Sothatwas what this was about. Kian wasn’t just curious—he wassearching. Hoping. Trying to prove that what he felt was real. That it wasn’t just peri magic pulling his strings.
But that wasn’t how magic worked. It didn’t carve clean lines between what was real and what wasn’t. It seeped in, messy and invisible, until even the strongest emotions couldn’t tell where they started.
If he was hoping to build a wall between himself and the curse—
He couldn’t. No one could.
“Oh?” Riya muttered coldly. “And what do you think you already know about me?”
“I know you have a strong sense of justice. You work hard. And you care about your friends.”
“Anyone could guess that.”
“And you hate asking for help,” Kian added, gentler. “Even when you need it.”
“That’s because I have everything under control.”
“I know.” He smirked. “Hey, want to hear a joke?”
“No.”
“What do you call a fish with a bow tie?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. James Pond?”
Kian burst out laughing. “Shit, that’s pretty good. I was going to sayso-fish-ticated.”
“God, that’s...awful.” It was the kind of joke her sisters would tell—childish and unfunny, especially after the day she’d just had. But before she could stop it, her mouth twitched.
“There it is,” said Kian, grinning like he’d just won something.
They stopped at a red light. The music softened to a hum, María’s voice spinning a slow, dreamy web between them.
Kian spoke again. “I tried looking up stuff about peris. After our talk.”
“What?” Riya blinked. “Why?”
“I wanted to understand better,” he said simply. “But there’s, like,nothingout there. No real history, no proper records.” He paused. Glanced at her again. “But then I started wondering if researching peris felt weird for you. Like... does it make you feel more connected? Or does it make you feel more like an outsider?”
“What do you mean?”
Kian hesitated. “It, just, reminded me of something.” He made a turn before continuing. “A while ago, my dad made me read this book on Filipino history. Obviously, I already knewa lot—you kinda just pick up the traditions and stories naturally when you grow up in it, right? But reading them made it feel distant. Like I was studying something academic, something separate from me, instead of something Iam. It kinda freaked me out, how disconnected I suddenly felt.”
Kian smiled faintly. “But then, as I kept learning, it made me feel proud, too. Like I was reclaiming it. Reconnecting in a way I hadn’t before.”
Riya fiddled with her hands in her lap.
Her heritage was just a fact of her existence, like eye color or height. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt pride in peri magic.
Only fear. Only mistakes.
“I’m not doing this for pride,” she said. “I’m doing this to fix a mistake.”
“Right...” Kian nodded. “Eyes on the prize. I gotcha.”
He smiled, but there was something in it that made her stomach roil—a subtle, knowing sort of sympathy, the same look her family sometimes gave her whenever the topic of peris came up.
“But if you ever want to talk about it—”
