Her voice steadies me. I lift my head and manage a small, fragile smile.
“Yeah,” River adds. “Most people in Sun still don’t know about you yet, but you’ve got a whole lot of Moons in your corner. When the time’s right, we’ll tell them.”
I nod toward him.
“You still have those tapes, right?” he asks.
“Yes. They’re under the floorboards.” I gesture to the rug concealing them.
“Did you get a chance to watch them?” Nala asks.
My stomach twists, bile burning my throat.
“Only two,” I admit. “I couldn’t stomach the rest.”
They fester in my mind like parasites—those recordings of the Star race centuries ago, bound and broken, experimented on for their tears.
Tortured. Chained in the same way I once was. My fingers drift to my wrists, tracing skin that still remembers the weight of enchanted iron, and I blink hard, forcing the images back.
River and Nala watch me with quiet understanding. We’re bound by what we survived—each of us altered in ways we don’t speak about.
Nala still wakes screaming in the night, Charlie’s name tearing from her lips before she can stop it. By day, she refuses to say it, as if silence might strip him of his power. But I can see it—how the memory consumes her, slow and relentless.
River pretends he’s unscathed, but I catch it in his eyes whenever he asks how I’m doing: the anxiety staining the hazel, the awareness that our reality is fragile, that everything could shatter in a heartbeat.
“If you want,” River says quietly, holding my gaze, “I can watch the tapes. You never know—they might have the answers we’re looking for.”
Relief loosens something in my chest. “That would be great. Thanks, River.”
I stand and gesture toward the looming pile of books. “Now, come on. These aren’t going to read themselves.”
They both nod, settling back in.
Chapter Two
The portal opens in my old bedroom.
For a moment, I just stand there, suspended between past and present. The hot-air-balloon wallpaper is peeling at the edges, curling like tired fingers. I used to sit on this very floor and stare at those balloons for hours, imagining myself drifting high above the clouds. High enough to find her. High enough to see my mother.
Gods, I was so sure she’d be waiting up there.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been back in the village. Longer still since I’ve faced my father. The room feels smaller than I remember, like it’s shrunk in my absence—or maybe I’ve just grown into someone who no longer fits inside it.
For a long while, I felt disconnected from him. Betrayed. Every unanswered question, every half-truth, cut deeper than he ever knew. But now… now I understand. He didn’t lie to hurt me. He lied to protect me. And that must have cost him everything.
He defended my mother long after she was gone, even after she broke the one rule we were drilled with from the moment we could speak.
Sun and Moon should not mix.
The words were repeated until they became law, until fear was as natural as breathing. The consequences were always clear. Always dire. And still—still—he stayed. He stood by herside while she carried me, knowing what the world would do if it ever found out. Knowing what it would cost him.
He didn’t have to love me like I was his own. He didn’t have to train me, guide me, or protect me… but he did. And standing here now, in this quiet room full of ghosts and peeling dreams, it hits me with a weight I can barely carry—
He is the only family I have.
“Flick.”
His voice wraps around me, years of quiet reassurance carried in a single word. It’s a sound I’ve been craving for so long that my knees almost buckle beneath me.
