6: Where The People Are

Radiance #6: Maybe he's right. Maybe there is something the matter with me.

Radiance is a lighthearted fiction serial about one of Earth’s darker timelines. It takes place around 2014 in a world where atypical abilities have become increasingly common, with the storyline following a group of minor-league superheroes based in Washington, DC. Our protagonist is Lady Radiance, former teen sensation, aka Christabel Jones, professional ray of sunshine—or, at least, she’s trying her best.

Previously, Christabel received a mysterious letter from someone claiming to have information about Lord Hades. This time, she must decide what to do with that knowledge.

<#5 || Directory || To #6.5 // #7>

Group message: BatSignal

BatSignal: EAST BACK DOOR BREACH 23:48:01 02-14-14

Sebastian Grimes: on it

BatSignal: INTERIOR HALL A1 EAST BREACH 23:49:03 02-14-14

BatSignal: OFFICE 1B “SERVER ROOM” DOOR BREACH 23:49:49 02-14-14

Jacob Jones: 10-4. Chris has a date, so afraid you’re on your own this time

Sebastian Grimes: copy

BatSignal: JRD-2.0-A360.29C “MAIN SERVER” OFFLINE 23:51:58 02-14-14

BatSignal: INTERIOR HALL A2 EAST BREACH 23:52:32 02-14-14

BatSignal: OFFICE 2A DOOR BREACH 23:53:05 02-14-14

BatSignal: OFFICE 2A WINDOW BREACH 23:53:54 02-14-14

Sebastian Grimes: building clear. clones again. they had good intel from somewhere, i got one straggler and the rest made off with what the shelf label says was the database server.

Marissa Cotlin: ugh. what. WHY.

Jacob Jones: Happy Valentine’s Daaayyy!

Marissa Cotlin: keep in mind its after midnight & ur only my 2nd favorite troll jacob

Jacob Jones: lol. Also, inb4 “it’s not a date”

Christabel Jones: Hades was trying out this new thing where he just SUMMONS GHOSTS (?!?) to smash up historic buildings. So if that’s what you call a date, fine. I was already in the middle of helping out with that mess on E St, too. He knows. I swear he knows.

Christabel Jones: but yes sorry I was unavailable.

Christabel Jones: I’m glad everybody is okay, though!

Marissa Cotlin: theoretically ok…i didnt do that setup…so just tell me this was not the server with the *subject* database

Sebastian Grimes: there’s only one labeled “database”. pretty sure it had everything.

Jacob Jones: oh boy.

Christabel Jones: That’s not good, is it?

Marissa Cotlin: time to find out if i deidentified the data well enough to keep hhs from fining us into the molten center of the earth :)))))

Marissa Cotlin: or the bad guys from using it like a rolodex which would of course also be bad

Jacob Jones: yeah…I was gonna say…that too

iMessage: Sebastian Baz Grimes

>Feb 15 2014

Sebastian: can you meet monday? no trouble. just need to run some things by you.
Christa: That sounds suspiciously like trouble, but yes, I can do that.
Sebastian: 11:30 at marissa’s. it’s fine, just an unofficial chat I had with atyps dept legal.
Sebastian: nevermind. that sounds even worse. don’t worry about it, see you then.

✨️✨️✨️

With the recessed fountains turned off for the season and the Christmas display taken down, the First Ladies’ Water Garden was a discouraging space, ringed in dormant shrubs and tracked through with muddy snow from the drifts left by last week’s storm. A small group passed as Christabel watched, but they were hurrying straight for the indoor garden. Even from down the path she could see that only one of the tables was occupied, its single occupant bundled up against the cold.

Christa checked the time again and decided it was close enough now. She walked around the central water feature—if you could call it that, without the water—and approached the woman in the corner. She was pretty, her age indeterminate, with white-blonde hair pulled back so tightly it was difficult to see under her hat.

“Christabel?” the woman asked when she was close enough.

“Yes. So you must be Sylph?”

She chuckled slightly, flashing pointed eye teeth behind her thin lips. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, but lyrical and precise. “Yes, I like the sound of that. You should call me Leila here, though—and do sit down. Forgive me, but one never really loses the taste for dramatics.”

Christa sat across from her, tucking her feet self-consciously back under the chair. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, once upon a time…” Leila smiled. “Yes, actually, perhaps I should start that way. It’s a story you might have heard before, and everything else I came to say will make more sense once I’ve told it. You don’t mind?”

Christa gestured for her to go ahead, and Leila looked out towards the dry, dirty tiles of the empty pool and folded her hands under her chin. “Once upon a time, a little mermaid lived far below the waves in the palace of her father, the wicked king of the sea. All the children of the sea are wicked, of course, for a siren’s voice is beautiful—but it has one purpose, and that is to kill. Evil is imprinted on her nature. A mermaid has no tears, and a mermaid has no soul. She is a monster.

“The sea king guarded his daughter closely, allowing her to visit the surface only to charm the sailors and wreck their ships, spilling rich cargoes and hot blood into the depths of his kingdom. He taught her of the treachery and vileness of men, and the justification of every evil thing which could be done to them in return. And yet…she would have given anything to be human, and to be with the man she loved, a man she had saved in an act of open rebellion. And she did give everything, just for the chance.”

