The lock between blood and bone

chapter 12 The light

The house was unusually quiet that evening. Even Selda’s sharp footsteps seemed softer, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath. Aria moved carefully through the kitchen, clearing dishes, her green eyes glancing at the shadows that danced across the room as the firelight flickered.

Rae and Mira were playing with scraps of cloth at the table, their whispers hushed and cautious. Aria tried to keep her focus on the dishes, scrubbing the stubborn stains with trembling hands, but then she noticed it—a faint glimmer of light flickering in the corner of the room, near the fireplace.

Her heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t fear that gripped her this time; she had learned to control fear over the years, burying it deep under quiet obedience. No, this was something else—a strange, magnetic pull she couldn’t explain. The flicker grew for a second, then vanished, leaving only the warm glow of the fire. Aria froze, her breath catching in her throat, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her.

“Mira, did you see that?” Rae whispered, her voice trembling slightly, betraying her own unease.

“See what?” Mira replied, frowning, though her own wide eyes betrayed curiosity.

Rae glanced at Aria, her small shoulders tense. “There… over there. I thought I saw something move.”

Aria’s pulse quickened, but she stayed silent. Her hands clenched into fists, the tips of her fingers tingling as if a current had passed through them. She forced herself to bend over the dishes, letting the warm water run over her hands, pretending to focus entirely on the mundane task. But her mind was far from ordinary; it raced with questions and possibilities she didn’t yet understand.

Selda entered suddenly, her presence sharp and demanding, like a storm she couldn’t outrun. “What are you girls whispering about?”

“N-nothing, mother,” Rae stammered, eyes flicking nervously between Aria and the corner where the light had appeared.

Selda’s gaze swept the room, lingering on Aria for a fraction too long. Aria felt a strange heat rise in her chest, but she forced herself to stay calm. Selda’s suspicion was dangerous, a thread she could not allow to snap. One wrong move, one uncontrolled flicker of magic or curiosity, and everything would come crashing down.

The flicker returned, just for a second, brushing along the edge of the mantle. Aria yelped softly, the sudden movement making a cup wobble. It teetered on the edge of the table, and Selda’s attention snapped toward it immediately. “Aria! Be careful!” she shouted, her voice sharp as a whip.

Aria’s heart thudded in her chest, but she kept her hands steady. The strange flicker had vanished again, leaving only a lingering sense of something unexplainable in the room—something that didn’t belong to the chores, the dirt, or Selda’s harsh words.

Once Selda stormed out in irritation, Rae leaned closer to Aria, eyes wide and filled with questions she dared not voice aloud. “Do you… do you think that was real?”

Aria shook her head subtly, masking the mixture of excitement and fear swelling inside her. “I… don’t know,” she whispered, though a small spark of hope ignited somewhere deep in her chest.

She let herself imagine for a moment. What if the house wasn’t only a cage? What if the flicker was more than a trick of the firelight? Memories she had thought long buried surfaced—her mother humming while tending the garden, the soft brush of petals against her fingers, and the laughter that had once floated through the air like wind-chimes. A quiet longing stirred in her, a thought that maybe, just maybe, her life could be more than endless chores and Selda’s cruelty.

Aria returned to her tasks with renewed diligence, scrubbing and rinsing with a sharper focus. She noticed small details she had ignored before—the warm smell of the stew cooling on the stove, the way the firelight made the wood grain in the table gleam, the faint shadows dancing along the ceiling. Each flicker reminded her of the spark she had seen, of the possibility that her world was bigger than this house, bigger than Selda’s authority, bigger than the pain she had been taught to accept.

By the time she finished the dishes and wiped the counter clean, the flicker returned one last time, as if teasing her, fleeting and elusive. Aria’s green eyes lingered on the corner where it had appeared, and for the first time in months, she felt something she hadn’t dared to feel before: anticipation.

A quiet, determined whisper escaped her lips. “One day… I will see it again.”

The house that had always felt like a cage suddenly seemed a little less ordinary—and maybe, just maybe, Aria herself was beginning to discover that she was more than the sum of her chores, more than the fear that had bound her for so long. Something within her had awoken, a curiosity that refused to be silenced, a glimmer that promised there was a world waiting beyond the walls.