Chapter 16: Seen
235 Words
The night should have been quiet.
It wasn’t.
Lyra felt it before she understood it.
A shift in the air.
Subtle.
Wrong.
Her fire reacted instantly—flickering beneath her skin, not wild, but alert.
Watching.
Waiting.
“What is it?” Kael asked, already stepping closer.
She didn’t answer right away.
Her gaze moved across the darkness surrounding the cathedral, scanning the tree line, the shadows, the places where something—or someone—could be hiding.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly.
But she did.
Deep down.
That feeling—
Was not new.
It was the same one she had felt before she crashed.
Before she lost control.
Before—
She had been found.
Lyra’s jaw tightened.
“We’re not alone.”
Kael’s wings shifted slightly behind him, the subtle movement signaling readiness.
“I know.”
That answer didn’t comfort her.
It confirmed everything.
“How long?” she asked.
“Long enough.”
Lyra’s fire flared just slightly.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Kael’s gaze didn’t leave the darkness.
“Because they haven’t acted.”
“And that makes it better?”
“No.”
A pause.
“It makes it predictable.”
Lyra didn’t like that.
Didn’t like the calm in his voice.
Didn’t like the way he stood like this was just another situation to manage.
Because this—
Wasn’t just anything.
This felt personal.
- Writer
