(Luna) The fever doesn’t break.
It rides me through the whole night and straight into the next day, a burning that sits somewhere under my skin instead of on top of it, like the sickness isn’t in my body so much as it’s in my blood.
I wonder, in the delirious haze of it, if this is anything like what took my mother – if some fever like this one crept through her before the accident that killed her when I was six.
Nana Mae keeps me home from school without even asking if I want to go, presses cool washcloths to my forehead that turn warm within minutes, and doesn’t say much of anything, which scares me more than the fever does.
Nana Mae always has something to say.
By the time evening comes, I feel steadier, just tired and hollowed out, like I ran a hundred miles instead of lying in bed all day.
I make it downstairs on my own, wrapped in an old quilt, and find her in the kitchen already setting the table for three.
“Jace is coming for dinner,” she says, not looking up from the plates.
“Figured you’d want to see him.
You’ve been asking for him half the day in your sleep.” “I have?” “Mmhm.” She sets the last plate down and finally looks at me, and there’s that same fear from the porch sitting behind her eyes, except tonight it’s got company.
Something like resolve.
“Sit down, baby.
There’s something I need to tell you before he gets here.” I sit.
My legs feel unsteady in a way that has nothing to do with track practice, and the quilt slides off one shoulder as I settle into the chair across from her.
Nana Mae pulls out the chair beside me instead of sitting across the table like usual, and she takes both my hands in hers – the same hands that told me my mother died in a car accident all those years ago, that smoothed my hair back at the funeral I barely remember, that have never once wavered from that story until now.
Her hands are shaking again, worse than they were on the porch.
“Your mama,” she starts, and her voice already sounds like it’s breaking before she gets anywhere close to the hard part.
“Willow, your mama didn’t die in any car accident.
That was never true.
I’m so sorry I let you believe it for this long.
I thought I was protecting you.” “Nana, what are you talking about?” “There’s a whole world you don’t know anything about.” Her grip on my hands tightens.
“A world your mama came from, and your daddy too.
It’s been coming for you since the day you were born, and I have been so scared, because I always knew it would come and I never knew how to stop it – ” Her words scatter apart because that’s when the pain hits.
It doesn’t build up slow this time.
It slams into me all at once, starting behind my eyes and tearing outward, and I hear myself make a sound I don’t recognize, something between a gasp and a scream.
The kitchen tilts sideways.
Nana Mae’s hands are still gripping mine but I can’t feel them anymore, can’t feel anything except the fire spreading across my forehead like somebody pressed a brand there and left it.
“Luna!” I don’t remember falling out of the chair.
I just know I’m on the kitchen floor, my back arching off the tile, every nerve in my body lit up at once, and somewhere very far away I can hear Nana Mae’s voice, high and frightened, saying my name over and over.
The pain on my forehead is the worst of it.
It burns in a shape, a pattern, three distinct points of fire that carve themselves into my skin like something ancient finally coming home to where it belongs.
I claw at my own face without meaning to and Nana Mae catches my wrists, pins them down with a strength I didn’t know her thin arms had.
“Don’t touch it, baby, don’t touch it, let it happen, let it happen.” “What’s happening to me?” The words tear out of my throat raw and broken.
“Nana, what’s happening to me?” “It’s happening.” Her voice cracks entirely now, tears running down her face as she cradles my head in her lap, careful of my forehead like it’s something precious and burning both at once.
“Oh baby.
It’s happening.” I don’t know how long it lasts.
Time stops meaning anything while my whole body convulses on that kitchen floor, my skin too hot, my bones aching like they’re trying to become something else, the fire on my forehead spreading and setting until it feels less like pain and more like a permanent piece of me.
That’s when the front door bangs open.
“Luna?
Mae, I’m here, I brought – ” Jace’s voice cuts off completely.
I can’t turn my head to see him, but I hear his footsteps break into a run across the living room, hear the thud of something hitting the floor, probably whatever he brought for dinner, forgotten and abandoned.
And then he’s there, dropping to his knees on the kitchen tile right beside me, and I catch one blurred glimpse of his face, white with shock, eyes wide and locked on my forehead.
He doesn’t run.
I brace for it without even meaning to, some old fear buried deep that says this is the part where he leaves, where the boy who’s always stayed finally has a good enough reason to go.
But he doesn’t.
He reaches for my hand, the one Nana Mae isn’t holding, and laces his fingers through mine, gripping tight enough that it grounds me even through the pain.
“I’m right here.” His voice shakes but it doesn’t waver, doesn’t hesitate.
“I’m right here, Luna, I’m not going anywhere.” I want to tell him something back, want to tell him it hurts, tell him I’m scared, tell him I don’t understand any of this, but all that comes out is another cry as the fire on my forehead flares one final time, sharp and blinding, and then, all at once, it’s done.
The pain drains out of me like water through a cracked pitcher, leaving me shaking and hollow and exhausted on the kitchen floor, my head resting in Nana Mae’s lap and my hand still locked in Jace’s.
“There.” Nana Mae smooths my hair back from my face with trembling fingers, and I watch her eyes go to my forehead and fill with tears all over again, though these look different than before.
Grief tangled up with something like awe.
“There it is.” “What,” I manage, my voice barely a whisper.
“What is it?
What’s on my face?” Nobody answers me, because that’s when I hear the front door, the one Jace left standing wide open in his rush to get to me, creak against the frame.
A man steps into the doorway, tall and still in a way that fills the whole room even from a distance.
I recognize him before I fully understand why.
The man from across the street.
Dark hair streaked with silver he’s too young for, eyes that catch the kitchen light and hold something gold and impossible in them.
“I’m here for her,” he says, and his voice is calm in a way that makes everything in me go very quiet and very afraid at the same time.
Jace is on his feet before I even see him move, putting his whole body between me and the stranger in the doorway like it’s the easiest decision he’s ever made.
“You’re not taking her anywhere.” The man, Orion, though I don’t know that name yet, tilts his head at Jace, and something crosses his golden eyes that looks almost like surprise.
“You can see the mark.” It isn’t a question.
“You’re human.
You shouldn’t be able to see it yet, let alone stand this close to what she’s becoming and still be on your feet.” He takes one step closer, and I watch Jace’s whole body go rigid, watch his jaw clench like he’s fighting something invisible.
“That costs you something, boy.
Every second you stay between us costs you something.
Your kind isn’t built to withstand this close to the change.
Ask yourself why your hands are shaking.” I see it then, what I missed before: the fine tremor running through Jace’s fingers, the sheen of sweat breaking out along his hairline, the way his breath comes shorter than it should.
He’s afraid.
He’s in pain, maybe, some low answering hum of it that has nothing to do with curses or claws and everything to do with standing too close to a fire he was never meant to touch.
He doesn’t move.
“I don’t care what it costs,” Jace says, and his voice shakes even as the words come out steady.
“I’m not leaving her.” Orion looks at him a moment longer, something unreadable passing behind those gold eyes – not anger, not the dismissal I expect a human boy to get from whatever this man actually is, but the look you give something you didn’t expect to respect, and end up respecting anyway despite yourself.
“You can’t stop what’s happening to her.” His gaze slides past Jace to me, still shaking on the kitchen floor with a mark burning cold now instead of hot across my forehead.
“But you can say goodbye.”