Part 2-Chapter 12

Part 2-Chapter 12
~Redakai~

I did not trust the fae. I never had.

They smiled too easily, spoke too softly, and watched too closely. They were creatures of thresholds and bargains, and nothing that lived between worlds ever did so without learning how to slip knives into promises.

Hamish was no exception. And yet…when he crossed the Manor’s wards, the house breathed instead of braced. That alone unsettled me more than any threat ever could.

I stood a half step behind Kaisha as he spoke, close enough that my presence anchored her without caging her. I could feel the echo in her chest through the wards now. Not flaring. Not screaming. Coiled. Contained. Like a storm forced into a bottle that was never meant to hold it.

Hamish saw it too. That was the problem.

“You sealed it,” he’d said.

Not you sealed something. Not there is a seal. You.

The room had gone still in that moment, the kind of stillness that follows a blade sliding free of its sheath. Dirk had tensed. Syrus had shifted his weight. Corton had gone quiet in that way he only did when something stopped being theoretical.

Kaisha hadn’t argued. She hadn’t denied it either.

She’d looked…empty. Not confused. Not frightened. Empty. Like the word had landed on a place already hollowed out.

I wanted to tear the truth from Hamish’s throat and bury it somewhere she could never hear it again. But I didn’t, because Hamish hadn’t come to unmake her. He’d come because something else was trying to.

“You said the seal is straining,” I said, voice low and even. Control was a weapon. I wielded it carefully. “Explain.”

Hamish glanced at Kaisha before answering, as if gauging how much truth her spine could bear without breaking.

“She built it when she realized rememberin’ would cost her more than forgettin’,” he said. “Not a spell. Not properly. More like…a decision that became law.”

My jaw clenched. That sounded exactly like her.

“Decisions do not hold back entities,” I said.

Hamish’s eyes flicked to me, sharp now. “Most don’t. Hers did.”

I had lived long enough to know when a creature spoke from experience rather than arrogance. Hamish wasn’t boasting. He was stating fact.

Dirk crossed his arms. “How long?”

Hamish exhaled slowly. “If the convergence keeps pressin’? Weeks. Maybe less. Depends on how hard the other side pushes.”

The other side. I didn’t like how vague that was.

“And if it breaks?” Syrus asked.

Hamish didn’t hesitate. “Then she remembers.”

My grip tightened on Kaisha’s shoulder before I could stop myself. She didn’t react. That frightened me more than panic ever would have.

“No,” I said flatly. “That will not happen.”

Hamish met my gaze without flinching. “Ye don’t get to decide that, vampire.”

I took a step toward him, power rolling off me in a controlled wave that made the runes along the walls flare.

Kaisha’s breath hitched, and I stopped immediately.

Hamish noticed. “So that’s how it is,” he murmured. “Still anchoring to each other without meaning to.”

“Careful,” I warned.

He smiled faintly. “I am.”

The wards shifted again, responding not to threat but to alignment. That was worse.

“Tell me something,” I said, lowering my voice. “When she sealed it…did she do it alone?”

Hamish hesitated. That was answer enough.

“No,” he said quietly. “She wasn’t alone.”

The room seemed to tilt. I felt it in my bones, in the echo that still lingered from a life that predated blood and fangs and the name Redakai. Kia. A man who had stood beside a woman whose power had scared gods.

“Who helped her?” I asked.

Hamish’s gaze flicked, briefly, to the floor. Then back to Kaisha.

“She helped herself,” he said. “That’s the part ye won’t like.”

I understood immediately. She had chosen to bury herself rather than risk becoming what she’d been again. And I had not been there to stop her. The thought cut deeper than any blade ever could.

Kaisha shifted slightly, finally stirring, fingers curling into the fabric at my side like she needed to be certain I was still solid.

I angled my body closer, subtle, protective. She leaned into it without realizing.

Hamish watched that too. “Ye’re afraid,” he said softly.

I bared my teeth just enough to be honest. “I am furious.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “That too.”

Dirk cleared his throat. “Can the seal be reinforced?”

Hamish nodded once. “Temporarily. But it won’t hold forever. Not with the convergence pulling at it.”

“How?” Syrus asked.

Hamish’s gaze returned to Kaisha. “By reminding her body why she sealed it in the first place. Not with memory. With grounding.”

Kaisha frowned faintly. “I don’t—”

“You don’t need to,” Hamish said gently. “Not consciously.”

I stiffened. “Absolutely not.”

Hamish sighed. “Redakai—”

“No,” I snapped. “You will not prod at her darkness to stabilize a seal you admit will fail.”

“Then ye’d best start planning for what happens when she remembers,” he countered.

The room went cold. Kaisha finally looked up at me then, confusion and something else flickering across her face. “Remembers what?”

I met her gaze and felt something ancient twist inside my chest.

“Nothing,” I said carefully. “Not yet.”

Hamish watched me like a man watching a dam crack under pressure.

“Vampire,” he said quietly, “ye know as well as I do that some truths don’t stay buried.”

“I also know,” I replied, “that not all truths deserve daylight.”

The wards thrummed. A warning.

Hamish nodded slowly. “Then I’ll stay.”

Dirk blinked. “Stay?”

“Aye,” Hamish said. “For now. If the seal breaks, I’d rather be here to help her survive it than watch from the dark paths and wonder.”

I didn’t like it. But I trusted the wards. And the wards had let him in.

Kaisha exhaled shakily and leaned more fully against me. I wrapped an arm around her without thinking, anchoring her to the present, to this life, to the name she still wore.

Whatever she had been. Whatever she might become again. She was here. And I would burn the world down before I let anything take her from it.

Outside, the city shifted. Inside, the seal held. Barely. And for the first time since the convergence began, I understood the true danger. It wasn’t that Kaisha might remember who she was. It was that the world might remember her too.