Chapter 123
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Chapter 124
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Levi glanced at me, a small ask in his eyes. I nodded. He turned his palm up on the table. “Want to hear what I told them p>
Elliot nodded. Levi didn’t speak words. He let a pattern rise from his skin, warmth without heat, shape without teeth. In my chest the meaning translated as a picture: a hearth, a
hand held up at chest height. “Come with one. Come empty–handed. Come under truth.
Any other way is no p>
Elliot watched it until it sank again. “That’s good,” he said. “It sounds like… home that isn’t stupid p>
“High praise,” Haiden muttered, grinning.
We let quiet sit a moment then. The good kind. I felt the kingdom listening and choosing
to hum instead of press.
“Questions?” I asked at last.
Elliot worried his lip, then let it go. “Two. One: do I have to be a Soul Eater all the time p>
“No,” I said. “You get to be a boy who throws glitter bombs and builds towers and learns hard things when he’s ready. Your magic is part of you. It is not all of you. ”
He nodded. “Okay. Two: what if I hear them in my head? What if they know how to talk that way p>
“Then you use the rules we teach you,” Levi said. “You do not answer. You tell us. And if you get scared, you use the word p>
“Pause,” Elliot said immediately.
“Good,” Noah said. “And if it happens when we’re not in the room, Hawk and Layah will feel it through the wards. We’ll come. ”
I squeezed his hand. “Always p>
He breathed out, shoulders finally loosening all the way. “Can I write my rule now? Before I forget the words? ”
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Chapter 124
“Of course,” Xavier said, already conjuring a pad and a pen that smelled faintly of cedar.
He slid them across.
Elliot bent over the page, tongue between his teeth the way he does when he’s building something that matters. He wrote slowly, careful block letters, then pushed the paper to
Levi.
The rule was simple: My name is Elliot. My home is here. You cannot call me out of it. If you talk, you talk to my family first.
Levi read it like a contract and then like a blessing. “I’ll stitch it into the decoy and tie it to our knot,” he said. “Anyone who speaks through that door will know this before they make a single sound p>
Elliot slid off the couch and came around the table without warning, launching himself at Xavier first, then Haiden, then Noah and Levi in a quick, fierce circuit. He ended back with me, climbing into my lap like he hadn’t done in months. “Okay,” he said into my shoulder. “Now I’m sleepy p>
“Good timing,” I said, kissing his hair. “We’re very good at bed p>
Xavier stood, stretching. “I’ll walk him back,” he said. “Princesses get cranky when knights are late for dreams p>
Haiden ruffled Elliot’s hair. “Tomorrow: pirate ships p>
“Stealth pirate ships,” Elliot said, already half–gone.
“Best kind,” Noah agreed.
We broke the circle the way packs do, touch on a shoulder, a look that says I’m still here even when we leave the room. Levi tucked the paper into his pocket like a relic.
At the doorway, Elliot looked back. “Hey,” he said. “Kin is a nice word. But it doesn’t mean the same thing when you say family. Okay? ”
“Okay,” I said, and had to swallow around it.
He nodded, satisfied, and let Xavier carry him toward his room, Layah ghosting after them like a moving shadow.
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Elliot
Sleep didn’t come. All the words sat in my head like marbles, clicking into each other when I moved. Kin. Child. Terms. No. My rule in Levi’s pocket. My family in this room and in the hall and upstairs in the breathing world. Maybe…maybe… I had family somewhere
else too. Same blood.
I rolled onto my back and watched my ceiling–sky breathe. I said the word out loud, to see how it tasted in my mouth. “Kin p>
Inside my mouth it was warm. It tasted like pack–house bread and hands on my back
when I was brave. Not brittle. Not hungry. Just… big.
“Okay,” I told the ceiling. “Two truths can sit in the same chair. ”
I shut my eyes and tugged on the edge of a memory like a knot in string. Marcus left holes where memories should be. He scraped and rewrote until the outside and the inside
stopped shaking hands. But some things hid from him, little pieces that went quiet when he walked by. If I’m careful, I can coax them out.
Grass first. The smell of it when you lie down and stick your face in it because the clouds don’t come close enough. Not pack–house grass, not Underworld garden grass. Wider. Wilder. Bees bumping flowers, yellow petals on my nose. Buttercups. I know the word now; I didn’t then. Wind. Not underground wind, not corridor breath. Upwind that tastes like sun. A laugh. Woman’s. Not nervous. Not polite. A laugh that tips her whole head back and lets the sky see all her teeth. It pops in my chest like soda bubbles. There are freckles when I look up. She is taller than anyone and also the exact right size for my
arms.
“Elliot!” A man’s voice, strong as a hand on your shoulder when you run too fast downhill. The way it lands makes something in me go still, then steady. I could walk on a fence with that voice under my feet and never fall. He doesn’t sound worried. He sounds proud. I don’t know why it matters that I know the difference, but it does, very much. Another laugh, smaller and closer to my ear. It isn’t a laugh, actually. It’s that hiccup–cry noise toddlers make when their sadness fights with their breath and loses. I’m sitting in grass. My knees are knobby. There’s a knee on my thigh too, tinier, bruised blue like the sky’s mirror. Sticky fingers on my shirt. Jam? Honey? Something sweet that has gotten everywhere it shouldn’t be. “Hey,” I hear my own voice say, little and bossy. “It’s okay.” I pull the little one in because that’s what you do. He fits under my chin like a puzzle piece.
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His hair is lighter than mine, or maybe the sun just likes him better. He clutches my neck like a drowning sailor and I don’t mind at all. His heart hits my ribs like a puppy tail. He stops making the sad noise. I can’t see his face. The memory won’t let me. But the weight of him is real. The way my hand rubbed circles on a tiny back is real. The satisfied sound the man made when he saw us stop crying is real. The woman said, “My boys,” and her voice did a thing my voice does now when I say my pack. My throat hurts all of a sudden because my body remembers a feeling my head doesn’t have words for.
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