"What—?!"

Phei froze.

His whole being stopped as if someone had reached into the machinery of his existence and crushed the gears between two fingers. His breath caught halfway inside his chest and refused to move. The hand he had lifted toward Diana remained suspended in the air, his fingers still, his eyes wide, his body locked beside Mother as the warm airport lights poured over him and suddenly felt too bright, too exposed, too late.

Mother turned toward him at once.

She had been smiling a moment ago, teasing him with that soft helpless affection only she could use against him without suffering consequences, but now her expression changed. Her eyes searched his face, then Maddie’s, then Brian’s, then the women gathered near the cars, and the confusion deepened because something had happened to all of them at once.

Maddie had frozen too.

That was what struck Phei next.

Maddie Whitmore, chaos demoness, stood beside her car with her smile gone.

Her body had gone still too, eyes sharp but disturbed, as though Mother’s question had not merely reached her ears but cut through a veil she had not known was covering her face.

Maya Scarlett.

The name echoed through Phei’s mind like a bell ringing from the bottom of an abyss.

It was a name he had not heard in hours.

Many hours.

A name he had not called.

A name Maddie had not called either or any of his women.

And the realization did not arrive gently. It struck him with such violence that his stomach seemed to drop through the tarmac beneath his feet.

For the last few hours, Phei had carried a strange hollowness inside him, a vast, dark gap opening somewhere beneath his ribs. It had followed him through the dealership, through the cars, through Jade’s graceful smiles, through Nastya’s flowers, through Maddie’s speed and Brian’s shouting and the long madness of the race.

A hole like missing shape and a silent wrongness so deep he had mistaken it for exhaustion, for distraction, for the stress of too much happening too quickly.

It had only grown wider as the hours passed.

He had felt it before and even shared a piece of that unease with Eira, though he had not explained it completely because he had not known how.

At the time, he had deluded himself into thinking it was the missing book.

The Rhythm of the Longing Distant Hearts.

The book he had failed to find. He had asked his women about it, and none of them had it.

That made sense, didn’t it?

It was missing treasure so precious to him like a missing rhythm and missing thread inside him.

Only now did he understand.

It was not the book.

Maya Scarlett’s whole being had been carved out of his soul and memory.

Not removed cleanly but carved and ripped away with such surgical cruelty that the wound remained while the name vanished, leaving behind only emptiness and unease. His heart had known something was missing. His soul had known. His mind had been wrapped too tightly to understand what the absence belonged to.

And it had not only been him.

Maddie had forgotten.

His women had forgotten.

Eira had forgotten.

A Fairy powerful enough to peer through impossible things, a creature who could watch the past, thread hidden movements, laugh at danger and annoy beings who probably had official rankings in apocalyptic inconvenience, had been made to forget Maya the same way they had forgotten her.

Phei’s blood ran cold.

’Mother.’

For some reason, Mother remembered even as all of the rest forgot.

Something about that did not feel right.

No, more than that, something about it felt terrifyingly important.

The shroud... whatever it was... had failed around her, or perhaps had never wrapped properly in the first place, and Phei had to thank the heavens for it because if she had not spoken that name, if she had not asked where Maya was, then the darkness wrapped around his soul might have remained.

Mother’s question had not simply reminded him but lifted something:

She had peeled back a veil and torn open a hidden curtain stitched around his heart by hands strong enough to deceive even him.

A soft soothing voice came from the other end.

"Mother, it’s—"

Something touched him.

Not physically...

...a presence slid around his body like silver silk and cold moonlight, wrapping through the air, brushing his senses, making a tremor run down his spine before the sentence could finish. It was familiar. Too familiar; the same presence his soul recognized before his mind could arrange the pieces properly.

From the other side of the airport, beyond the parked cars and polished glass, a door closed softly.

A silver-haired silhouette stepped through.

The glass door sealed behind her with a clean little click that should have been swallowed by the airport, but somehow reached them all.

She walked forward in elegant strides beneath the gold-white lights, her hair catching the glow like moon-thread, her face calm, her eyes soft, her body moving with that delicate certainty that had once lived so naturally at the edge of Phei’s world that he had not realized how much of his breathing had been built around it.

"—been long since we last saw each other."

Maya completed the sentence as she finally reached them.

She stopped before Phei and Mother, her smile gentle, her eyes first on Mother, then on him, then back to Mother again as if she could feel the crack in the air but had chosen, mercifully or cruelly, not to address it yet.

"I am happy to see you healthy," she said softly. "Phei told me you had been released, but I wanted to see for myself. Just to be sure." Her smile warmed, sincere enough to hurt. "Thank the heavens."

Mother’s confusion melted into affection at once.

"Oh, you sweet girl," she said, laughing softly as she reached for Maya. "Come here."

Maya stepped into her arms, and Mother hugged her with the same easy warmth she gave those who had already been accepted somewhere deep inside her heart.

Maya’s hands rested carefully around her, gentle, reverent, almost fragile, and for a moment her expression shifted into something brighter than relief. She could not have said anything happier today than seeing this woman well.

Not because Mother was merely precious to Phei, and the two women had formed some kind of bond together despite having only met once but Maya knew exactly that part of Phei’s sanity clung to Mother.

There were four of them, as far as Maya knew.

Maya herself.

Melissa.

Mother.

And the Goddess.

Four pillars in different rooms of Phei’s heart, four women whose pain could unmake him in ways his powers, battle and destiny could not prepare for.

Phei could fight enemies, endure schemes and even survive legacy madness and cosmic rot.

But if any one of those women broke before him, something in him would break with them.

Mother pulled back and held Maya by the shoulders, looking her over with open affection. "You look beautiful, sweetheart."

Maya smiled, and the softness of it made Phei’s chest ache with the memory of forgetting her. "Thank you."

"And you are too humble," Mother continued, brushing a hand gently over Maya’s arm. "Too sweet too. I should scold Phei for not bringing you directly."

Phei blinked.

The betrayal was approaching. He could feel it gathering wings.

Mother looked between them. "Did he give you my message?"