His Rejected Luna, His Hidden Son
Selene's anchoring had bought the months it promised, and the birthday I had once been sure he would never live to see came and went as nothing but a birthday — a lopsided cake the Sanctuary kitchen made from what it had, five crooked candles, four hundred broken strangers singing badly in a cold stone hall, and a boy with his own whole face back, gray-silver eyes enormous over the little flames.
"You kept the promise," Luca said, very seriously, before he blew them out. "The cake one."
"I keep the cake ones," I said. "Always the cake ones."
He thought about that, and nodded, and blew out all five in a single breath, and did not tell anyone what he wished for. He never did. But he leaned bac