He looked at me then, the cop in him surfacing through the father’s worry. “I heard about the official report. ‘Dormant mana-pocket’. Ruptured and burned itself out.”
“It’s a lie,” I said flatly.
“I know,” Eamon murmured, his eyes hardening. “No witnesses. No forensics. A scene that clean isn’t an accident, Selene. It’s a correction.”
He met my stare, the old detective in him surfacing to validate the threat. A clean scene meant professional erasure. It meant we were living on borrowed time.
He held his ground. He knew the game, and he knew me. I was the one holding the badge now, and he respected the weight of it. Buthis posture shifted, the sudden activation of a sentry. He stood watching from the periphery, eyes keen, waiting for a crack in my defence. He was the fallback. If the wall broke, he would be there.
Silence settled between us. We circled the safe topics: work, the weather, Marcus’s terrible communication style. We avoided the truth hanging in the air—the thing he had told me in the kitchen, the confession that had cracked the ground under my feet.
I glanced at him. At his tired eyes. The lines around his mouth. A thousand questions rose in my throat. Why didn’t you tell me? Who else knew? What else are you hiding?
But the questions knotted together, anchored too deep to force out. If he answered… I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it. Not from him. Not yet.
So I swallowed them back down where all the rest lived.
After a moment, I cleared my throat. “The book in my old room… the children’s one you used to read me and the story written by Mum. Can I take them?”
His expression shifted—surprise, then a flash of pain, quickly smoothed away. He nodded and disappeared upstairs without a word.
Eamon returned with two books held carefully in his hands. He offered them like something fragile.
The Little Sun and the Little Moon—worn, loved, edges soft from years of use.
And the cloth-wrapped volume—The Tides Beyond the Veil. My mother’s words. Her stories. The story she left for me.
He hesitated before placing them in my hands. “I thought you might want them one day.”
My throat worked. “Thanks.”
He studied me. Worry, regret, and fear shifted behind his eyes.
I wanted to speak—to say something that mattered—but everything inside me was brittle. If I opened that door even a fraction, I feared what would pour out.
So I nodded instead. He nodded back.
He opened his mouth, leaning forward slightly. “Selene, I—“ He stopped. His shoulders dropped as the words died in his throat, the tension draining out of him. He wasn’t ready either.
“Look after yourself,” he murmured, swallowing whatever confession he had almost offered. The words landed as a goodbye. “Please.”
Something twisted inside me—sharp and unnameable. I gripped the books tighter. “I will.”
I left before the emptiness cracked me open. I stepped into the city air with my favourite children’s book and my mother’s stories pressed against my ribs, the unasked questions anchored in my chest.
SEVENTEEN
Selene
The afternoon turned into a blur after I left Eamon’s. Back in my flat, the quiet was absolute, a weight building behind my ears. I paced, unable to settle, acutely aware of the bag sitting on the floorboards and the books inside it. They carried a burden far greater than paper and ink; they held the tangible proof of the lies I had lived with for my whole life.
I took the books out of my bag and carried them into the kitchen. I sat at the counter, dragging the cloth-wrapped volume towards me, and openedThe Tides Beyond the Veil. These pages supposedly held the history Eamon had finally voiced: the truth of the Aetherkind. I scanned the text, hunting for facts buried within my mother’s prose, but I found only fables. Princes born of starlight, wars fought with shadows. Nothing distinguished the reality of my bloodline from ordinary bedtime stories. I stared at the ink, unable to decipher which of these myths were actual memories.
My phone buzzed against the wood, severing my focus.
Riven:Change of plans. I am downstairs.
Just that. No greeting. No explanation. Typical. I stared at the screen for a moment before typing back.
