Lillian woke up in her own bed with no memory of how she'd gotten there.
The morning light streaming through her apartment's single window felt too bright. Everything felt too bright. Too loud. Too much.
She sat up slowly, her head pounding like she'd spent the night drinking cheap wine. The last thing she remembered was signing that contract in the restaurant, then pain shooting up her arm like lightning.
After that, nothing.
She looked around her tiny studio apartment, trying to piece together what had happened. Her work clothes from yesterday were folded neatly on the chair by her bed. Someone had brought her home and undressed her.
The thought made her skin crawl.
"What the hell?" she muttered, then stopped.
Her voice sounded different. Clearer somehow. Like she was hearing it for the first time.
Lillian swung her legs over the side of the bed and immediately noticed two things. First, she was wearing pajamas she didn't remember putting on. Second, her wrist was throbbing.
She looked down and gasped.
The red mark that had been appearing and disappearing over the past few days was now permanent. And it wasn't just a mark anymore—it was a intricate design that wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet. Thin lines spiraled and curved in patterns that seemed to shift when she wasn't looking directly at them.
It was beautiful. And terrifying.
"What did he do to me?" she whispered.
The memory of Adrian's satisfied expression flashed through her mind. He'd known this would happen. He'd planned it.
Lillian stood up, testing her balance. Her body felt strange, like it belonged to someone else. Everything was sharper, more vivid. She could hear her neighbor's TV through the thin walls, could smell coffee brewing three floors down, could feel the vibration of cars passing on the street below.
It was overwhelming.
She stumbled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. The woman in the mirror looked like her, but different. Her amber eyes seemed brighter, almost luminous. Her skin had a glow that hadn't been there yesterday.
"This is insane," she told her reflection.
But even as she said it, fragments of memory were starting to surface. Not from yesterday, but from years ago. Childhood memories she'd pushed aside and forgotten.
She was seven years old, standing in her adoptive mother's garden. The roses had been dying—some kind of blight that had killed half the neighborhood gardens. But when Lillian touched them, they bloomed. Bright red petals unfurling like they were eager to live.
"How did you do that, sweetheart?" her mother had asked.
"I don't know," Lillian had answered. And she hadn't known. She'd just wanted the flowers to be happy.
Another memory: Age nine, the first day at her new school. She'd been nervous about making friends, so she'd wished the other kids would like her. By lunch, she'd had six invitations to birthday parties and three offers to sit together at lunch.
Her mother had called it charisma. "You just have a way with people, Lily."
But it had been more than that, hadn't it?
Age twelve: The night of the car accident. She'd woken up screaming, knowing something terrible had happened to her birth parents. She'd called her adoptive mother, sobbing about a nightmare where two people died in twisted metal and broken glass.
The police had called the next morning to confirm what she'd already known.
"Intuition," the grief counselor had said. "Some people are just more sensitive to the world around them."
Lillian sat down on her bed, pieces clicking into place like a puzzle she'd been avoiding for years. The strange dreams. The way plants seemed to grow better when she was around. The uncanny ability to read people's emotions. The instinct that had helped her see through financial fraud in hours instead of weeks.
It hadn't been intuition.
It had been magic.
She looked at the mark on her wrist again, and this time she saw it differently. Not as something Adrian had done to her, but as something he'd awakened in her.
Something that had been waiting her entire life to surface.
A knock on her door interrupted her thoughts.
Lillian froze. Nobody ever visited her. She didn't have friends who dropped by unannounced, and her landlord always called first.
The knock came again, more insistent.
"Lillian? I know you're awake."
Adrian's voice, muffled through the cheap door but unmistakably his.
Her first instinct was to pretend she wasn't home. To hide under the covers and hope he went away.
But anger was starting to build in her chest. Hot and sharp and demanding answers.
He'd drugged her. Or used some kind of hypnosis. Or magic. Whatever he'd done, he'd made her sign that contract against her will, and now something fundamental about her had changed.
She was done being passive.
Lillian marched to the door and yanked it open.
"You son of a bitch."
Adrian stood in the hallway holding a coffee cup and a bag from the bakery down the street. He was wearing jeans and a sweater instead of his usual suit, which somehow made him look younger. More human.
"Good morning to you too," he said.
"Don't." She held up a finger. "Don't you dare act like this is normal."
"Can I come in?"
"No."
"Lillian, we need to talk."
"You're damn right we need to talk. But I'm done playing by your rules."
She stepped back and gestured him inside, not because she wanted to invite him in, but because she didn't want her neighbors to overhear what was about to be a very loud conversation.
