Page 81 of Embers of Midnight
Light. Not theater. Change with no sound. A woman stands where the creature stood. Bare feet, dark hair braided back, a white dress cut simple. The fabric moves when she breathes. That’s the only drama. She is not Sera. She is exactly where Sera comes from.
“Seraphina,” she says, and my own name-struck ribs answer like an instrument tuned to the same pitch.
The part of me that is teacher wants to clear the field, erect scaffold, put a line of salt around the edges and tell the guest to wait for a more appropriate hour. The part of me that is a man watching the girl he loves hold very still in a storm shuts the teacher up.
I hover out of sight—not outside the dream, just outside the circle where words are happening. The ethics are bad. I log the sin and keep watching. If she is harmed, I break it. If she is helped, I shut up.
“Who are you,” Sera asks, voice steady because she makes it steady.
“Melina,” the woman says. “Your mother.”
The word lands in Sera like a weight and a relief at once. I feel it hit. I feel her lungs reach for air around it. I hate that I hear any of this. I am not leaving.
Pieces line up fast, because they have to. Death and love in the same breath. Years of absence not from choice. A father who hidher because someone had to. Doors thinning. Time going rough at the edges. It is a lot for midnight.
When Sera says “I don’t have one,” about a father, I want to walk into the scene and hand her every name in the academy like they’re suspects. I do not move. The woman tells the truth cleanly: “I died the day you were born.” She adds it without drama, like she knows Sera can smell theater. “He hid you after—because I asked him before I went.” The old anger in Sera loosens its grip by a finger. I can feel it without reading her mind. You learn to feel the body you tune to.
They talk about watchers who sent money with no names on it. About wards meant to shave teeth off the worst wolves. About the difference between a roof and safety. No one apologizes for breathing. They apologize for what people with breath did badly. It is the only kind of apology that helps.
Sera asks for something she can carry. The woman gives it in one line: “Find your father.” Closer than you think. Farther than you want. He won’t come. Go anyway.
My stomach drops and lands somewhere near my shoes. I think of reputation and responsibility and the way certain men hold themselves like doors other people must pass through. I hate how quickly a short list forms in my head. I push the list away. Not in this moment. Not while she’s holding herself together.
The woman says the sentence I will replay when I cannot sleep: “You were loved before you were born.” Sera takes the words like a starving person takes broth—cautious, skeptical, then with both hands.
The air pressure shifts. The invisible line between them stops being theoretical; I can see it, thin and bright. She cannot cross it. Sera cannot bear that. Neither can I. My hands curl into fists I will use on nothing in particular.
“Say it again,” Sera asks, because she is brave in ways that look small until you try to do them yourself. The woman says it again. It goes in deeper the second time. The band on Sera’s wrist warms. I feel that too and want to kiss Ronan’s stupid, careful mouth for every slow, gentle decision he’s made this week.
Wind moves through the trees. Four lines of prophecy fall through us like gravel:
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.
I hate prophecy as much as I love melody. I memorize it anyway. I know the difference between a line you choose and a line that will trip you if you ignore it.
“Will I see you again?” Sera asks. Soft. Not small.
“Yes,” the woman says. “Not like this.” Doors. Water. Fire that isn’t hers.
Sera says “Mom” once, like a man saying a prayer after swearing he doesn’t believe. It hurts to listen to. It hurts good.
“Always,” the woman says, and then reality pulls. Sera breaks awake with the kind of breath that scrapes. I step sideways, out and down, hard enough that my back hits the hallway wall. The house is just a house again. Wood, paint, the faint lemon the cleaner leaves behind.
I open her door and she is already upright, eyes wide, hands useless in her lap until I put them to use.
I cross the room and sit on the edge of the bed and open my arm. She comes into it without performing need. Her forehead hits my collarbone. Her breath tries for a rhythm and fails the first two attempts. I give her mine. Two short, one long, palm steady between her shoulder blades. She matches on the third. The tremor leaves her hands first, then her ribs.
“I—” She swallows. The word has to climb a hill. “I saw my mother.”
“I know,” I say, and I hate the truth that lives next to it. “I felt someone I didn’t know in your head. I followed. I should have asked. I didn’t have the time good manners take.” I angle my mouth to her hair. “I’m sorry I listened. I’m not sorry I stayed.”
She pulls back an inch, the distance couples use when they want to see a face without leaving safety. “Was it real?”
