I sit back against a pillar. Silence falls heavy. I feel her beside me — heat through stone, breath in the air. My throat trembles. I clear it.
“I messed up,” I say. “I always thought I had to bear the burden alone. That if anyone was close, they’d crack under the weight.”
Her fingers press my thigh. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
I twist to look at her, study her face in this pale lamp glow. She’s plain, unarmored, honest. She’s more than I ever believed I deserved.
“Okay,” I say, voice cracking. “We try. We regulate. You help me keep the beast at bay when it claws to the surface.”
Her lips press into a line. “I’ll learn.”
I reach for her hand. It rests in mine. The Seal under my chest throbs. Outside, night stretches deeper. The villa creaks as wind shifts. The olive trees lean heavily outside the windows.
In that moment, she’s not a risk or leverage. She’s my anchor. And I vow silently: I’ll protect her, even if it costs me everything.
18
KALEIGH
The heat starts in my chest.
Not like panic, not like fear. It’s softer. Deeper. It curls inward instead of out, blooming behind my ribs like the memory of a sun I’ve never stood under. I’m asleep—somewhere inside the weave of sheets and breath and the low hush of cicadas buzzing through the villa walls—but something deeper than sleep begins to unthread. I feel the weight of my body leave me. I feel the room go still. I feel a shift.
Then I hear them.
Whispers.
They’re not in my ears exactly. They move like smoke across the inside of my skin, threading themselves through bone and blood, not harsh or frantic, but steady and low and full of something that feels older than language. At first, I can’t make out the words. They echo behind a veil, caught in the space between dream and something heavier.
Then a shape begins to form.
It’s fire. Not flames licking wood or paper, but a ring, slow-burning, suspended in the dark. Behind it, chains coil like serpents—thick and rusted, twitching with life, not broken butwaiting. I see hands. Many of them. Reaching not to fight, but to hold, to touch, to bind. And in the center, something pulses like a heartbeat wrapped in light.
The whispers become a voice.
A woman.
Not young. Not old either. She speaks like someone who’s said the same thing across centuries and still isn’t tired of saying it.
"The beast is your balance. Touch him, and truth reveals."
Her face drifts into view, not fully formed, more feeling than flesh—high cheekbones, dark eyes rimmed in ash, braids woven with silver thread. There’s paint on her hands. A ring of glowing ink circles her throat. I try to step forward, try to reach her, but I can’t move.
She steps into the fire without burning. She raises her hand.
She touches my heart.
And I wake.
But not like I usually do, not with a gasp or a start, not with sweat clinging to my spine and breath caught halfway. I wake gently, like surfacing from warm water, like someone peeled the night off my skin instead of tearing it.
The room is dark but I can see every corner. I see dust motes that aren’t supposed to float when the air is still. I see the cracks in the stone floor glowing faintly at the edges, like veins pulsing under skin. I see my own hands resting on the blanket, and they are glowing.
Not blinding, not wild, but lit. Pale gold swirls up my arms in delicate patterns like vines or runes, etched under the surface, moving slowly as if stirred by the beat of my heart.
I sit up. The glow doesn’t fade.
It hums under my skin like a second pulse. Not alien. Not unnatural. Familiar in the way grief is familiar. The way instinctsettles behind your ribs when you know someone’s watching you from across a room.
