Chapter 1271: Little Shadow’s Mysteries

Of course, Selene did not truly need to leave.

That had never been what Eira meant.

The girl only needed to remain outside Phei’s perception if she wished to continue this strange little game of pretending she had not died, and even after all this time Eira still could not understand why Selene insisted upon it.

Every time she tried to fit the decision into something sensible, it refused to cooperate.

Selene had survived and had even returned stronger than her past vulnerable self, and delt a great deal to those who were involved in her case before Eira stopped her from doing more. she was now free from all those even though the horrors that had happened to her had nor faded but she had people to lean to; her family was alive, her mother was alive, Phei was alive, and somehow instead of running into their arms she had chosen to stay in the shadows hidden and watching people who mourned her while refusing to give them the one truth that might finally let those wounds breathe.

Her mother was the part Eira understood least.

That woman was still carrying the loss of her only child and she sometimes cried softly when the memory and thought of her daughter slammed in her time to time.

Eira had seen enough grief across her long existence to recognize when pain had stopped being an event and become part of someone’s daily life. Selene’s mother had learned to function around her daughter’s emptiness, perhaps even smile around it, but losing a child did not vanish simply because years passed and the world grew rude enough to continue without them.

Somewhere inside her remained the mother who had watched a future disappear and never received it back.

And Selene could end that suffering with a few words:

"Mother, I’m alive."

Eira could almost imagine it too clearly; the disbelief first... that terrible heartbeat where the woman would stare because hope had hurt her too many times to be trusted immediately; then recognition of her own daughter in her hands she’d thought she had lost together with her husband!

Perhaps Selene would barely manage to explain anything before her mother crossed whatever distance remained between them and crushed her daughter into an embrace hard enough to make breathing an optional luxury.

Then the tears would come.

Gods, the tears.

Eira had seen realms celebrate victory with less feeling than she suspected that one reunion would contain.

Only Selene and Eira currently knew the truth.

Nobody else understood that the child they had mourned was standing within the same world, breathing, thinking and secretly watching them from darkness.

The tales of how she survived could come afterward while questions could wait an anger towards those who had done this to her could take a pause from so long. Whatever impossible things the girl had endured could be explained when her mother had finished touching her face a hundred times simply to make certain she was real.

And then there was Phei.

Eira’s thoughts slowed there.

She did not even want to imagine what that reunion would do to him.

Selene had been the first person who had ever loved him for who he’d become after he lost his parents and went to live with Maxtons; amongst legacy bullies and the cold mansion back home, Selene had loved him so much she’d even shared her parents with him so he could feel the warmth of being with a mother and a father, oh how welcoming they’d bee to him and called him son on that very day, the way Mother had— and then been taken away from him.

Not only her but her father too before Mother was hospitalized for life too until his Healing Touch!

That loss had settled somewhere inside Phei long before Eira entered his life, another absence hidden beneath the arrogance, lust, jokes and increasingly absurd number of women currently threatening the structural integrity of his romantic schedule.

What happened when someone he had already accepted as gone simply stepped out of a shadow and looked at him again?

Would he freeze? Would he believe her immediately? Would he laugh because his mind rejected the possibility before it finally broke through? Would he grab Selene so quickly she never managed to finish whatever dramatic explanation she had prepared?

Eira could picture Phei’s face far too easily, and the thought made something so funny she wanted to laugh but there was this stupid twist through her already exhausted chest refusing her her amusement.

Across the room, Selene gave a small nod, showing she understood Eira’s warning.

The movement should have ended the matter.

Instead Eira saw her eyes; there was pain there.

Quiet, obvious pain that Selene had probably hoped the darkness would hide for her, except Eira had spent far too long around wounded creatures to mistake silence for peace. The girl’s gaze had lowered slightly after hearing that Phei’s perception had grown stronger, and beneath all that control lived the miserable understanding of what Eira’s warning actually meant.

If she wanted to remain hidden from him, she could no longer linger close to watch him and her mother, if he returned tonight.

Which meant less time near her mother if Phei was near.

Less time watching her family.

Less time slipping quietly into familiar rooms and pretending the shadows were enough and just sat close to him and share the warmth of him through the shadows, which was creepy the first time Eira saw it; less time watching Phei from somewhere he never thought to look.

Eira looked away.

She could not stand that expression.

That realization irritated her almost as much as Selene’s stubbornness did.

Why? Why was she doing any of this?

’What reason could possibly justify hiding from people whose happiness would become unbearable the instant they discovered she is alive?’

Eira knew perfectly well that she could find out.

If she truly wanted to be cruel about it, she possessed ways of forcing her way through protections weaker minds considered private. Selene’s thoughts were not some sacred continent beyond Eira’s reach, and there had been moments when curiosity, frustration and concern all encouraged her to stop asking politely and simply look.

She never did.

Some doors became uglier once opened without permission.

That did not mean Selene was not steadily exhausting her patience.

Eira’s lips tightened while another thought escaped before she could stop it.

’This little girl is going to make me lose my mind.’

Then she blinked and her eyes slowly lowered toward her own tiny body.

’Actually, perhaps I should stop calling everyone little. Hello? I am literally the smallest person in this room.’

The correction improved absolutely nothing about her mood.