse climbing my arm beats in sync with the one that woke me in the storm.
The radio crackles back to life for half a second, catching a scrap of some old love song before cutting out again.
I whisper, “Everett?” before I can stop myself.
The dragonfly lifts away, circles once, then vanishes toward the light spilling through the door.
For a long time, I just sit there, staring at the space it left behind, my heart thudding too fast, my mind forming a plan. Logic begs me to sit back down, call a friend, call a therapist. But logic never made me feel alive.
Then, I hear the knock on the door. Aggressive, repeated. It fractures the silence of my apartment. I startle, rise, an uneasiness curling low in my gut.
Don’t.
As if it’s whispered across a great void. And then the last thing I remember from my dream: They’ll come for you before they come for me.
I look through the peephole, holding my breath.
Two mountain men with thick brown beards and piercing blue-green eyes stare back.
As if they can see through the peephole or somehow sense me.
One’s flesh flickers for a moment, almost imperceptibly, something I would have never known to look for if it wasn’t for—
Everett. He wasn’t a dream.
My breath catches in my throat, and my heart pounds.
Another knock. Harder. Again.
The silence fractures; so does my pulse.
“Eden, we know you’re in there.” The voices menace as my pulse slams against my temples.
I step back noiselessly, mind racing. What do I do? Call the sheriff? Call a neighbor?
The plate of Star-honey gleams softly on the counter—its glow answering something I can’t see.
Then, I hear it, the click of the dragonfly, only magnified a hundredfold. When I turn, there’s a black cloud of them flying into my apartment. They pour through the open balcony door like metallic rain, dozens—no, hundreds—of them, light sparking off every wing.
I can’t process anything as the mountain men on the other side of the door bang again, voices growing more threatening.
One among the tiny horde of flashing metal insects grabs hold of my sleeve, tugging me along with it.
Go.
It sounds like they’re trying to break the door in now. The banging deafening as the cloud of insects swirls in front of the door like one great silvery shield.
Go now.
I don’t have a second to reflect before the large dragonfly leads me to the balcony, more robot than nature, though I don’t know how that can be. But then, nothing—nothing since knocking on Everett’s door has made sense.
I follow it over the balcony’s edge and down the fire escape as footsteps hammer closer. Two men dressed in all black with sunglasses appear.
“Ms. Lightborn,” one exclaims, pulling a badge in an efficient move. “We need to—”
But the dragonfly tugs me toward my vehicle and another swarm gathers, setting off some kind of small explosion. A burst of light—loud but harmless—cracks across the sidewalk, smoke blooming like a screen. Through the distraction, I make it into my vehicle with the creature leading.
Rook.
A name? Perhaps. Can it communicate with me?
Follow.
It feels like Everett and the dream. Like he’s in my head, though the communication is far more basic. As I pull away from my bakery and apartment, the two sets of men run into each other. Heads bobbing, gesticulating wildly as insects swarm them.
The air hums like a living thing as I grip the wheel. Behind me, smoke and sirens. Ahead, the Starborn Range—calling me home.