Then she would worry it cost him something. Then she would insist Mother be considered first, again, even though Mother was already whole. Phei thought the future argument away with a small private smile. He would win it eventually. He usually did, with women like Diana who pretended they did not want to be cared for.

They were simply the ones who needed it most and trusted it least.

Before he could say more, the air changed and a very serene feeling crossed the living room like moonlight entering water.

Phei turned toward the source, one of the penthouse doors had opened...

...Maya stood there.

Her silver hair sat perfectly over her shoulders, soft and luminous beneath the morning sun, and her small hands lightly fisted the fabric of a white free-falling dress. She looked impossible in the daylight, which was strange because Maya had always carried something of the moon around her.

This morning, under gold instead of silver, she became a contrast so delicate it made the room pause. A moon walking through morning like quiet star refusing to fade just because the sun had arrived.

"Maya," Phei called.

His feet were already carrying him to her before the name finished leaving his mouth.

She looked up at him as he reached her, and he took her soft hands in his, feeling that small, real warmth beneath his fingers. For one breath, the memory of last hours horror brushed him again. The forgotten name carved-out absence; the abyss he had mistaken for a missing book.

The impossible wrongness of a world where Maya Scarlett had been removed from his memory.

His hands tightened gently around hers and pulled her into his arms.

Maya folded into him with a soft exhale, her face resting near his chest, her body still for half a second before she hugged him back.

"Is this an apology?" she asked in her soft voice.

Phei’s brows lifted. "For what?"

"For not appearing last night," she said, still against him. "I waited in my room. I thought perhaps you would come after getting Mother’s thing in her room, then I thought perhaps you were waiting for Mother to sleep first, then I thought perhaps I should not be greedy because Mother deserves you more than anyone after what she went through, then I thought perhaps that was a noble thought but still quite inconvenient because I had prepared myself emotionally to be hugged, and then no one came to hug me," She was nearly sobbing, "which made the preparation useless. Do you understand how wasteful that is?"

Phei’s smile began slowly... fuck he missed his rambling girl.

Maya lifted her face just enough to look up at him, still rambling, her eyes soft but accusing. "And then I thought perhaps I should be mature and sleep, but sleeping without receiving the hug one has prepared for is not simple. It creates imbalance. A very serious imbalance. I am not saying you ruined my night, because that would be dramatic, and I am not dramatic, but I am saying the night was less correct than it should have been."

Phei’s smile widened.

She continued, entirely sincere and impossibly adorable. "So if this hug is your apology, I will accept it. Not immediately, because immediate forgiveness encourages poor behavior, but eventually. Very soon, actually. Perhaps now. Because it is, uh... working?"

Phei laughed soft, warm, almost disbelieving.

The more he listened to her, the more something inside him ached with gratitude. This. This rambling. This gentle complaint dressed in dignity, the soft flood of words that made everything in him slow down and listen.

To think he had been made to forget Maya. To forget this feeling her sound and the ridiculous tenderness that only she could give him.

’Only sorcery could do that.’

Only something cruel and powerful and wickedly precise could make his soul forget the shape of her.

He lowered his face and whispered, "I love you too, Maya."

Maya stiffened.

Then pulled back just enough to glare up at him with offended softness. "I did not say I love you."

"You implied it."

"I did not imply it. I was discussing emotional imbalance caused by your failure to appear."

"Sounds like love to me."

"No, loving someone is not merely wishing they appeared in your room after a long night. Loving someone is..." She stopped, then frowned as if the sentence had stepped into a trap. "It is a complicated arrangement of feelings involving trust, concern, longing, irrational patience, occasional jealousy, the desire to be chosen, and maybe wishing to be hugged until breathing becomes slightly inconvenient, but that does not mean I said it."

Phei looked at her.

Maya blinked.

Then her face colored beautifully.

"That was not a confession," she said.

"It sounded detailed."

"It was theoretical."

"Very researched."

"Phei."

He smiled and hugged her again, gently trapping her words against his chest. "I missed you so much, sweetheart."

Maya’s hands tightened at his back.

This time she did not argue.

