Page 62
Some instincts don't need a plan to start saying goodbye.
24
DARIUS
The next morning, I watch Serenity pretend she's fine for three hours. I had stayed up watching her work through most of the night, catching only brief intervals of sleep while she obsessed over the ancient texts.
She sits cross-legged on the safe house floor, surrounded by journals, like she's building a fortress of ancient knowledge. Every few minutes, she scribbles notes on loose paper or mutters something about ritual patterns under her breath. She is the picture of feverish determination.
Except I recognize her tells now. Whenever she safeguards a secret, her bottom lip is caught between her teeth. Her shoulders lock into rigid lines upon uncovering vital information, and she maintains a calculated distance to keep herself perfectly poised and independent.
Kellan moves, his steps possessing the guarded grace of someone knit back together through magic, each stride a testament to a body that remembers its own destruction. Fresh scar tissue maps his chest beneath his shirt—I notice the ridges through the fabric. The healer's work was remarkable—pumping him full of accelerated healing spells and pain-numbing draughts—but even with that and our shifter regeneration working in overdrive to knit his muscle and bone back together, he's operating at maybe seventy percent, and we both know it.
"Perimeter's clean." He braces one hand against the doorframe when he thinks I'm not looking. "No magical signatures or movement in the tree line. So we're good for now."
"Thanks, Ro." I don't take my eyes off Serenity's rigid posture. "Get some sleep. I'll take first watch."
He lingers in the doorway, glancing between us as he picks up on the thick, underlying tension. "Everything alright?"
"Perfect," Serenity says, eyes on her journal. "Just trying to decode a century of cryptic family notes before dawn. You know, light reading."
Kellan raises an eyebrow at me. I shake my head slightly—not now. He gets the message and disappears back into the bedroom, closing the door, his movements purposefully soft.
I perch on the couch, close enough to watch Serenity but far enough to avoid crowding her. She flips through pages with machine-like accuracy, but her eyes have lost their usual fire. She looks... hollow, like she's already mourning something.
"Find anything useful in Lachlan's writings?"
"Bits and pieces. His theory about overloading the containment makes sense, but the execution details are missing."
"Missing how?"
"Someone tore out the final pages." She holds up the journal and shows me the ragged edges. "Either he destroyed them himself, or—"
"Or someone else did it for him." I lean forward. "Serenity, what aren't you telling me?"
Her pen stops moving. She sits frozen, like a deer sensing trouble, before forcing herself to continue writing. "Nothing, I'm just trying to piece together—"
"Bullshit."
The word cuts through her careful composure. She looks up, glaring with irritation. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." I stand and cross to where she sits, crouching down so we're at eye level. "You've been pulling away from me for the past hour. Acting like you're already gone. So either tell me what you found in those journals or admit you're planning something stupid."
Her fingers curl inward, fingernails biting into her palms. "I'm not planning anything."
"Serenity."
"I said I'm not—"
"Look at me." I reach out and tilt her chin up, compelling her to face me head-on. "Really look at me and tell me you're not planning to sacrifice yourself."
What I say fills the room like a ticking clock. Serenity inhales sharply, and her mask slips, stripping her exposed. I see the terror underneath—raw and desperately convinced she's already dead.
"Every Vessel dies, Darius." A tremor runs through the statement, shattering her composure. "Every single one. From my mother to my great-grandmother. They all tried to fight it, and they all failed."
"That doesn't mean—"
"Yes, it does." She eases away from my touch and scrambles to her feet. "Three centuries of this nightmare. Twelve generations of Crowe family members since the early 1700s became Vessels. Whenever the seal weakened, the family performed the ritual in absolute secrecy to keep the community from panicking. The duty just passes to a sibling or the next of kin once the current Vessel perishes. And at the end of the day, none of them survived the reinforcement process."
