Chapter 121
Chapter 121
*Jiselle*
There was a time when I used to run to escape the world.
Now I run to remember I’m still part of it.
The wind scratched at my face as I climbed the jagged slope behind the hollow ridge. Loose gravel shifted beneath my boots, and the burn in my thighs reminded me I wasn‘ t invincible anymore. The flame wasn’t gone, but it no longer carried me effortlessly the way it once did. Since closing the Veil Gate, everything felt quieter. Slower.
Too quiet.
I reached the outcrop above the valley and knelt, pressing my palm against the stone. The earth here hummed with faint magic–leyline traces, but nothing active. No threat. No pressure. Just the slow breath of a world learning how to mend.
I exhaled and let the remnants of my power stretch outward, testing. The flame responded gently, just a glow under the skin. Manageable. Contained.
I stood and focused on the boulder perched ahead of me–broad, solid, unmoved for
what looked like centuries.
Just a test, I told myself.
I raised one hand.
“Control. Intention. No fear.”
The first surge was smooth. My palm pulsed white–gold, and a ribbon of flame flicked toward the rock, clean and fast.
It should’ve stopped there.
But it didn’t.
A second wave rose from deep inside me–unbidden, uncontrolled. It punched forward like a second heartbeat behind my first. Not mine. Not exactly. The ribbon of power widened, cracked mid–air, and the boulder didn’t just split–it exploded.
Stone fragments scattered around me in a high, shrieking ring. I stumbled back, shielding my face just before the burst hit the edge of the cliff wall.
And then everything went still.
And black.
I don’t know how long I was out.
Seconds. Maybe less.
But when I opened my eyes, I was on the ground. My knees scraped. My hands
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blistered. My breath coming short and fast like I’d run from something bigger than flame.
And then I heard her.
Not in words.
In presence.
Like a thought I hadn’t had yet, curling around the edges of my mind.
You thought it was gone. But the flame does not leave. It waits.
I jerked upright.
My pulse galloped.
The heat in my chest hadn’t flared. The runes along my collarbone hadn’t glowed.
But something inside me had spoken.
I didn’t go back to the others right away.
I wandered, slow and aching, until I found Eva in the valley basin below–kneeling in the grass, hands coated in ash, focused on warding lines she’d been etching into the soil.
She didn’t look up.
“You burned something,” she said.
I froze. “How do you-?”
“I felt it.” Her voice was steady. “Every gifted wolf within a mile did.”
I sat down heavily beside her, letting the silence between us thicken. She didn’t press me. Just kept working, hands moving with precise rhythm until the last rune was complete.
Then she looked at me.
“What happened?”
“I tried to train. Just focus my power.”
“And?”
“It came too fast. Like something doubled it.”
Eva tilted her head. “Surged?”
“Not exactly.” I met her eyes. “It felt like… there were two of me.”
Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t interrupt.
“One was mine,” I said slowly. “But the other–it’s quieter. Older. Not a voice exactly. A shadow. A presence. She doesn’t push. She waits. Like she knows she doesn’t have to fight for control.”
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Eva leaned back on her heels, silent for a long moment.
Then she said the thing I’d been afraid to think aloud.
“The flame you released… might not be gone.”
I shivered. “I felt it leave.”
“But power that old doesn’t vanish,” she whispered. “Especially not willingly. Maybe it didn’t leave. Maybe it just slipped beneath the surface.”
“Into me?”
“Or into something in you. A piece that Eira opened. A door you never knew was there.”
I looked away. “I haven’t told Nate.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m scared if I do… it’ll make it real.”
Eva didn’t flinch. She just nodded, like she understood in a way only someone who had come back from the brink could. “Then let me carry it. Until you’re ready.”
It wasn’t just an offer. It was a lifeline. A quiet vow from someone who had watched me fracture, held the pieces, and never asked me to be whole before I was ready.
I could’ve cried.
Instead, I reached out and gripped her hand. Not tightly, not desperately. Just enough for her to feel the weight I couldn’t put into words.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
She gave me a small, tired smile. “Always.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Sleep felt too fragile, like it would shatter if I let my guard down for even a second. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the edges of that second presence curling around my thoughts like smoke–shapeless, patient, waiting. And worse than that, I felt her calm. Like she knew she could wait me out.
So I left the camp, wrapping a cloak around my shoulders and climbing the ridge just above our hold. The climb was short, but the cold caught my breath. The wind tugged at my braid, sharp and clean, laced with pine and old ash.
Maximus was already there.
He sat near the edge, one leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee, arms loosely folded over his chest. He didn’t look surprised to see me–just turned his head slightly, acknowledging me with that unreadable expression he wore like a mask.
“Trouble sleeping?” he asked.
“Always.”
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I lowered myself beside him, not too close. Just far enough that our shoulders didn’t touch, but the space between us felt like an echo. He didn’t move. Didn’t ask anything
more.
We stared out over the moonlit valley. The land looked softer under silver light–like the world had temporarily forgotten how much blood had soaked into it. The trees stood still. No magic stirred. But under it all, the ground still hummed with something unsettled.
I wrapped the cloak tighter around myself, not for warmth, but for something else. Protection, maybe. Armor made of wool and silence.
“You ever wonder what would’ve happened if you hadn’t walked away that night?” I asked quietly.
His brow twitched, barely. “You mean the night I told you I’d wait for you to choose?”
“Yeah.”
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he shifted, arms tightening slightly.
“Sometimes,” he said. “More often than I’d like to admit.”
I turned toward him, not fully, but enough to catch the way his jaw clenched. The way his throat moved before he spoke again.
“I used to think if I’d just said the right thing… if I’d held you longer or told you I loved you sooner, maybe you wouldn’t have walked away.”
“That’s not why I left,” I said gently.
“I know that now,” he said. “But back then, it felt like I’d lost a war I didn’t even get to fight.”
I exhaled slowly, guilt threading through me like thread through old wounds. “You didn‘
t lose. There was never a war.”
“No,” he said. “There wasn’t. But there was a choice. And I gave you space to make it. Because even then, I knew–deep down–that if I forced it, I’d always wonder if you were mine because you wanted to be, or because I’d made it too hard to leave.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
“I never lied to you,” I said.
“I know.”
“I did love you.”
“I know that too,” he said. “Just… not the way you needed to.”
“No,” I agreed, voice small. “Not the way I needed to either.”
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He turned his gaze back to the stars. “I’m not angry anymore.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m… tired,” he said. “And I still think about you. And him. And all the different versions of what we could’ve been. But no, Jiselle–I’m not angry.”
I didn’t reply.
We sat in the quiet together, the weight of what was and what couldn’t be hanging between us like unfinished pages in a book we both stopped writing.
And maybe that was okay.
Maybe this–this shared silence, this ache without bitterness–was its own kind of healing.
“I think you would’ve burned either way,” he said. “But maybe not alone.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
He looked at me then–really looked.
“You carry it differently now,” he said. “Not like a gift. Like a scar.”
“Maybe it’s both.”
He nodded, thoughtful.
“Are you sure you’re whole?” he asked, softly.
I didn’t answer right away.
I turned back toward the stars.
“No,” I whispered. “But I’m still trying to be.”
And beside me, Maximus stayed quiet.
But he didn’t leave.
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