Three minutes.
That’s all the “fresh” air I get each day—if you can call it that after it’s been filtered through wards and layered beneath the constant hum of containment spells. Thank the gods for Dom and The Den.Without those nightly escapes into chaos, I’d lose my mind in this perfectly curated routine.
The black-glass tower looms ahead, its surface catching the sunset like a mirror. Another monument to Darkmoor’s obsession with flawless aesthetics. The elevator responds to my magical signature before I even reach for the call panel, its wards already reading that distinct cocktail of personal essence and Ellis bloodline. As precise as a fingerprint. All courtesy of Alexander’sgeneroussecurity upgrades. Though I’ve never been sure if the biometric recognition is meant for convenience . . . or surveillance.
The elevator deposits me in our penthouse. Every inch screams curated luxury: enchanted artwork that shifts with the viewer’s mood, furniture crafted from materials so rare they’re nearly extinct, windows that adjust their transparency with the hour. Sometimes I wonder if Father realizes how desperate it all looks. Thisneedto prove we belong among Eclipsera’s elite. As if their legacy of innovation wasn’t already carved into this city.
Mom’s humming draws me out of my thoughts. Her presence at this hour is wrong, like waking from a dream where everything looks familiar but nothing behaves the way it should. She’s usually still at the lab, buried in whatever latest obsession has caught her attention. For as long as I can remember, she’d stay even later than Father, both of them consumed by their endless pursuit of the next breakthrough.
“Mom?” The leather sofa accepts my bag with a soft thud.
When she emerges from the kitchen, my breath catches. Elyra Ellis has always been the embodiment of scientific control. Every strand of hair precisely pinned, every gesture calculated to the decimal. But now? Her hands flutter between her wedding ring and the blood ruby pendant at her throat, the stone pulsing unevenly with each touch. Bruised shadows cling to her caramel eyes, and her usual pristine lab coat is nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Father?” I keep my tone even, ignoring the strange tension prickling in the air.
“Still at the lab.” She tries to smile, but it falters before it ever reaches her eyes. “He will be working late.”
“On a Friday night?” I lift a brow.
My father, obsessive as he is, usually insists on leaving the lab by dusk. Something about maintaining work-life balance, though that never stopped him from dragging research home.
“You know how he gets with his projects.” She waves it off, but I catch the tremble in her hand as it drops back to her side.
I do know. I’ve seen that glint before. The hunger in his eyes when something new takes hold. The way he loses himself in potential and precision. The same look he used to wear when I was younger, watching me solve equations or cast spells, like I was just another variable in need of refining.
“Are you going out?” she asks, though her gaze slides past me to the cracked leather journal on the desk.
I’m already halfway to my room, mind on the new dress I bought for tonight. “Meeting Dom at The Den.”
Her lips flatten, and the magic in the apartment pulses faintly with her disapproval. Lately, though, there’s been a shift. A quiet effort, like she’s trying to make up for years of pressure and expectations. Sometimes I think she convinced Father to stop pushing so hard about Dom, hoping I’d get bored and move on, but they don’t understand how he gets me in a way no one else does.
“The Den.” She says it like others might say sewage. “Aria, you could do so much better than—”
“Better than what?” I spin around, jaw tight. “Better than Kian Blackwood’s son? Better thanthe heirto one of the Founding Families? Who else would meet your standards, Mom?”
She presses her lips together, and I know exactly what she’s thinking.Whoshe’s thinking of.
“I love Dom,” I say firmly, cutting off whatever argument Mom’s rehearsing. “And I’m going to be late.”
“Aria, wait. We need to talk.”
“About Alexander’s offer?” Everyone’s holding their breath, waiting to see what brilliant path I’m going to choose. What legacy I’ll create. It’s exhausting. “Because I really don’t—”
“No, not about that.” She moves to the desk. “There’s something I need to give you.”
I glance at my watch. An hour to get ready if I want to be fashionably late rather than rudely late. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”
She picks up the worn leather book, the pages yellowed with age. “I wrote this . . . This is my personal journal. I want you to have it.”
I take it, more surprised by the gesture than interested in its contents. From what I’ve pieced together over the years, my birth wasn’t exactly a celebration for her. The nurses used to whisper about how she refused to hold me, wouldn’t even look at me. A brilliant scientist reduced to tears by something as simple as motherhood.
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll read it later.”
“Aria.” Her hand catches mine, grip strong for someone who once couldn’t bear to touch her own child.
“Mom, are you okay?”
Her fingers tighten, then release. “Yes, sorry.”
