Chapter 17 : Eighteen and Everything Else

"You're turning eighteen!" Diana beamed, tossing glittery confetti like a blessing or a spell. "That means there would be cake, music, maybe a party if you'd let me throw one without acting like I'm suggesting a funeral."

Elian curled deeper into the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest. "I don't need anything."

Diana grinned. "I know, but I think you do.

Elian offered a smile.

She didn't talk about what the date meant to her.

But something in her bones knew.

Eighteen wasn't just a number.

It was a turning.

Not just of years, but of tides.

**********

Across the city, above its towers and neon hum, Damian stood at the glass wall of a darkened high-rise. From above the city looked like a bustling anthill and somewhere in the soft haze of those lights, she existed.

Elian.

"My Elian." He said, only in his mind. He had not said it out loud in months. Not since the night she unknowingly awakened something ancient in both of them.

He'd kept his distance not out of fear, but because she was too young, too fragile, she wasn't ready for him, not yet.

But soon she will.

"She would be Eighteen soon." He thought to himself. It was not about legality or rites of passage. It was about something deeper and older. She would remember who she was. Her body would begin to answer the call she had long buried.

And when that happens and the seal is broken, she would come looking for him.....

She would remember.

Not all at once. But enough to make her want him.

*******

Saint Valent's was hazed in blurred reality, with classes, bells, locker sounds, and laughter's. But beneath it, a soft vibration thrummed under Elian's skin. A pull toward something she couldn't name. It felt like someone had called your name in a dream. She couldn't shake the feeling especially at night, when shadows grew long and familiar voices whispered from forgotten corners of her mind.

The dreams were back,this time they were clearer.

A hallway of stone.

A door without a key.

And behind it warmth, darkness and A presence.

Sometimes it whispered. Sometimes it breathed.

"Are you okay?" Calista asked one afternoon as they walked between buildings. Her tone was casual, but her eyes were focused.

Elian didn't answer immediately. She stared at the way the sun fell through the trees, golden and soft.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I feel kinda weird. I don't know if it's because I've be stressing too much this past few days."

Calista didn't push. She just smiled, gently. But when Elian glanced away, Calista's fingers slipped into her blazer pocket and pressed the hidden transmitter, sending the update.

Damian heard it in real time.

"She feels it," Calista reported quietly. "She's waking up."

He closed his eyes.

"Good."

But he made no move to go to her.

Not yet.

Every instinct in him ached to see her, to say her name, to touch and feel her, to see if her body remembered him, the way his soul remembered her.

He waited patiently, for if he went to her before she was ready, he would lose her. She was still a minor above all that.

"Not for long." He said to him.

********

At home, Diana had made plans for the weekend. Just a quiet dinner, a cake from the bakery Elian liked. No big party or anything fussy.

"You're almost a woman now," Diana teased, ruffling her hair. "Legally, at least. Emotionally? Still the little cry baby."

Elian chuckled. "That's not fair."

Diana smiled.

The night before her birthday, Elian sat on her bed staring at the ceiling, heart thudding like there was a second clock in her chest, She couldn't sleep. Her body buzzed with a strange tension. It wasn't from fear, neither was it from excitement.

It was from aching and longing for something she has no idea about.

But somewhere beyond the stars, someone was waiting, watching and wanted her also.

A hidden string pulled tightly inside her.

*******

In his tower, Damian stood motionless. The storm in him was silent but sharp.

She was almost there.

The girl with wide eyes and trembling hands had grown sharper and stronger, not knowing who she would become, but better than who she had been.

"His Elian."

Or rather, the soul that had always belonged to him across lifetimes, through silence, through fire.

And tomorrow, when the clock would strike 12am. Time, at last, would begin again....