Page 11

11

JACKSON

W hen I get home, I still don’t sleep. Not after the way she looked at me. Not after the words she didn’t say.

“Walk away.” That’s what she told me. Like that’s even an option now.

Like I could ever fucking walk away from this—her—after everything we’ve seen, done, survived.

My apartment looks like a crime scene. Papers, old surveillance footage, printed files from off-the-books channels. Black Sun traces go back decades. Centuries, even. Disappearances. Purges. “Unexplained” magical phenomena. Major city fires. Vanishings at sanctuary locations.

And always, always just out of focus in the records, always half-blurred or mislabeled.

A figure that looks too much like her to be coincidence.

Same stance. Same eyes. Same fucking shadow.

It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t make sense.

And yet here I am, red-eyed and shaking with adrenaline, scrolling through photos and documents like they’re gonna scream the truth if I stare long enough.

My phone buzzes. Blocked number. Of course. I look at the time and see it’s already 8 AM. Shit.

I answer, voice gravel. “Yeah?”

“It’s me.”

Sera.

Her tone’s clipped, cold—but not detached. There’s something sharp behind it. Like she’s pissed but doesn’t have the energy to deal with how deep it runs.

“We’ve got another one,” she says.

I sit up straighter. “Where?”

“Forest Glade. Off the 30. We’re already on scene.”

I pause. “Who?”

She exhales. “It’s... bad. Just get here.”

Then the line goes dead.

I roll up to the edge of a forest preserve that should’ve been quiet this time of morning. Instead, the whole area’s crawling with PEACE enforcers, magical suppression fields, glowing runic wards scrawled in midair like floating chains.

I flash my badge and push through the perimeter.

And then I see the body.

It’s a kid.

A Fae.

Not just any Fae— a child.

Looks maybe ten, eleven. Hair like spun copper. Pale skin with the faint shimmer of magic beneath it, the kind that never fades, even in death. Wings—ripped, shredded.

I stop walking.

Just stare.

Because this?

This isn’t just murder.

This is sacrilege.

You don’t kill Fae kids. Not even monsters go there. The Fae are locked in their own courts, mostly neutral—highly political, annoyingly aloof, but protective as hell of their young. And now this kid is laid out on a mossy patch of ground like a warning sign no one wants to read.

Sera’s standing off to the side. Dressed in black again. Hair up, except for the pieces she always seems to keep loose over her ears, and blade tucked into her side holster. She looks like a general surveying a battlefield. Cold. Still.

But when I get close?

There’s something off.

Her hands are clenched so tight, blood’s slicking her knuckles where her nails cut in.

She sees me and flinches.

Not visibly. Not to anyone else.

But I know her better now.

Barely.

And maybe not enough.

“Another sacrifice?” I ask, voice like gravel.

Her lips twitch. “Possibly. The runes nearby weren’t Black Sun standard. Older. But similar structure. Could be a splinter sect.”

“What the hell are they doing?” I snap. “First vamps. Then shifters. Now a goddamn Fae child ? What are they summoning?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Say something.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Her jaw flexes. “Do you think I’m not trying?”

“I think you’re hiding shit that would make this easier if you’d just let me in. ”

“I can’t! ” she snaps, voice cracking before she reins it back in. “God, Jackson—if you knew half of it, it’d bury you. I’m not doing this to punish you. I’m doing it to protect you.”

And there it is.

Finally.

That flicker of vulnerability. Of truth.

“You think that makes it better?” I say, quieter now.

“No,” she breathes. “But it’s all I’ve got.”

The silence hangs thick between us. The kind that makes you feel like if you say one more thing, the whole damn world might break in two.

I step closer.

Close enough to see the circles under her eyes, the faint tremble in her fingers, the way her mouth twitches like she’s holding back everything.

“I believe you,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.”

She swallows hard.

Then pulls away, turning toward the PEACE enforcers barking orders in the distance. “They’ve got suspects lined up. Typhon and Gideon boys. Some rogue necros. A demon-marked hedge witch who swears she’s innocent. Tensions are bad. We’re barely past the last riot. This’ll light the fucking match all over again.”

“We need to get ahead of it.”

She nods.

But she doesn’t look at me again.

Not for a long time.

Later, as the scene gets cleaned and the magical barriers hum louder with containment energy, I catch her standing alone beneath the trees, looking up at the patch of sky filtering through the leaves.

I don’t walk toward her.

I just watch.

Because for the first time, I see it—not the blade or the badge or the power she wears like a second skin.

I see the weight. And I don’t think she’s ever had anyone to help carry it.

Maybe that’s why I’m still here. Even if it’s killing me trying to help her lift something I don’t understand.