Page 19 of Demon Daddy's Hidden Son
"Where have you been?" I ask, and she smiles that secret smile reserved for moments when the world narrows to just us.
"Right here," she whispers, her lips moving against my throat. "Always right here."
We make love in dreams with the desperate intensity of reunion. I map every inch of skin I've memorized, trace each beloved scar and freckle with reverent attention. She arches beneath me, gasps my name like prayer, holds me close enough to share breath and heartbeat and soul.
In dreams, nothing is broken. Nothing is lost. We exist in the space between seconds where love is infinite and separation is impossible.
But dreams end.
I wake on floors of unfamiliar inns or beneath alien stars, and reality crashes over me like ice water. The space beside me is empty. The air lacks her scent. My arms embrace nothing but shadow and wishful thinking.
Each awakening kills me. Each return to consciousness tears the wound fresh and deep, until I'm certain my heart will simply stop from the repeated trauma of loss.
But it doesn't stop. It keeps beating, keeps pumping blood through a body that feels increasingly foreign, keeps sustaining a life that has no purpose beyond finding the woman who made it worth living.
So I rise. Pack my things. Take to the sky or road or whatever path might lead closer to answers.
And begin another day of searching for the other half of my soul.
11
DOMIEL
The mist clings to everything here like forgotten prayers, threading between ancient trees that tower overhead like silent sentinels. But I keep coming back to this place, between Millhaven and Silverbrook, where zarryn tracks lead from the cliff.
It's been days of me wandering through the forest, off the path. I just know I must be missing something here. She has to besomewhere.
I almost miss the village entirely—just a glimpse of stone and timber through the fog, half-swallowed by the earth itself. But something pulls at me, a recognition I can't name. It's deeper into the forest than I think she would have gone, but I'll leave no stone unturned.
I land at the village edge, my boots touching down on moss-slick stone. The impact sends a tremor through my exhausted wings, and I fold them tight against my back as I walk deeper into this place that feels older than memory. Veylowe, according to the weathered sign barely visible through the mist. The air tastes of woodsmoke and winter berries, of secrets kept and stories untold.
Lanterns burn low with rune-glass flames, casting blue and green shadows that dance across buildings carved from dark stone and old timber. Everything here breathes with the kind of quiet that comes from generations of choosing to remain hidden. My presence feels like violation, like light thrust into a space that treasures darkness.
Then I see her.
The world stops.
Kaleen.MyKaleen. Walking through the mist with a wicker basket balanced against her hip, her chestnut hair caught in a loose braid that hangs over one shoulder. She moves with that same graceful confidence I remember, her amber eyes focused on the herbs she's collecting from someone's carefully tended garden. The gold flecks in her irises catch the strange light, familiar as home and devastating as loss.
She's alive. Whole.Here.
Two years of searching, and she's here. In this forgotten place wrapped in fog and silence, living some life I know nothing about. The relief hits me like a physical force, buckling my knees for a heartbeat before training takes over and locks my muscles in place.
But something's wrong. The way she holds herself—cautious where she was once bold, careful where she was fearless. Her clothes are simple homespun instead of the fine fabrics I draped her in. And there's something about her posture that speaks of uncertainty, of someone who's learned to question the ground beneath her feet.
I take a step forward, then another. My boots crunch softly on fallen leaves, and the sound carries in the stillness.
She looks up.
Our eyes meet across twenty feet of mist-drunk air, and her face goes white as fresh snow. The basket slips from nerveless fingers, herbs scattering across the damp ground in a cascade ofgreen and brown. Her lips part on a sharp intake of breath, her hand rising instinctively to press against her throat.
For a moment that stretches like eternity, we simply stare. I drink in every detail—the way her skin has gained color from outdoor work, the faint lines around her eyes that speak of laughter I wasn't there to witness. She's beautiful. Changed, but beautiful.Mine.
But her expression—gods, her expression. Not relief. Not joy. Fear. Uncertainty and worry that makes my chest tighten until breathing becomes effort.
Movement at the edges of my vision breaks the spell. Faces emerge from doorways and around corners, drawn by whatever instinct small communities develop for sensing outsiders. An elderly woman with iron-gray braids and pale green eyes. A broad-shouldered man who smells like herbs and pine sap. A soft-featured woman with ink-stained fingers who clutches a leather-bound book against her chest like armor.
Their expressions shift from curiosity to wariness to something darker as they take in my wings, my height, the unmistakable bearing that marks me as xaphan nobility. This is a human place, I realize. A refuge. The kind of settlement that exists specifically to escape notice from my kind.
