Page 78 of Embers of Midnight
In bed, my body falls into the mattress like a decision I finally made. My mind offers me the image of Nyra yelling at a ferry,Kieran losing at squid charades, Draven at the table like a man with two jobs and a heart he refuses to misplace, Caelum’s bow hand steady, Darian’s palm on my knee, Ronan’s hand open on the table next to mine. The watcher at the hedge, the frost on the bin. I let both parts belong to the same day without trying to clean it up.
Sleep sweeps my edges. Right before it takes me, I think of tomorrow, and my mouth finds a shape that isn’t fear.
Always
Seraphina
I don’t feel the moment I fall asleep. One breath, lights out. Next breath, cold.
I’m standing in a clearing I’ve never seen awake. Air clean enough to sting. Frost silvering the grass. My wrist is heavy in a good way—Darian’s thread and Ronan’s bracelet, warm against skin. I breathe. Two short. One long. The exhale sits my feet on the ground.
A sound moves between the trees. Not shoes. Hoof on frozen grass. Slow, deliberate.
She steps into the open. The shape hits every nerve I’ve been trying not to touch: a large, dark body with heat under the hide, one long horn cutting a straight line into the night. The eyes catch what little light there is and hold it. I know this outline from Alaska, from the river, from the part of me that won’t lookdirectly in a mirror. My gut wants to run and bow at the same time.
I hold my ground. “Hi,” I manage. “We doing this?”
She lowers her head in a single clean nod. Then light rolls—no drama, no smoke—and where the horn was, a hand lifts. The body narrows, unhinges, stands. A woman takes the last step toward me.
She’s tall. Dark hair braided back from her face. Bare feet. A white dress that shouldn’t belong in a winter clearing and does anyway. No lace, no frill. Just a simple cut that moves when she breathes. She’s not me. She’s not a stranger. Her mouth has my stubborn line. Her eyes carry a softness I don’t trust and want anyway.
“Seraphina,” she says, and my name lands like someone set it down gently for once. “You came through.”
Pressure hits the back of my throat. My brain tries to pick a defense and fails. “Who are you,” I ask, even though the answer is already moving through my ribs.
“Melina.” Her mouth tilts, not quite a smile. “Your mother.”
I thought I was prepared to hear it. I wasn’t. Heat spikes. Anger shows up in full gear, sees her face, and backs off without leaving. I cross my arms because I don’t know what else to do with them. “You left me.”
“I did,” she says, steady. “We hid you. It was the only way you’d live long enough to stand here and tell me you’re angry.”
The honesty knocks something out of my chest. Air rushes in behind it. “A note would’ve helped,” I say. It’s mean and small. I let it be true.
“We tried three times,” she says. “One was ‘misplaced.’ One stolen. One burned.” Her gaze drops to my wrist. She sees thread and sunstone and her eyes warm like a stove that isn’t trying to prove anything. “You kept breathing. That was the point.”
“Who is ‘we’.” The word scrapes on the way out.
“Your father and I.” She says it without flinching.
“I don’t have one,” I snap. It’s a reflex that tastes like old rules and cheaper lies.
“You do,” she answers, softer. “You were loved before you were born.” She studies my face, and I hate that I lean toward the look like a plant chasing heat. “Loved enough that we chose survival over pride.”
Silence stretches. It doesn’t break. I fill it with breath. Two short. One long. It helps.
“Why now?” I ask. “Why this clearing. Why tonight.”
“Because time got thin,” she says. “Doors I used to hold shut are opening at the edges. You’re walking toward one. I can pusha little, cross a little, say a little.” She lifts a hand like she might touch my cheek and stops a palm-width away, as if there’s glass my eyes can’t see. Warmth crosses anyway. It unravels something behind my sternum I didn’t know I tied.
“Are you—” I stop. Pick a word that won’t explode in my mouth. “Alive.”
“No my sweet Seraphina.” She says it clean. “I’m dead. This is a piece of me. It took work to reach you. It won’t last.”
That hits lower than I expected. It doesn’t knock me down. It finds a seat next to the kid who packed a bag in her head and never unpacked it. I nod once because anything else will leak.
“You can’t give me his name?” I ask, because I’m not doing riddles if I can help it.
“Not across this kind of line.” She glances at the trees, at the dark between. “And not without pulling the wrong eyes toward you. You’ll have to ask the right men the right questions. Watch who shields you too long. Look where a man hides what he loves when he’s ashamed he loves it. Old places. Old habits.” She sees my face harden and lifts a hand, palm out. “I know. It’s not enough. It’s what I can carry through.”