Adrian stepped into her apartment and looked around. It was tiny—just a studio with a kitchenette, a bed, and a bathroom barely big enough for one person. But it was clean, and she'd tried to make it feel like home with plants on the windowsill and books stacked on every available surface.
"Nice place," he said.
"Cut the crap. What did you do to me?"
"I gave you a job."
"Bull. This—" She held up her wrist, showing the mark. "—is not a standard employment contract."
Adrian set the coffee and pastry on her small table. "You're right. It's not."
"Then what is it?"
"Protection."
"From what?"
"From people who would use your abilities for their own purposes."
Lillian stared at him. "You mean people like you?"
"No. People much worse than me."
"How do I know you're not the worst person I could meet?"
Adrian was quiet for a moment. "You don't. You'll have to trust me."
"Trust you?" Lillian laughed, but it came out bitter. "You manipulated me into signing a contract I didn't understand. You've been lying to me since the moment we met. And now you want me to trust you?"
"I've been protecting you since the moment we met."
"From what?"
"From yourself."
The answer hung between them like a challenge.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Adrian walked to her window, looking out at the fire escape and the brick building across the alley. "Tell me about your childhood."
"What?"
"Your childhood. Before your adoptive parents. What do you remember?"
"Nothing. I was three when they adopted me."
"Try harder."
"I don't—" Lillian stopped. Because suddenly she was remembering something else. Something she'd buried so deep she'd convinced herself it was just a recurring nightmare.
She was very small, maybe four years old. A woman with dark hair was holding her, running through a forest at night. There were lights behind them—not flashlights, but something that moved and twisted like living fire.
"We have to hide you," the woman was saying. "They can't find you. They can't know what you are."
"Mama?" Little Lillian had asked.
"I'm not your mama, sweetheart. But I promise you'll be safe. I promise you'll have a normal life until it's time."
"Time for what?"
"Time to come home."
Lillian shook her head, trying to dislodge the memory. "That's not real. That's just a dream."
"Is it?" Adrian turned from the window. "Look around your apartment, Lillian."
She looked, and her heart stopped.
Every plant in her apartment had tripled in size.
The small fern on her windowsill was now touching the ceiling. The succulent collection on her bookshelf had grown into a miniature jungle. The half-dead bamboo plant her roommate had left behind was now a thriving forest that took up an entire corner.
And they were still growing.
"How is this possible?" she whispered.
"Because you're awake now." Adrian moved closer, and she could see something like wonder in his eyes. "Because the contract didn't just bind you to me—it unlocked what you really are."
"And what am I?"
"Powerful. More powerful than you can imagine."
A vine from the bamboo plant curled around her ankle like a friendly cat. She looked down at it, and it pulsed with soft green light.
"This is insane."
"This is magic."
Lillian sank onto her bed, overwhelmed. "Magic isn't real."
"You're sitting in a room full of evidence that says otherwise."
She looked at him, this man who'd turned her world upside down in less than a week.
"What happens now?"
"Now you learn to control it."
"And if I don't want to?"
Adrian's expression grew serious. "Then you'll hurt people. Probably starting with yourself."
As if to prove his point, one of the vines knocked over a lamp. Lillian flinched, and every plant in the room shuddered in response.
"I don't understand any of this."
"You will. I'll teach you."
"Why? What do you get out of it?"
Adrian was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was softer than she'd ever heard it.
"I get to keep you safe."
"From what?"
"From the people who killed your real family."
The words hit like a physical blow. "My real family?"
"The Blackwoods. One of the most powerful magical families in North America. They were murdered fifteen years ago by the magical council because they were considered too dangerous to live."
"You're lying."
"I'm not. You're the only survivor, Lillian. And if the council finds out you're still alive..."
"They'll kill me."
"They'll try."
Lillian looked down at the mark on her wrist, then at the jungle her apartment had become. Everything was happening too fast. Too much information, too many revelations, too many impossible things that her rational mind couldn't process.
But deep down, in a place she'd kept locked away since childhood, it all felt true.
"I need time to think," she said.
"Time is something we might not have much of."
"Why not?"
"Because the magical resonance you caused when you signed the contract was felt by every sensitive within a hundred-mile radius. People are going to start looking for the source."
"People like the council?"
"Among others."
Lillian stood up, and the plants throughout the apartment swayed like they were responding to her movement.
"Then we better get started."
"Started with what?"
She met his eyes, and for the first time since this all began, she felt like she was making a choice instead of being dragged along by circumstances.
"Teaching me how to fight back."
End of Chapter 6