تسجيل الدخولThe silver burned beneath my hands, but I didn't pull away. I could feel it—the poison, the corruption, the thing that was killing him—and beneath it, something else. Something that responded to my touch. Something that had been waiting for me to reach for it.
My father's gift.
Dawn came slowly, the gray light of early morning filtering through the broken window and casting long shadows across the music room. Neither of us had slept. We had spent the night on the sofa, wrapped in each other, the bond between us humming with a new kind of energy—raw and fresh and somehow more honest than before.No more secrets. That was what we had promised each other. And now, in the pale light of morning, Alexander began to fulfill that promise."Your father," he said, his voice quiet in the stillness, "was the most remarkable human I ever met."I lifted my head from his chest, looking up
Markus was gone before I could ask another question.One moment he was there, his words still hanging in the air like poison. The next, he had melted back into the darkness outside the broken window, leaving me alone with Alexander and the wreckage of everything I thought I knew.I stood in the center of the music room, my hands shaking, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The Stradivarius lay abandoned on the floor where I'd dropped it. The fire had died to embers. And Alexander—Alexander watched me from across the room with an expression I couldn't read."Luna." His voice was careful. Measured.
The silver burned beneath my hands, but I didn't pull away. I could feel it—the poison, the corruption, the thing that was killing him—and beneath it, something else. Something that responded to my touch. Something that had been waiting for me to reach for it.My father's gift.I pressed harder, and Alexander gasped. The wound on his shoulder began to close, the blackened flesh slowly fading to pink, then to the pale white of his normal skin. The arrow in his leg loosened, and I pulled it free, ignoring his cry of pain."Luna—" he started.
We didn't find Markus. He found us.Three days after I'd read my father's journal, three days of planning and searching and preparing, he came for us in the place we'd let our guard down.The manor.I'd returned to Alexander's side that first night, unable to stay away any longer. The apartment felt wrong now—empty, cold, devoid of the presence that had become essential to my existence. The bond pulled at me constantly, a thread connecting my heart to his, and I'd finally stopped fighting it.
I couldn't stop reading.The journal had become an obsession, a lifeline to a father I'd lost before I ever really knew him. Every page revealed something new—something hidden, something secret, something that changed everything I thought I knew about my family.Alexander sat with me through the night, silent and patient, his presence a steady anchor as I navigated through my father's words. The bond hummed between us, but I couldn't tell anymore where his emotions ended and mine began. Maybe that was always the point.Then I found the name.
The journal was thicker than I'd expected.Alexander had given it to me hours ago, but I hadn't been able to open it again after that first glance. Instead, I held it in my lap, my fingers tracing the worn leather cover, my mind racing with possibilities I wasn't ready to face."You don't have to read it now," Alexander said quietly. He sat across from me, giving me space, but I could feel his presence through the bond—steady, patient, waiting."Yes, I do." I took a deep breath. "If I don't do it now, I never will."







