Chapter 6
“Kea’s parents,” Holden said, once Celeste had returned that evening and he’d laid the full report out for her to review, breaking a silence he’d been sitting inside for most of the afternoon, processing information he’d been turning over since receiving it. “The fire marshal’s report says they found them near the back exit. They’d gone back in for one more animal despite being told the building was about to collapse. They never made it back out.”
Celeste absorbed this with the same careful attention she applied to medical diagnosis, extracting meaning from facts that painted a picture of the girl’s background layer by devastating layer. “So she grew up surrounded by damaged creatures, learning to trust again,” she said slowly. “That explains why she approached Phantom without fear. She’d spent her whole life around animals that others considered dangerous. She saw past the aggression to the pain underneath.”
“There’s more,” Holden said, his voice dropping lower, though Kea slept soundly two rooms away, Phantom’s watchful presence keeping vigil at her door. “Kea was listed as deceased in the official report. Her bedroom was in the section that burned hottest. Investigators assumed she’d been overcome by smoke before she could escape.”
“But she hadn’t been in her bedroom,” Celeste said, following the logical thread to its obvious, devastating conclusion, her voice going quiet with the weight of it. “She was with the animals they’d already evacuated. She watched her parents go back inside and not come out. Then she watched the building collapse with them inside, and she’s been trying to fulfill her mother’s last instruction ever since. Find Umbra. Make sure he’s safe.”
The weight of that realization settled over them both, adding layers of understanding to Kea’s determined approach to the mansion despite obvious danger. She hadn’t been reckless or foolishly brave. She’d been completing a mission that gave purpose to a survival that might otherwise have felt meaningless. Finding Phantom meant honoring her parents’ life work, proving their deaths hadn’t been entirely in vain, because at least one of their rescued animals had found safety.
