Page 9 of Something Worth Keeping
The beacon had felt him. Somehow, impossibly, Julian had sensed Cillian’s presence in the apartment the night before. Most humans remained oblivious to shadow-walking, their minds refusing to acknowledge what they couldn’t understand. But Julian had looked directly at the corner where Cillian had stood, watching him sleep.
And then this morning, Julian seemed tothankthe shadows for keeping watch.
Cillian’s form flickered, nearly losing cohesion. The token he’d left pulsed in response, a fragment of his essence wrapped in Julian’s tissue paper, tucked in Julian’s drawer. The connection sang between them, a golden thread only Cillian could see.
His phone buzzed - actual technology, not manifested - and Cillian solidified just enough to check the screen - a message in the Order’s encrypted channel.
Thorn:Meeting tonight. Shadow House. Mandatory.
Cillian dismissed it. Thorn could lecture him later about duty and responsibility. Right now, nothing mattered except the human in the window who’d also just received a text message.
Julian stared at his phone, then typed something. Deleted it. Typed again. His face did that thing - the slight tightening around his eyes that Cillianwas learning meant he was calculating social acceptability rather than just being honest in his replies. He sent the message, then immediately set the phone face down on the desk.
“Inadequate,” Julian muttered. “That was completely inadequate.”
Cillian leaned forward, shadows pooling beneath him. What had his beacon written? Who had dared to text him? The urge to manifest inside the apartment, to read over Julian’s shoulder, to eliminate anyone who caused that expression…
The phone buzzed again. Julian picked it up, read the response, and his shoulders dropped half an inch.
“Well,” Julian said to the empty room. “That could have been worse.”
It had gone badly, then. Someone had hurt his mate. Cillian’s shadows writhed, tasting the air for targets. Hecould find whoever had sent that message. He could visit them and make them understand that careless words toward Julian Purdy carried consequences.
No,Cillian told himself,not without cause.
But his hunger growled anyway, wanting violence, wanting blood, wanting to clear the world of anyone who made Julian’s shoulders slump.
Julian returned to his laptop and pulled up what looked like research documents. He’d been compiling information all day - about shadow entities, about guardians, about creatures like Cillian. The beacon was trying to understand what he’d witnessed in the alley.
Such a smart thing to do…methodical...perfect.
Cillian watched Julian work for another hour, documenting hisobservations in that focused way of his. He saw how Julian cited and checked every source and how each hypothesis was clearly stated. It was a search for factual information rather than opinions. If Julian had been hunting monsters instead of cataloging them, he would have been devastatingly efficient.
The thought sent heat through Cillian’s manifested form as he imagined it - his beacon, covered in gore, calmly explaining the most effective way to dispose of remains. Julian had looked at corruption being consumed and seenefficiency.
The shadows purred.
Movement below caught Cillian’s attention. A woman emerged from the apartment building, pulling her coat tight against the cold. She walked three blocks to a bus stop, checked her phone, and waited.
Cillian didn’t care about her. But then her phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen and laughed, actually laughed, before typing a response. She made the interaction look easy. Effortless. The kind of casual social interaction that Julian carefully calculated and apparently still somehow got wrong.
The protective rage bubbled hotter. That woman probably had dozens of friends. It was unlikely that she’d ever been suspended from work for being “too honest.” She had probably never spent her evenings alone, talking to shadows, because the darkness was better company than humans who found her intensity uncomfortable.
Julian deserved better. He deserved people who appreciated his precise mind and unflinching observations. He deserved a world that didn’t punish him for refusing to lie. Moreimportantly, at least from Cillian’s perspective, Julian deserved a mate who would burn that world down if it kept hurting him.
I am that mate.
Cillian’s form flickered again, shadows spreading across the rooftop like spilled ink. His hold over his shadows was slipping, and he knew he needed to feed. It would be a way to channel his consuming energy into something productive before he manifested in Julian’s apartment and terrified his beacon by being too much, too soon.
But the thought of leaving, even temporarily, felt like tearing out his essence, and Cillian just couldn’t do it.
The lamp in Julian’s apartment created a warm circle of light. Julian sat within it, utterly alone, completely unaware that he was the most precious thing Cillian hadencountered in all his centuries of existence.
They don’t deserve him,Cillian thought, watching Julian rub his eyes beneath his glasses.None of them deserves him.
Another text arrived on Julian’s phone. This time, Julian read it and didn’t respond at all. He just set the phone down and returned to his research.
Cillian hated that Julian did that - not because of Julian but for whoever was texting him. Julian’s actions showed a dismissal born from experience, from knowing that responding would likely make matters worse. How many messages had Julian received that made him give up on replying? How many times had he been made to feel like his honesty was a flaw instead of a gift?
