Oh.
I look at my hands again. Really look this time. And I see it. The slight shimmer around the fish hook scar. A whisper of magic so faint I never would have noticed if I wasn’t searching.
My glamour. Wrapped around the wound like protective film.
It’s not hiding the scar. It’s preserving it.
All this time. All this time, the magic wasn’t erasing who I was. It was keeping me safe until I was ready to remember.
Something cracks open in my chest. Not pain. Release.
I settle back. Close my eyes. And focus inward to that space inside me where I keep everything tightly locked away.
Then I blow the doors off the fucking hinges.
The smell hits first. Dust and old paper and something green underneath. Growing things. Waiting.
There’s no power surge. No dramatic explosion of magic. Just a release of breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
Mentally, I see myself step into this massive warehouse in my head. Rows of shelves stretching into darkness. Boxes stacked floor to ceiling, each one labeled with something I’ve buried.
Fear of abandonment.
Lucy’s death.
The sound of Graves’ voice.
Every time I wasn’t enough.
I walk past them. Not today. Those boxes can stay closed.
I’m looking for something specific.
The aisles blur together until I find it. A shelf near the back, dust-free, like someone’s been visiting. A single box sits alone, a name written on the side in handwriting I don’t recognize.
Ashlynne Moonshadow.
My hands shake as I reach for it.
The cardboard is warm under my fingers. Alive, almost. Humming with something that feels like homecoming and terror wrapped together.
I open it.
My breath catches. My heart slams against my ribs.
Inside, there’s no object. No artifact. No magical key.
There’s me.
Living. Moving. A window into a life I never got to live.
I see a woman. Tall, taller than I am now, with ears that come to delicate points. Her hair falls past her shoulders in waves of pinkish-silver, darker at the roots where green bleeds through like new growth on a plant. Her eyes are full green, no whites, no pupils, just endless forest that holds secrets I’m only beginning to understand.
She’s laughing at something. Running through trees. Her skin shimmers with patterns that move beneath the surface. Thorns and vines, ivy that breathes and pulses with her heartbeat like a living tattoo.
She looks happy.
She looks free.
