He sat in the music room long after the others had retreated to their own corners of grief, solitude, or distraction.
The grand piano remained untouched, though the keys seemed to hum with restrained longing. The afternoon sun filtered through tall windows, warm and golden, but Evander Laurent didn't feel it.
He hadn't felt warmth in eighteen years.
Only the aching echo of a name never spoken aloud.
Aira.
He whispered it sometimes, in dreams. Once, when he was twelve, he'd cried it into his pillow — a soundless sob, because he hadn't wanted anyone to hear. She'd been gone six months then. No one talked about her by that point. The family had frozen, solidified around the ache of loss.
And yet she had always lived in the spaces between their words. In the silence before Elias answered a question. In the way Lucien left the nursery untouched. In the way Cassian flinched when someone said "sister."
Evander was barely three when it happened.
But he remembered the fire.
Not the smoke. Not the sirens.
He remembered the heat. The orange glow that had no business filling a hospital hallway. He remembered their father shouting. His mother screaming a name. And Elias holding him tight, shielding him from the sight of flames licking at white walls.
And he remembered crying — not from fear, but because someone wasn't there.
Even at three, he had known someone was missing.
They hadn't said the name around him at first. Not until he grew old enough to notice the photo on his father's desk. The baby girl in his mother's locked jewelry box. The nursery they never converted into a guest room.
Then one day, he asked. Just once.
And Elias told him.
Aira.
She was the space between his ribs. The ache he could never soothe. The melody he never finished composing.
The sister he never got to meet.
And now… she was real.
Alive.
He wanted to run to her. To see if she had his eyes or their mother's. To hear the voice he had only imagined in daydreams.
But she wasn't ready.
And neither was he.
The others processed it differently.
Elias, the eldest, didn't cry. But that night, he stayed awake in his study until dawn. His quiet gaze the next morning spoke volumes. Elias had been ten when she was lost. Old enough to remember holding her, protecting her in those first months. Old enough to remember failing to save her.
He still blamed himself.
Cassian, ever the realist, had grown more protective of the family with each passing year. The second-born. He took loss like a knife to the spine and buried it deep. He had spent his life building defense systems and high-tech barriers, as if they could shield him from grief ever again. But after hearing she was alive, he spent an hour alone in the garage, leaning against the bulletproof SUV he once said he'd use to drive her to school… if she ever came back.
Ronan had the softest heart — ironic, given he ran the security operations. He'd seen the worst of the world, and still managed to believe in hope. When Seraphina said Aira's name, Ronan had turned away, not to hide tears — but to breathe. It was like his heart needed time to adjust to joy.
Lucien had already started writing. Of course he had. The artist of the family, he lived in metaphors and melodies. He processed pain in lyrics and paint. But Evander had seen the tremble in his hand when he opened his journal. He'd waited years to write something for her.
And then… there was Evander.
The youngest.
Closest in age.
The one who should've grown up beside her. Fought over cookies. Shared secrets. Protected her in schoolyards.
Instead, he had grown into silence.
Into restraint.
He didn't let people close — not even the ones who shared his blood. But when Seraphina said that Aira had stared at his picture the longest, something inside him shattered.
A tiny part of him dared to believe… that maybe she had felt him all these years too.
That maybe some part of her — wherever she was — had missed him the way he missed her.
And if that was true…
He would wait forever if he had to.
Because you don't rush the return of the missing piece of your soul.