Luna. Chapter 59

(Kael's POV)

I sat in my empty house, staring at the scar on my face in the bathroom mirror. Three years since I'd gotten it, and it still served as a daily reminder of what I'd sacrificed to save Victor's life.

The Ashwalkers' price had been simple: infiltrate their organization, feed them information about supernatural communities, help them identify potential targets. In exchange, they'd provide the antidote for the slow-acting poison that had been killing Lyra's father.

I'd agreed without hesitation.

Three years of playing double agent. Three years of pretending to support their genocidal agenda while secretly undermining their operations. Three years of watching them torture and kill innocent supernatural beings while I gathered evidence that no one could ever use.

Because using that evidence would expose my own role in their organization.

The scar on my face was their mark of ownership. A ritual brand that identified me as one of their inner circle. It had been carved with a blade soaked in cursed silver, ensuring it would never fully heal.

Every morning, I looked at it and remembered the choice I'd made. Save one man's life at the cost of my own soul.

"You look like hell," Zara said from the bathroom doorway.

I hadn't heard her come in, which was concerning. My reflexes weren't what they used to be.

"Feel like it too."

"How long since you slept?"

"Sleep is overrated."

"Kael." Zara moved to stand beside me, meeting my eyes in the mirror. "This has to stop."

"What has to stop?"

"The self-destruction. The isolation. The way you're punishing yourself for choices that saved lives."

"I enabled monsters for three years."

"You prevented them from killing hundreds of innocent people."

"By helping them kill dozens of others."

"By making impossible choices in an impossible situation."

I turned away from the mirror, unable to look at the scar any longer. "Does that make it okay?"

"It makes it necessary. Sometimes there aren't any good choices, only ones you can live with."

"Can I live with it?"

"You tell me. Because from where I'm standing, you're barely surviving."

She was right. The past three years had hollowed me out, leaving me functional but empty. I went through the motions of being alive while feeling like a ghost haunting my own existence.

"Lyra needs to know the truth," Zara said quietly.

"No."

"She thinks you abandoned your family for selfish reasons. She doesn't know you sacrificed everything to save her father."

"And she's never going to know."

"Why?"

"Because knowing won't change anything. I still betrayed her trust, still rejected her when she needed me most, still chose to believe the worst about her instead of fighting for our relationship."

"But the context—"

"The context explains my choices, but it doesn't excuse them. I still hurt her. I still broke her heart. I still destroyed our family."

Zara was quiet for a long moment. "She still loves you."

"I know."

"And you still love her."

"With everything I have left."

"Then why are you giving up?"

I looked at my reflection again, seeing a man marked by violence and hollowed out by guilt. "Because she deserves better than this. She deserves someone whole, someone clean, someone who hasn't spent years swimming in blood and lies."

"She deserves to make that choice for herself."

"Maybe. But I can't ask her to. Not when I know what the answer should be."

"You're scared."

"Terrified."

"Of her rejection?"

"Of her acceptance. Of dragging her down into the darkness I've been living in."

Zara touched my shoulder gently. "Kael, look at me."

I met her eyes.

"You're not the same man who made that deal three years ago. The choices you've made since then, the way you've protected innocent people, the way you've been willing to sacrifice yourself for others... that matters."

"Does it?"

"It does to me. It would to her too, if you gave her the chance to see it."

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to think there was still something in me worth saving, worth loving, worth fighting for.

But the scar on my face and the blood on my hands told a different story.

"Maybe someday," I said finally.

"Maybe today."

"Not today."

"Then when?"

"When I finish what I started. When the Ashwalkers are destroyed and Asher is safe and I can look at myself in the mirror without seeing a monster."

"And if that day never comes?"

I thought about Lyra laughing in the garden with Magnus, about Asher growing up with a father figure who could give him everything I couldn't.

"Then at least they'll be happy."