I knew that this might be our last night together. I wanted him to make it a night I would never forget.
I had never made love before, but that is what it was. Full of emotion. Full of sensation. Full ofhim. Full ofme. Wrapped in our cocoon of shadowmire, we held each other like the sun would never rise.
But when the light started to peek over the horizon—we knew what it meant.
He kissed me one final time, told me he loved me. I could tell there was something more he wanted to say, something else in his eyes—but he swallowed it. Instead, he just told me to be careful, warned me against ever letting anyone know the full power that I carried. That there were things that I needed toknow, about my magick, about my family, my father. Things that he would tell me when the time was right.
With one last look of longing, he climbed down from my window—and then he was gone.
I fell back asleep and woke when the sun was high, casting no shadows on the ground. Fitting, I thought, as my heart lay broken in pieces, mourning the shadows that would no longer be next to mine.
I grabbed my bike to hurry over to his estate, to see him one last time, only to find the house already empty, a few servants hastily boxing up what remained of my best friend and his family. I ran to his room to find it completely empty of all the things that had made it my favorite space those past four years, all the things that were Gavrail—his coin collection, his sketchbook, his books, the drawing of me he had framed and hung over his desk—gone. All gone.
All except for a small velvet box.
It sat on his now-empty bed, next to a letter addressed to me.
Celeste,
There’s so much I wish I could tell you. But I can’t—not yet. Not without putting you in danger. And I hate that. I hate keeping anything from you.
What I can say is this: be careful. Please. There is a kind of power in you that most people can’t even begin to understand. It’s not only extraordinary—it’s dangerous. Not because of what you might do, but because of what others will do to get to it. To get to you. There are people out there who will hunt you for it. Who will try to hurt you for it.
You can’t let anyone know—not even the people you think you can trust. I know how that sounds, and I hate asking you to hide a part of yourself—but it’s the only way I know how to keep you safe.
You are everything to me. I need you to be okay. To be happy. Even if this life keeps us apart, then let the next one bring us back together. Because you are the ending to every story I know.
I love you. More than I know how to say. It’s always been you. It will always be you.
Yours,
Gavrail
Inside the boxwas a ring—two pear-shaped diamonds flanking a large cushion-cut deep-blue sapphire.
There was a note tucked inside:A belated birthday present.
The last thing he ever gave me.
That first week, I ran to the mailbox every day, convinced there would be a letter. But days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. Months to years. Nothing.
He was gone. Vanished like his shadows, like smoke after fire.
The boy who taught me how to build forts in the woods and whisper secrets into lakes until the lakes whispered back. The first person to teach me about magick. The first person to teach me about love.
The silence he left behind carved something out of me I’ve never been able to fill.
Those days in our forest were the last time I ever willingly touched my magick. Between his and my father’s warnings, I locked it away once more, caged so carefully I almost forgot how it felt as it pressed against the bars.
Sometimes it stirred. A flicker, a breath against the cage. I always forced it still.
Until the day the cage broke.
That day… The day I found my father’s body in the lake. Just a warning of blue against the churning waters as the rain swirled around us, chaotic and charged. I don’t even know what Idid. All I know is my mother found us together at the shoreline, me sobbing into his chest as I held him, water spooled out around us in a curved wave. Hovering above us, dripping soft tears from its edges like it was crying too.
* * *
Noaand I talk all through the night.
