Page 2 of Embers of Midnight
He nodded once, a movement that felt like a fracture. “I’ll be seen by no one,” he promised. “She’ll eat. She’ll sleep.” He looked down at the sleeping face again, and the look all but undid him. “She’ll live.”
Melina’s mouth pulled into a tired smile. “Write her name. Not ours.” She inhaled against pain that no longer sharpened into purpose. “When she’s ready, tell her… tell her I burned every path I had to bring her here.” The words thinned. “Tell her I wanted the small years. Teeth and knees and lies about homework. Tell her I would have stayed.”
“You did,” he said, and bowed his head over hers. He kissed her temple and then the soft hair at the crown of their daughter’s head. “I love you,” he told her, at last and entirely. “I love you.” He drew the cloak higher over her shoulders with careful fingers. “Forgive me.”
Her eyes closed on an exhale that did not return. Weight changed by ounces. The room stayed plain—boards, tin roof, water bucket, a child breathing—but everything else shifted at a depth no carpenter could measure.
He did not rage. He did not move for a long time. He held both lives until one no longer needed holding and the other sighed in sleep as if in answer to a private music only she could hear.
When he finally stood, he carried the girl wrapped in her mother’s torn cloak. He stepped into cold air, followed the line of trees to a road, crossed distances measured better by grief than by miles. A town gathered out of dark—low buildings, faded paint, a sign that readSaint Jude’s Home for Children.
Inside, a night lamp glowed over a desk where a woman slept in a chair. He found a small room of metal cribs and painted animals. He set the baby down on a clean blanket, smoothed the edge around her chin, and searched a drawer for paper and pencil. He printed one word with deliberate care:Seraphina. He slid the slip beneath her hand.
He bent low. “When the time is right,” he whispered, voice kept small so it would not disturb anyone who could not help. “I’ll return. We’ll finish what your mother and I began. Not to burn this world, but to clean what rot we can. If you never forgiveme, I will still stand beside you.” His mouth trembled and he steadied it with the old soldier’s trick—one breath in, one out. “Because gods may fall but daughters rise.”
He turned for the door. Cold air slipped along the floor. Words came with it—no throat in the hall, no singer on the step—shaped all the same, clear as carved stone:
Born of fire and bound by fate,
Daughter of war at heaven’s gate,
Clad in flesh, her truth concealed,
The flame shall wake when blood is spilled.
She walks alone, but is not one—
four shadows circle ’round the sun.
They’ll guard her heart, though none may claim,
her path bears death and love by name.
She’ll break the chains or break the world,
a banner raised, a fate unfurled.
And when the stars fall from the skies…
the lost shall burn. The daughter—rise.
He absorbed it like a man taking orders from a sky that had always refused him. Then he stepped into the night and walked until the building reduced to shape, and beyond that, to memory.
In the crib, the baby’s fingers opened and closed around the edge of the note. Her breathing held a steady count. Beneath the small breastbone, the seal lay quiet and deep. Her name remained.
Everything else waited.
Rent & Other Demons
Seraphina
Rent is a patient little devil. It sits on the kitchen counter like an invisible landlord, checks the date on my phone, and taps its foot while I fight my keys at the door. The lock sticks, because of course it does, and my knuckles are numb by the time I get it to open. Heat sneaks out in the hallway; my apartment answers with a tired exhale from the radiator that might be a death rattle or just enthusiasm on low.
I shoulder the door shut with a soft thud and breathe in that special perfume of my place—old coffee, cheap soap, a hint of snow from my coat. My grocery bag is too light to be comforting. It bites the crease of my fingers anyway. I dump it on the counter and watch two cans, a sack of ramen, and the budget version of peanut butter roll into their corners like they’re ashamed of being here. Same, guys. Same.
The fridge opens with a groan like we keep secrets together. Cold air rushes my face. Inside: half a lemon I don’t rememberbuying, mustard with a heroic attitude, and a lonely slice of bread that has seen things. I set the new recruits on the shelf as if placement matters. It doesn’t, but order feels like control when money doesn’t.
“Congratulations,” I tell the condiments. “You’re a family now.” My voice bounces off tile and thin walls; the upstairs neighbor answers with a cough. He smokes like it’s a personality. I close the fridge and rest my forehead on the door a second longer than I need to. Metal cools my skin. The rent devil clears its throat.
