Page 14

14

ADELLUM

I 've become a shadow, a whisper on the edges of this village. For two days, I've watched her—my Harmony, alive and whole, moving through this sleepy hamlet as if she belongs here. As if she's found peace without me.

A better man would let her have it. But me? I'd become so fucking twisted without her that I was determined to snatch it up and keep it, keep her and everything she found buried deep beneath my skin where she belongs.

The innkeeper, a stooped, sour-faced woman with hands like gnarled roots, took my money with narrowed eyes.

"Not a word about me," I told her, pressing extra novas into her palm. "To anyone."

"Your business is your own," she replied, but the way she looked at my wings told me exactly what she thought of xaphan business in her village. "Room's at the top of the stairs. Meals extra."

I barely use the room. Sleep is still a distant memory, especially now with Harmony so close I can almost taste her on the air. Instead, I haunt the village like a specter, keeping to shadows and alleyways, watching her from corners and rooftops with wings tucked tight against my back.

She works at a restaurant—a homey place that seems to be the heart of this backwater village. I perch on a rooftop across the square, watching as she moves through her days.

Harmony looks different. Softer, somehow. Her body has filled out, curves where once there were angles, a fullness to her that makes my hands itch to trace those new contours. Her hair is longer too, wild curls often contained beneath a scarf as she works. But it's her eyes that have changed the most—still that mesmerizing hazel-green flecked with gold, but now guarded, cautious. The easy openness I remember is gone.

What happened to you, little bird?

On the first morning, I watch her open the restaurant, sweeping the front step in the pale dawn light, her movements efficient and practiced. A woman—older, with iron-gray hair and a commanding presence—joins her, and their voices drift across the empty square.

"Market day," the older woman says. "We'll need extra bread."

Harmony nods, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "I started the dough last night. And I've pickled those dreelk greens you wanted."

"Good girl." The woman—the owner, I assume—squeezes Harmony's shoulder. "What would I do without you?"

Harmony's smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Probably sleep more."

I squeeze the geode in my pocket until my palm throbs. Five years she's been here, building a life without me, while I tore the world apart looking for her. The rage burns low in my gut, but beneath it lies something worse—fear. Fear that she never wanted to be found.

Not that it will stop me. Nothing will stop me from getting to her.

By midday, the restaurant bustles with locals. I move closer, finding a shadowed alcove between buildings where I can hear the chatter spilling through open windows.

"Harmony!" a man's voice calls out. "These quillnash cakes are better than my mother's, and I'll be damned if I ever admit that to her face."

Her laugh—gods, her laugh—floats through the air, lighter than I remember, but still unmistakably hers. "Your secret's safe with me, Holt."

I peer around the edge of the building, catching just a glimpse of her as she serves a plate to a ruddy-faced farmer. She moves with grace, smiling and nodding as she weaves between tables. But there's a guardedness to her, a careful distance even as she chats and serves. She's built walls I never saw before.

The evening brings a softer rhythm to the village. I follow Harmony as she leaves the restaurant, carrying a small basket of what looks like kitchen scraps. She walks to a modest garden plot behind the building, where neat rows of vegetables grow in tidy lines. Even in the fading light, I can see the care she's taken with this patch of earth—so like her, to coax life from the soil with those gentle hands.

She kneels among the plants, those same hands now burying scraps beneath the soil. Her lips move silently as she works—talking to the plants? Singing, perhaps? I strain to hear, but I'm too far away.

"There," she says finally, audibly. "That should keep you fed through the week."

I nearly step forward then—nearly reveal myself—but something stops me. The vulnerability in her posture, perhaps. The peace in her face as she looks up at the darkening sky.

I've never seen her alone like this, truly alone. In New Solas, she was always surrounded—by other servants, by expectations, by the weight of her station. Here, she seems... free. And the thought tears at me, that freedom might mean freedom from me.

On the second day, I notice something that turns my blood to ice.

She's not alone after all.

A child—a little girl with wild curls like Harmony's but eyes that strike me with their familiar silver—darts from the back door, flinging herself against Harmony's legs.

"Mama! Mama, look what I made!"

I freeze, feeling as if I've been struck by lightning. The breath tears from my lungs in a sharp, painful gasp.

A child. Harmony has a child.

The little girl clings to Harmony's legs, her small body practically vibrating with excitement as she holds up some crude creation—a clay figure, I think, though it's hard to make out from my vantage point. What isn't hard to see are those eyes—brilliant silver, like mine, like looking into a mirror. But they're set in a face that looks so much like Harmony, with skin several shades darker than mine, curls wilder than mine ever was.

"What's this?" Harmony crouches down, taking the little sculpture with careful hands. "Oh, Brooke, it's beautiful! Is it a lunox?"

"No, Mama! It's a zarryn! Joss showed me how to make the tails." The child—Brooke—gives an exasperated sigh far too adult for her tiny body. "See the two tails?"

I count back in my head. Five years since Harmony vanished. This child can't be more than four. The timing... the timing could fit. But my mind rebels against the possibility, already building walls around the hope before it can take root and destroy me all over again.

She can't be mine. She looks too much like Harmony to really tell. And where are her wings? I search the child's back, but there's no sign of even the smallest nubs that would mark a xaphan offspring. Not mine, then. Which means Harmony found someone else. Quickly.

The thought burns through me like acid, eating away what little sanity I've managed to preserve these past five years—which is honestly nonexistent. I'm just a mad man being driven further insane.

Harmony's laughter drifts through the evening air. "Of course it's a zarryn. I see it now." She tucks a curl behind Brooke's ear, a gesture so tender it makes my chest ache. "Did you thank Joss for teaching you?"

Who the fuck is Joss?

Someone who I have an itch to fucking kill now.

"Uh-huh." Brooke nods, bouncing on her toes. "He says I'm the best clay-thrower he's ever seen for someone my age."

"Well, he'd know." Harmony's voice carries that unmistakable thread of pride that only belongs to a mother. "Let's put him somewhere safe to dry, shall we? Then you can help me pick some brimbark for dinner."

I watch, transfixed, as they move through the garden together, the little girl chattering endlessly, Harmony responding with infinite patience. There's an ease between them, a rhythm that speaks of years together, of routines well-established. A life built.

A life that doesn't include me.

Magic thrums in the air around them—no, around the child specifically. I can feel it even from here, a low vibration that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. The girl has power. Untrained, wild, but undeniably there.

Human magic is rare, but not unheard of. Whoever fathered her must have had abilities.

But as the child turns, laughing at something Harmony said, I catch a glimpse of golden sparks dancing from her fingertips when she points excitedly at something in the garden. Gold. Not the earthy brown of human magic, nor the green of nymphs. Gold like fire. Gold like lightning.

Gold like xaphan magic.

I squeeze the geode in my pocket so hard I feel it cut into my palm. The pain grounds me, keeps me from launching into the air and flying down to them right now.

Logic tells me this child can't be mine. She lacks wings, looks nothing like me except perhaps those eyes, and Harmony left me. But logic has been my enemy for five years now. Logic told me Harmony was gone forever. Logic told me to give up the search and bind with Lilleth.

Fuck logic.

The girl is Harmony's daughter. That makes her mine in all the ways that matter. They both are. They have always been, from the moment I first saw Harmony in Arkan's garden, from the moment this child drew breath.

I will not lose them again.

Sliding deeper into the shadows, I watch as Harmony leads her daughter inside, both of them carrying small baskets of vegetables. The restaurant door closes behind them, and I wait, wings pressed painfully against my back, the hunger to follow them so strong it makes my body shake.

Soon. But not yet. First, I need to understand this life she's built. Find its weaknesses. Find my way in.