Part 2-Chapter 38

Part 2-Chapter 38

~ELYSIA~

The door clicked shut behind Alex, and the room changed shape. Not physically. The walls stayed where they were, the window still overlooked the same sweep of trees and sky. But the air shifted when his presence left. The gravity he carried with him eased, and what remained felt sharper at the edges, more exposed. The bond between us settled into a low, steady hum, like a hand still resting at the small of my back from a distance.

Lila watched the door for a heartbeat longer, then let out a breath. “He walks like he’s holding a fault line together,” she observed, her mouth quirking as she turned back to me.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling my robe belt tighter as I moved toward the chair near the window. “Most days it feels like he is.”

Lila’s gaze flicked to me, considering. “And you,” she said, shifting her weight as she spoke, “you look like someone who finally realized the fault line runs through her chest.”

I sank into the chair instead of pacing. Pacing would have bled energy I needed to keep. “Feels more like it runs through my blood,” I replied, resting my forearms on my thighs. “Apparently that’s the problem.”

Lila stepped farther into the room, the wards adjusting subtly around her, cataloging her presence again like they were taking a second reading. She shrugged out of her jacket and draped it over the back of the second chair without asking permission: it felt oddly right that she didn’t.

“Your blood isn’t the problem,” she said, lowering herself into the other chair. “The problem is who thinks they have the right to define it.”

I studied her face, the lines at the corners of her eyes, the way she held herself like she was always ready to spring, whether she needed to or not. “You talk like you’ve seen this before,” I said, my voice quiet but pointed.

Lila gave a small, humorless huff. “I’ve seen versions,” she said. “Wolves born with too much gift for their rank. Witches who hear things they weren’t meant to hear. Children raised by people who thought control was protection, and forgot to tell them what they were protecting them from.”

My fingers curled against my knees. “You mean me,” I said.

“I mean all of you,” she corrected, tilting her head. “You. Remy. The others they didn’t manage to erase cleanly.”

A chill slipped down my spine at that. “Others,” I repeated, tasting the word.

Lila’s jaw tightened just slightly. “Names can wait,” she said. “Right now the important part is you understand you’re not a one-off miracle or a freak accident. Systems don’t overreact to one person. They overreact to patterns.”

My heart kicked once in my chest, then steadied into something harder. “The council,” I said, feeling the word settle like grit in my mouth. “They’re the system.”

“One of them,” Lila replied, propping an ankle over her knee. “They’re the loudest and the most organized, which makes people pretend they’re inevitable. They’re not.”

I let my head tip back against the chair for a second, staring at the ceiling. “You sent me to Remy,” I said, bringing it back to the place this actually started for me. “You told me it was about a job. You never said anything about…bloodlines. Systems. Patterns.”

Lila’s expression didn’t waver, but something in her eyes dimmed. “If I’d told you everything,” she said quietly, “you would’ve run.”

“I might’ve stayed,” I argued, straightening again.

“You would’ve stayed for the wrong reasons,” she said, her voice firm now. “Out of fear. Out of obligation. Out of anger that didn’t have a target yet. I needed you to walk into that office because you chose to, not because you thought you were a pawn in someone else’s prophecy.”

The third layer in my blood, the one Remy didn’t have a name for yet, stirred at that word. Prophecy. It didn’t flare. It listened.

“You talk like you had a plan,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Did you?”

Lila’s mouth twisted. “I had a direction,” she said. “I knew the council’s hands reached farther than they should. I knew you were being kept small on purpose. And I knew Remy is allergic to tidy lies.”

A reluctant sound escaped me, half laugh, half exhale. “That part checks out,” I said.

Lila’s gaze softened, just a fraction. “He saw you,” she said. “Even when he didn’t have the whole picture.”

“He saw just enough to sever the tether,” I murmured, feeling the ache of it ripple through me. “To cut himself off, so they couldn’t track me through him.”

Lila’s eyes sharpened at that. “He told you?”

“He told me enough,” I said, my fingers tightening. “The rest I felt.”

Silence stretched between us for a beat. It wasn’t empty. It was full of things neither of us wanted to put words around yet.

“You knew something was wrong,” I said. “Before any of this. Before the council. Before Alex. You knew my life didn’t add up.”

Lila looked away then, toward the window, her profile carved in shadow and dilute morning light. “I knew your records were clean where they should’ve been messy,” she said. “I knew the man you called your grandfather knew more than he was saying. I knew your file came with gaps that had been smoothed over instead of explained.”

Something inside me flinched. “You checked into my life?” I asked, and my voice came out thinner than I intended.

Lila turned back to me, no apology in her eyes. “Of course I did,” she said. “You walked into the bookstore like you had been kicked in the ass by the world, and a scent that screamed at me. I would’ve been negligent if I hadn’t.”

I stared at her for a long moment. “And you still sent me to Remy,” I said softly.

“I sent you to the one place I knew the council didn’t have direct access to,” she replied. “And to the one person who wasn’t going to let you stay blind because it made his life easier.”

Emotion pushed into my chest, sharp and hot, but it wasn’t quite anger. “You could’ve told me,” I said, because I had to say it.

Lila leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she held my gaze. “Elysia,” she said, her voice low and unflinching, “if I had said the word ‘council’ and ‘erasure’ and ‘bloodline’, you would have looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Then you would’ve gone home and tried very hard to pretend your life was still yours to define.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it again. She wasn’t wrong, and we both knew it.

“You needed proof,” Lila continued, straightening again. “You needed to feel the edge of the cage before you believed it was there. Remy could show you the bars without making you think you were trapped in them.”

I drew a slow breath, letting it out through my teeth. “And now?” I asked. “Do you think I have enough proof?”