From the kitchen came a small clatter, a spoon set down a touch too hard against a ceramic edge, and then Mother’s voice drifted out, suspiciously bright, suspiciously casual.

"If you two are finished negotiating the terms of a hug, the food is almost ready." A pause. Then, lower, fond, betraying her completely: "Take your time. It is nice to hear this house make those sounds."

Maya buried her face deeper into Phei’s chest, mortified. "She heard everything."

"She hears everything," Phei agreed. "It is her superpower. That and aprons."

Across the room, Diana watched them in silence.

Her expression softened, deeply and carefully.

She had known Maya and had seen the girl’s quiet devotion, her gentleness, the way she moved around Phei not like a decoration or possession, but like a soft light that had learned the shape of his wounds.

Diana had also watched Mother look at Maya with a tenderness that hurt to witness. Maya could not sit in the hole Selene had left behind. No one could; such holes were not chairs waiting for new guests. They were graves, absences with teeth:

...but Maya had done something else; she had lit a small amber of warmth near the edge of that darkness, enough that Mother’s heart did not always have to face the cold alone.

For that, Diana was grateful.

Grateful to Phei for bringing Maya in Mother’s lonely life.

Grateful to Maya for being gentle without trying to replace what could never be replaced.

Grateful, even, for this strange new life where private jets, impossible healing, morning breakfasts and heartbreaking tenderness all existed in the same room like the universe had finally stopped being entirely cruel.

From the kitchen, Mother stood at the windowed partition with one hand over her mouth.

Tears slid down her face silently.

She had not meant to cry. She had only looked up from the stove because she heard Maya’s voice, because she heard Phei laugh in that softened way he rarely did unless someone had reached a place inside him no blade could touch.

And then she had seen them where Phei held Maya and Maya wrapped in his arms, silver hair against his chest, white dress falling around her like morning mist.

For one impossible second, Mother saw another girl there.

Selene...

Selene would have stood like that too, perhaps. Soft and bright, her own voice filling the morning with rambling complaints, her hands clutching at Phei as if he belonged to the safest part of the world.

The scene before Mother looked so painfully close to what Phei and Selene might have become that her knees almost weakened.

In Maya’s place, she could see the outline of her dead daughter, not because Maya was Selene, not because anyone could be Selene, but because grief was cruel enough to borrow the living when it missed the dead.

Mother wiped at her tears quickly, but more came.

She was glad.

That was the strange, terrible truth.

Glad that someone soft stood beside Phei. Glad that Maya cared for him. Glad that the boy who carried too much vengeance and too many fractured loyalties had someone who could ramble him into smiling, someone who could stand near the deep hole Selene’s death had left in his life and light a small, trembling glow beside it.

But little did Mother know, that hole could not be filled in Phei’s life too.

Not by Maya.

Not by Melissa.

Not by Mother herself.

Not by the Goddess, or any other of his women.

Each one of them held a special place in his heart that no one else could replace, and so did Selene!

Selene’s absence sat in Phei as fresh as the day she had been carved out of his life, only quieter now, more disciplined, more vengeful.

He did not speak of it often because some grief became dangerous when given too much air. But it remained like dark altar in him and a place where love had become wrath and patience had become a blade waiting for the right throat.

He would kill the bastard who had done that to her.

Phei was sure of that.

...Not today...

...not this morning.

This morning was sunlight, breakfast, Mother’s tears, Diana’s silent gratitude, Maya’s soft indignation and the warm weight of a girl in his arms who had nearly been stolen from his memory.

This morning, he only held Maya tighter.

And when she murmured against him, "You are hugging too hard," her voice was muffled, but not displeased.

Phei loosened his arms by a fraction. "Sorry."

"I did not say stop."

He smiled into her hair.

From the kitchen, Mother wiped her cheeks and turned quickly back toward the stove before either of them could see her crying.

Diana saw.

But said nothing.

Some tears were not meant to be interrupted and some grief deserved privacy even when it spilled in the morning sun.

And outside, beyond the towering glass, the new day continued blooming over Hell’s Paradise Island, bright and merciless and beautiful, while inside Phei’s penthouse, warmth gathered in fragile little pieces around a family still learning how not to lose each other.