Chapter 7 - WHAT SHE FINALLY TOLD ME
Noah locked every door after Adrian left.
Then he stood in the kitchen and said, “Take off your glasses.”
Mara went white.
“No.”
“I’m not asking because I think you’re ugly.”
“Noah.”
“I need to know if he’s lying.”
“He isn’t.”
“I need to see.”
“That is literally the one thing you cannot do.”
He rubbed the bruise forming over his knuckles.
“Fine. Then tell me.”
So I did.
Badly.
There was no graceful way to explain that my eyes could kill him.
I told him my mother’s name was Selene Vale. That she had taught me to wear lenses lined with a thin alloy that blocked whatever moved from my eyes into someone else’s nervous system. That mirrors were safe. Cameras were safe. Photographs were safe.
Direct eye contact was not.
“How direct?” Noah asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I never practiced!”
That came out louder than I meant.
He looked away.
I hated myself immediately.
“Sorry.”
“No, that’s… yeah. Fair.”
I sat across from him.
My glasses suddenly felt heavier than they had in years.
“My mother said we were the last line. She said there had been others once. Families. Women with different versions of it. But people hunted them. Kings. Doctors. Priests. Men who wanted weapons.”
“And Adrian?”
“I don’t know what he wanted from her.”
Noah looked at the attic ceiling.
“The notebook might.”
I stiffened.
“I know. I shouldn’t have opened it.”
“No. You shouldn’t have.”
He accepted that without defense.
That hurt too.
He asked, “Eli?”
I told him.
All of it.
The gun. June. The broken lens. Eli’s skin turning gray.
The thumb.
Noah’s eyes closed for a moment.
“Is he dead?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I never had anyone to ask.”
We sat there with that.
The refrigerator clicked on.
Outside, rain tapped the window.
Noah said, “You slept next to me for six years knowing one accident could…”
“Yes.”
He stopped.
He looked sick.
I wanted to tell him I had protected him. That I kept spare glasses in every room. That I had trained myself to wake without opening my eyes if I heard him moving beside me.
Those facts didn’t make it better.
They made it stranger.
He stood.
“I need air.”
Panic hit me stupidly fast.
“Noah.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I said I’m going outside.”
“You don’t know what you’ll decide out there.”
He looked at me then. Not at my eyes. At my mouth.
“You’re right.”
The honesty hurt more than a promise would have.
He walked out onto the back porch.
I stayed in the kitchen.
Ten minutes passed.
Then fifteen.
At twenty, his phone rang on the table.
He had left it behind.
The caller ID said SHERIFF ORTIZ.
I answered.
“Mara? Where’s Noah?”
“Outside.”
A pause.
“No, he isn’t.”
My heart stopped.
Ortiz continued, “His truck was just found running on County Road Nine. Driver door open.”
I stared at the empty back porch.
On the wet boards, Noah’s coffee mug lay shattered.
Beside it was a black playing card.
On the front, in silver ink, one word had been printed.
EURYALE.
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