Chapter 24 - Fragments Out of Place
Jaquelyn
11:03 | Duvarra Penthouse – Reading Room
Jaquelyn paced the edge of the reading room like a predator in too small a cage, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her long cardigan. The floor-to-ceiling windows painted sunless shapes across the rug. She hadn’t said anything yet — not since Topher had left. Ezekial leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. Watching. Waiting.
“It’s not just that he’s off,” she said at last, voice low. “It’s like something’s missing. Like someone carved out a piece and didn’t bother filling it back in.”
He said nothing. The silence between them stretched. She turned toward him, eyes narrowed. “You don’t feel it?”
“I feel nothing,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
Her brows knit. “He’s your childer.”
“He should be. But the bond is gone. Or was never there to begin with. It’s like the connection didn’t take.”
Jaquelyn crossed the room slowly, tension coiling beneath her skin like a live wire. She stopped short of him, searching his expression. “I feel something,” she said quietly. “Not to him. Not like he’s mine. But... like something’s pulling. Wrong and quiet. Just under the skin.”
Ezekial’s gaze flicked up, sharp. “Describe it.”
“Like an echo that shouldn’t be in my head. Like someone humming off key in a soundproof room.” She exhaled. “I wanted to punch him. And at the same time, I almost—”
“Almost what?”
She hesitated. Then looked away. “Almost reached for him.”
Ezekial’s jaw flexed. His voice stayed calm. “You think it’s blood?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not hunger. It’s... familiar. Like a feeling I should recognize, but don’t want to.”
“Does he feel it back?”
“Oh yeah.” Her laugh had no humor. “You didn’t see his eyes. He looked like I was the edge of a cliff he was about to fall off.”
Ezekial pushed off the doorframe and walked past her, heading for the liquor cabinet though it was still morning. He poured something dark, unnecessary. Held it in his hand like a ritual.
“He’s afraid of you.”
“Good,” she said.
“He should be,” he agreed. “But fear doesn’t bind people. Not like this. Whatever it is between you two — it’s not the childer bond.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know,” Ezekial said. “But I don’t like that I wasn’t told.”
They stood in silence for a long moment, the weight of unspoken suspicion threading between them.
Jaquelyn moved to the window, watching the sky shift into bruised gray. “Do you think the Council did something?”
“If they did, they were subtle. But it’s not their usual brand of cruelty. This feels... messier. Organic. Or worse — accidental.”
She turned, brows raised. “Accidental?”
“If something went wrong in the turning — if he pulled from you in the moment...”
“I wasn’t even conscious.”
He met her gaze then, eyes dark. “Exactly.”
The room felt colder. Quieter. She sat down slowly, settling into the chair she’d claimed earlier that week. The blanket was still draped over the armrest. Her body remembered the space. Her muscles relaxed on instinct. But her mind kept spiraling.
“What if they knew?” she asked. “What if this is why they pushed for his return? Why they pushed to classify me?”
Ezekial didn’t answer right away. Instead, he sat across from her. Their knees almost touched.
“I’ve been watching the Council for a long time,” he said. “They don’t move unless they see leverage. And I think they see it in him. Or in you.”
Her fingers curled around the fabric of her pants. “That’s what it felt like. Like they were waiting to see what I’d do.”
He nodded once. “And you showed them mercy.”
“Was that a mistake?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it’s a decision. And they’ll study it like blood under glass.”
She leaned back in the chair, arms crossed tight. “I don’t want him near me again. Not without you in the room.”
“You won’t have to ask,” he said.
But even as the words left him, she noticed the tension in his jaw. The tightness in his shoulders. He was worried. Not just about the Council. About her. The distance that had been easing between them for a week suddenly felt like it was back again — all the little comforts, the shared glances, the unspoken routines — on pause. Waiting.
She reached for the cup he’d set beside her, sipped the still-warm tea. Her voice dropped low. “Do you trust me?”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
“But?”
“But I don’t trust what they’re doing. Or what’s happening to you.”
She nodded, slow and steady. “Then maybe,” she said, “you should start treating me like I’m not the one breaking.”
That landed.
Ezekial said nothing. But his eyes didn’t leave hers.
And the space between them didn’t quite close — but it held.
She set the cup down gently and stood, not quickly, not sharply — just a shift from stillness into motion. As she walked to the far wall and pulled a volume from the shelf, something heavy but thin, old paper and new notes folded inside, she flipped it open absently but did not read. “There’s something else,” she said.
He stayed quiet, waiting.
“I dreamt of him. Not Topher exactly, but something shaped like him. And it spoke in a voice I didn’t recognize. Just one word.”
Ezekial’s tone dropped. “What word?”
She closed the book. “Familiar.”
He straightened. “That’s the word?”
“That’s the word.”
She looked back over her shoulder. “It wasn’t a warning. But it wasn’t friendly either.”
Ezekial’s voice went razor quiet. “We’ll increase the wards tonight.”
Jaquelyn nodded. “And tomorrow?”
“We start looking for what slipped through while we weren’t watching.”
Jaquelyn nodded slowly, but her eyes stayed on him a moment longer. Not just for affirmation — for calibration. For balance. Something in her posture had shifted since the conversation began, and now she moved differently. Less defensive. Not more vulnerable, but more aware. She crossed back to the chair, sat with deliberate ease, and leaned into the silence with purpose.
“I want to start with the records from his transition,” she said. “If there’s anything in the sensor logs, I’ll find it. Blood resonance, emotional echoes, spell trace — whatever’s there, I want to see it.”
Ezekial tilted his head. “You trust your eyes over the Council’s?”
“I trust my instincts,” she said. “And I trust that whatever happened to him didn’t start with him. It started with something we didn’t see.”
He nodded once. No argument. Just approval.
And outside, the clouds shifted again — the light turning sharp along the horizon, as though even the sky was waiting to see what she would do next.