THE RECORD THAT REMAINS
Selene's POV
Felix's archive room looked different in daylight.
Not changed — the same shelves, the same cedar smell, the same forty years of careful organization — but softer somehow, the morning light through the high windows turning the dust motes gold instead of gray. The shadows that had seemed so heavy the previous evening had retreated into corners, leaving the room feeling less like a vault and more like the quiet heart of something old and carefully preserved.
It should have felt comforting.
Instead, my stomach tightened as Damon and I stepped inside.
The box from the night before still existed in my mind with impossible clarity. My mother's handwriting. Her words. The weight of paper that had survived years longer than she had. I had slept very little, and what sleep I managed had been restless, filled with fragments of memories I could no longer tell apart from dreams.
Felix was already at the central table.
