Chapter 193 193

Chapter 193 193
Emma's POV:
Three weeks after the building, on a Saturday afternoon, I was at home. Evie was drawing dragons at the coffee table in the living room and I was pretending to read a textbook and actually watching her breathe. I'd been doing that, the watching thing. Counting her inhales when she was focused on coloring, checking the locks twice before bed, standing in her doorway at two in the morning to make sure she was still there.
I knew it was too much. I knew it was me, not her, that hadn't healed all the way. But I couldn't stop.
She was using the gold Sharpie Marlen had given her. The sixth dragon this week, each one bigger than the last, wings taking up more and more of the page. She was humming something from a cartoon, sitting on the floor, and her hair was falling out of the ponytail I'd put it in that morning and she looked fine. She looked normal. She looked like a kid drawing dragons on a Saturday.
Then a car door slammed outside.
Evie's whole body went rigid. The Sharpie stopped. Her hand grabbed the edge of the table and her knuckles went white and she looked at the window with a face I never wanted to see on a five-year-old, this frozen alertness, like an animal that heard a branch snap.
I was next to her in two seconds. Pulled her against me, too fast, too tight, my hand on the back of her head.
"It's okay. It's just a car. It's just the neighbor."
She was stiff for three, maybe four seconds. Then she relaxed. Pulled back. Looked at me with those eyes.
"I know, Emma. It was just a door."
She went back to the dragon. The Sharpie moved again. But I stood there with my hand on her back for a long time after, just feeling my own heartbeat slow down.
The doorbell rang at four.
"LUCIAN!" Evie was up and across the living room before I could move, the gold Sharpie rolling off the table and onto the floor. She yanked the door open and he was there, jeans and a hoodie, backpack over one shoulder because he'd come from the library, and she launched herself at his legs and he caught her and lifted her up and put her on his hip like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"What are you drawing?" he said, already walking.
"You. The gold one. But the wings are still wrong."
"I can show you the wing thing again if you want," he whispered.
"WITH the gold eyes?"
"Maybe later. Your parents are home."
"Hi, I’m here too, you know?" I said.
He smiled at me. "Hi."
Then he walked towards me and kissed me on the cheek, and Evie said "Ughhh" anyway.
"He was mine first, you little bug," I told her and she laughed.
Mom was at the kitchen table with her crossword. Dad was in the couch with a game on, volume low because he'd heard the door. He looked up when Lucian came in and did the face, the quiet one, the one that made people confess to things they hadn't done.
"Mr. Thomas," Lucian said.
"Lucian."
That was it. That was the whole conversation. But there was something underneath it now that hadn't been there a month ago, this understanding between them that happened after I told my parents we were together. The conversation, which Lucian called "the interrogation" and Mom called "a nice chat" and Dad called nothing because Dad didn't call things anything.
The interrogation had happened the Tuesday before, at the kitchen table, with Dad sitting across from Lucian and Mom next to Dad and me in the doorway trying to disappear. Lucian had been doing okay for the first five minutes, answering questions about school and his family and his plans. Normal stuff.
And then Dad hit him with the quiet face and said "what are your intentions with my daughter" in that voice, the one that's worse than yelling because there's nowhere to hide from it, and Lucian knocked over the sugar bowl. Sugar everywhere, on the table, on the floor, on Mom's crossword. And while he was trying to clean it up with his hands, with sugar all over his fingers and his face red and his voice cracking, he said "I'm going to love her for the rest of my life, sir." Just like that. Sugar on his hands and absolute certainty in his voice.
Mom had looked at Dad. Dad had looked at the sugar on her crossword. And then Dad said "that's a big statement for a Tuesday" and Mom tried not to laugh and Lucian looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him.
It wasn't the answer they expected. It was way too much, too intense, too honest for a kid who'd been dating their daughter for, I don't know, a couple months? But I knew he meant it. And I think they knew too. Because Dad shook his hand after, which was Dad's version of a hug, and Mom sent him home with Tupperware, which was Mom's version of a blessing.
So now Lucian came through the door and nodded at Dad and Dad nodded back and that was enough. He put Evie down and she dragged him to the table to show him the dragon and he leaned over and said the wings needed to go higher, like this, and he drew two lines on a napkin and she said "OH, that's why it looks weird" and went back to fixing it.
He sat next to me on the floor. Close. His knee against mine. He smelled like the library, like old paper and the terrible coffee from the machine in the lobby, and underneath that he smelled like Lucian, warm, like something that had been in the sun.
Two hours later, Evie was in bed. Mom and Dad were upstairs. The house was quiet and the TV was on low and we were on the couch and he kissed me. Slow at first. His hand on the side of my neck, thumb on my jaw. Then less slow.
I pulled him closer by the front of his hoodie and his other hand went to my waist and under my shirt, his fingers on my skin, warm the way they always were, and I felt the heat come up, not the burning kind, just the steady warmth that meant he was comfortable, that meant his body trusted mine even when his brain was still catching up.
"I missed this," he said against my mouth.
"You saw me yesterday."
"Not what I meant."
He kissed my neck. My collarbone. His hand moved up my ribs and I made a sound and his breath caught and I pulled him closer and the warmth got warmer and his eyes, when he pulled back to look at me, had the smallest ring of gold around the iris. Not the full shift. Just the edge of it, leaking through. The way it did when he felt too much.
"Emma."
"Don't you dare stop."
"I have to tell you something."
I closed my eyes. Exhaled. "You have the worst timing of any person alive."
"I know." He sat up. Kept his hand on my hip. The gold faded from his eyes. "I talked to Marcus this week. Told him everything the man in the building said. The blood, the clinical trials, the partnership. All of it."
"And?"
"And he already suspected some of it. The pharmaceutical angle. He's been working with Nathaniel, Dawson's father, the green dragons. It seems that they are staying indefinitely, it’s not safe out here. There have been more sightings near Emberdale. More operatives. Not moving, not yet. Just watching."
My stomach tightened. "How many?"
"Enough that Marcus thinks it's not over. He thinks the three men at the building were a cell, and when they didn't report back, whoever sent them is going to send more."
The living room was quiet. The TV on mute now, some late-night show with the host smiling at nobody. Lucian's hand still on my hip, steady, warm.
"Marcus said something else," he said. "About you."
"About me?"
"He said if you didn't run when you found out the truth, then you need to be ready for what comes next. That means training. Learning what the Order does, how they operate, how to protect yourself and Evie. He said you can't be on the outside of this anymore, Emma. You're in it."
I looked at him. At his blue-green eyes and his jaw and the way he held himself now, steadier than before, not the clumsy boy who tripped over his own feet, or not just that, but something else too: someone who knew what he was capable of and had decided to carry it instead of run from it.
"When do we start?" I said.
He smiled. Small, lopsided, real. The one I fell in love with.
"Monday," he said. "Marcus has a place. Behind the cabin."
"Monday." I took his hand. His fingers laced through mine, warm and steady. "Okay, I get it. But right now, you owe me the rest of that kiss."
He laughed and it was real and full and I kissed him and the gold flickered behind his eyes.
I wasn’t just a crazy fantasy writer anymore: I was someone who knew the truth that most people didn’t even imagine existed in front of their eyes. And I had to pay some price for it. Monday would come and whatever came with it we'd be ready. We had to be.
But tonight was ours, and I just planned to make him feel loved and accepted, not matter what.

THE END.