But the dragon saw me.
Hades’ ghosts looked at me.
And neither of them looked for Charlotte.
They looked at what I am now.
The realization settles slowly, sharp and unwelcome, carving a quiet space inside me that feels too much like acceptance.
“I don’t knowhowto let her go,” I admit finally, my voice low, more to myself than to him.
Oracle’s expression softens, not with pity, but with understanding earned the hard way. “You don’t let her go,” he says. “You carry her forward differently.”
The words don’t comfort me.
They unsettle me.
Because carrying her forward means acknowledging that the girl who walked into this world will never walk out the same.
Silence stretches between us, thick with everything I don’t say. I force my shoulders back, grounding myself in the steadiness I’ve fought to build since the turning. “Thank you,” I say at last, the words rough but honest, because even if I don’t like what he’s offering, I recognize the truth inside it.
Oracle inclines his head, the golden light in his eyes softening as he steps back, leaving warmth in his wake rather than absence. The space he occupied lingers for a moment, quiet and reflective.
The cabin settles around me again while the fire cracks softly. Rogue’s hand remains steady against mine, an anchor that keeps me from drifting too far into the thoughts Oracle stirred loose.
I don’t say anything for a long time.
Outside the window, the light has shifted. The morning flare of sun that lit the tops of the pines when Scorch first walked in is gone, replaced by something lower and warmer, the kind of afternoon light that arrives after hours have passed without anyone noticing. The shadows in the cabin have reoriented themselves. A bird I don’t know the name of makes a sound I’ve never heard before, and then is quiet.
I think about Charlotte Harris.
I think about her terrible reality television and her overcaffeinated lattes. I think about the boys whose names she never learned. I think about the twenty-three years that belonged to her, and the four days that have belonged to whatever I am now, and the ratio of those two things, which will shift every single day from this one forward until she is nothing but a small, bright fraction of what I am.
Reborn.Something new was built from the ash of what the turning took.
I don’t know yet whether I believe him.
I don’t know yet whether I can.
But I hear the words, and I let them sit, and the afternoon moves slowly on around me while I do.
Footsteps sound at the doorway, and then there is Grizz. He has to turn sideways to fit through the frame, which should be absurd but is instead somehow exactly right, because Grizz is the kind of massive that doesn’t read as threatening. He crosses the room and lowers himself onto the floor beside the fire with the unhurried, deliberate movement of something that has never once in its existence needed to rush. The floorboards creak but hold, and the fire seems to steady as he settles.
He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t offer an ability, a technique, or a negotiation. He folds his enormous hands in his lap and sits with the fire between us and exists in the room, while the room changes around him. The pressure in my chest eases by a marginal degree, the hunger loses its sharp edge, and the noise of all those heartbeats in the cabin diminishes to something that can be heard without screaming. His presence is the earth itself, weight, patience, and the deep, untroubled certainty of something that has been here long before vampires were a concept and will behere long after, and it reaches me in ways that none of the words have quite managed.
My hands stop shaking.
I look at him across the fire, and he looks back at me with dark, steady eyes, and says nothing. The silence stretches, heavy but calm, and for the first time since dawn, the cabin doesn’t feel like a battlefield.
It feels… held.
Across the room, Rogue shifts.
He moves quietly, a hand to Scorch’s shoulder, a glance toward Hades, a low word murmured to Oracle, a head nod to Dread. There is no announcement, no command, just a subtle gathering. Chairs scrape softly against the floor. The fire pops, and boots cross wood in slow, deliberate steps.
I realize he’s bringing them together.
