Six quiet syllables on her thin lips.
Six chaotic clangs through all my senses.
I grab my head, digging fingers at my scalp, but the din goes on. It is tamed only when my brother steps up, a protesting glower on his face.
“Magique is dead, Kavia. Oui, he told me all about it. The woman was murdered before his eyes, and then—”
Kavia tosses her head from side to side. “No. No. We are trying to tell you…as absurd as it seems…”
“Stop!” Maximillian stomps to the right, inserting himself between her and me. “I will not allow you to torment him like th—”
Kavia cuts his air short with a vehement shove. I doubt anyone but her could get away with such an affront to my brother. “You think that is why we did this? Risked ourselves together like this? To deliver empty torment to you boys?”
When Max’s opinion is still glaringly clear in his coiled posture, Carl moves forward. “Let her speak, Maximillian. Believe me, if we both had not seen it with our own eyes…”
“Seen what, damn it?” I finally break in. “We are all standing here on borrowed time. You must gather your thoughts and your words, Kavia. Just tell me. What about Magique?”
At last, Max capitulates with a terse nod. But now that Kavia has the full floor, her jaw has nearly dropped to it. At the end of my patience, I am about to prompt her again—when her mouth finally forms around a word.
“Here,” she stutters out. “H-H-Here. She is…here!”
I wheel around—and realize that from her angle, Raegan has been invisible until now. But still, her shock sends me into a similar daze. Only at this moment do I recognize what has felt like impossibility for so long. That Raegan is not invisible to me. More so, that she is not the unusual but passable proxy for Magique. She is…Rayonnement. A unique radiance in my existence. In my spirit.
In my heart.
“Hello there.” Raegan arcs an awkward wave and then drops into a small curtsy. As I battle the urge to sweep her up and kiss her soundly for the beautiful respect to my alternate parents, Carl joins his own gawk to Kavia’s. “So sorry, I know this is mega weird. But…my name is Raegan Tavish. I was apartment sitting for Max and Allie—errr, Maximillian and Alessandra—when somehow, Bastien burst in via the wonder wardrobe and—”
“Oh, no.” I pivot from Kavia in order to wrap my arms around my adorably bumbling woman. “Not just somehow. Raegan. My God…if even I see it by now, how are you so blind to it?”
She huffs, conveying her affronted puzzlement. “Listen, buddy. Somebody’s got to see the forest through the trees, okay?”
“To the point that you do not see the purpose through the providence?” I counter.
“Huh?”
She scowls. I do my best to erase the fine lines of it with my fingertips.
“It was not just somehow, Raegan. None of it. It was somewhere, in a very specific sometime. My collision into you, into this here and now, was a reminder that I had to keep putting steps in front of each other. You reminded me why I received that dukedom… ’Twas not just for how I wielded my sword. It was for the courage I had to keep fighting, even if all the odds seemed absolutely impossible. To keep believing I had been spared for a reason, even if Magique was not.”
There is more to tell her—mon dieu, so much more—but Kavia surges at us, now appearing and acting like the real woman who inhabits her body.
“No. No. My boy, this is the very reason we are here! This—by all the saints that were ever lifted to heaven—this is why we are here!”
She ends it by rushing in and clasping Raegan in her own exuberant grip. My rayonnement darts her wide stare between the two of us.
“I…ermmm…not quite sure I understand…”
“The purpose through the providence.” Kavia punches harder on every syllable than I did. “The somewhere, the sometime—and the someone.”
She nudges in between us. In a numb haze, I let her. My obeisance is more than being the De Leon brother who knew the wrong side of her paddle too many times. It is also not about the shock of actually having her here.
It is the acknowledgement of the words she has just reiterated. The truth she is now staring into Raegan’s soul. The verity I have seen so many times in Raegan’s eyes and been too staggered to admit. To truly see.
“You know it too, Miss Raegan Tavish…oui?” whispers my determined sorceress of a former kitchen maid. But right now, Kavia wields no charmed wood shards or alluring incantations. She summons no extra power but that of the truth. “You have already seen it. Smelled it. Touched it. You have already been touched by…her.”
And there it is.
Too outlandish to consider.
Too terrifying to dream of.
So I do not dare.
“Kavia.” I lower my arm between Raegan and her. I keep going, pushing vehemently enough to make her stumble back. “You will stop.” I swing my gaze up to hers. “Please. She is gone, and I have to accept that. I have accepted it.”
“No. No, my boy. Do you not know it? Do you not see it?”
“Of course I see it, damn it. But that is not the same as wishing such a thing into existence. Rebirth is for Bible passages and folk tales. It is not for—”
“But what if it is?”
My mouth is already open, drawing more air to settle Kavia into her existential place, but stop short when realizing the retort is not hers.
As usual, Raegan Karlinne Tavish has toppled my mind like a brimming apple cart. The fruit tumbles through my mind at wild velocity. Just like her bold, bustling city. Just like her vibrant, passionate spirit. All the ways she challenges me…
But none so much as now.
“I said, Bastien De Leon, what if it is possible?”
She rolls a sweet but strong hand along my outstretched arm. With gentle guidance pulls it around her waist. Along the way, her hair tickles my knuckles. After all the jostling tonight, her shiny strawberry curls have started to tumble free, exactly the way I like them.
Just a tiny part of everything I have grown to love about her.
“Rayonnement?” I hook my other arm around her. “What are you saying?”
I draw her yet closer, needing her here now. Unable to see her anywhere else. More than just my connection to this place and time. She is my bridge back to…me. The life I thought so lost to me. The soul I had all but torched in that loss.
“The whole of it, Raegan.” It is a demand I do not intend but cannot ignore. Something already tells me that her answer is too important for a simple whisper. “You have never distilled the truth from me, woman. Do not begin such disrespect now.”
If she is going to insist that I depart with Kavia and Carl, then she will honor me by saying exactly that.
But dear God, how I pray it is everything but that.
Oh yes, this is me—praying.
And now this is her—smiling.
“Well, I’m not dictating it in code, Desperado.”
She adds to all of the sudden lightness with a small giggle. Laughter? Why? What am I telling myself not to hope for—but dare to do just that anyway?
“Hey. I really am asking this, buddy. I mean, what if…all of this…really is the freaking miracle? What if, in a weird way, I was right about the ultimate plan but wrong about the spark for it?”