Leila paused in her story, bloodlessly pale fingers fluttering to rest over her mouth. Christa, entranced, waited without breath for her to continue. “Of course, that was impossible,” she said after a moment. “I would not give you false hope, Christabel; rarely do these tales end so happily as we would like. The little siren was mad with longing when she made that terrible deal, blind to the understanding that she could not buy faithfulness by agonies. When her gamble failed, she had a choice: to kill him and return to the sea, or to dissolve away forever. Because she chose at last to sacrifice herself—because, evil creature though she was, she’d done something truly selfless—the mermaid didn’t die after all. Instead, she was transformed into a daughter of the air. Not a human as she’d hoped, but still one of those good spirits who, like the children of the sea, have no souls, but may earn them by good deeds.” Leila looked back and smiled pointedly. “A sylph, if you will.”

“Oh,” Christa said, feeling at a loss for other words. “So, you…”

“I used to be on the other side, yes,” she said. “My costume name was Siren. I seduced, I assassinated, and I took what my master needed. I thought he was the whole world, but I broke his control, and I survived. Like the little mermaid leaving her sisters below the waves, though, I couldn’t take my brother with me. I brought you here because I still regret that very much.”

She had been right; Christa now saw immediately what everything was about. “My—Hades is your brother?”

“A brother, a son; something like that, yes,” she said, her eyes narrowing a little wistfully. “Our master wanted us to think of him as a father, but he’s not much for the part. It was mostly just the two of us, and I was fifteen years older. I did the best I could to raise him myself.”

Christa leaned in across the table, heart quickening. “Tell me everything.”

She smiled wryly. “I don’t think I know much that would interest you. I haven’t seen either of them in ten years, or at least I hadn’t before Lord Hades found his way into the news reports. But of course I’d know Liam anywhere.”

“Liam!” It came out in a gasp despite her efforts to remain dignified.

“Yes. He was just a baby, so I got to name him. I know it’s matchy, but teenage Leila thought that was cute.”

“It’s lovely,” Christa said, overwhelmed by the possibilities in front of her. No, she had to focus on her mission: stop Hades. Of course, now it was something like: stop the power behind Hades, and save Liam. Siren had broken free. It could be done. “Leila, I’m sure you do know a lot that could help. I have to stop him from carrying out whatever your master is planning, but I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Oh, I didn’t think you did. I don’t believe he wants to hurt you, either,” Leila said. “Liam never was especially good at villainy, but even for him this has dragged on for quite a while. I’m surprised that Archangel’s let him get away with it.”

“Archangel—”

“Sorry, I should have started there. Dramatics, as I said.” Leila looked apologetic as she tapped her fingernails thoughtfully against the wooden table. “Yes, that’s Hades’ master. I’m sure he had another name once, but that’s the only one I knew. As for what he’s planning…well, for as long as I was with him, it was always ultimately the same thing. He wants a body.”

“A body? He doesn’t have one?” Christa asked.

Leila shook her head. “No. I don’t know what Archangel is, exactly, but it’s unnatural. He used to be an ordinary man, or so he said, but…something happened. He’s something more, or maybe something less, than that now. An untethered spirit with enormous psychic ability. He said it’s like being in Hell.”

The cold flames and tormented screams flickered at the edges of Christa’s memory. “Yes, I see,” she said. “And he hasn’t been able to clone himself a replacement?”

“Oh, no,” Leila said. “He’s tried, of course, but no ordinary body can stand being possessed by him. A body’s only meant to hold one soul at a time, and as I said…I suspect he’s something more than that. His clones can’t even handle being psychically controlled for very long. Only someone with very strong powers could physically contain him without burning out.”

She nodded. That would be why he hadn’t taken Liam, either—no powers of his own at all, if the blood test was to be believed. “But none of us are that strong. I don’t see why he’s been paying attention to me.”

Leila’s gaze was fixed on her. “How did your mother die?”

Christa’s eyebrows jumped. “How did you know…”

“Tell me, and you’ll understand.”

She had to stop for breath before she could answer. “It was cancer. Ovarian cancer, they found it while she was pregnant with my brother and me. She wanted us to be born safely, so she waited to get treatment, and…and of course it was too late then.”

When she was young, and when she was still acting, Christa had thought about her mother all the time. Dad wouldn’t talk about her, so she’d studied her films, filled scrapbooks with old press photos, and filled in the missing pieces with a kind of idol worship. She had to have been a saint, to die for love like that. In her mind, it naturally fell to her to step into her mother’s empty shoes and use her gifts to make that sacrifice worth something. For so long, it had worked. At least, everyone seemed happier that way. Since leaving for college and then moving here, though, she’d thought about Mom less and less often. Since she became Lady Radiance, hardly ever. It had made it easier to avoid confronting the question of why she wanted to be Lady Radiance, a question that kept coming back but which Christabel had so far managed to ultimately dodge. She thought she should have proven by now that it was her own free choice.

“I’m truly sorry to hear that,” Leila said. “I wanted to be wrong, but her cancer was almost certainly caused by one of Archangel’s mutagenic programs.”

She was saying something else, but Christa couldn’t hear it clearly. The ground was spinning. “Wait,” she said weakly. “Wait. I need a minute.” He killed—but why—but how—

Leila gently set a hand on top of hers and waited for her to breathe more slowly again. “The deaths weren’t intentional,” she said. “I was young at the time, but he explained later. He’s made several attempts at mass genetic modification, trying to raise the percentage of the population with atypical traits. He thought it would improve his chances of finding a suitable host.”

“So, he…he made us.” Christa swallowed heavily, wishing it didn’t make so much sense. This just couldn’t be right, but Jacob’s and her matching mutations, the location the cancer had started… “I think that's worse.”

“Maybe so.” Leila took her hand back. “He’s not the only one responsible, believe me. There are other groups doing similar work, not to mention the government-sponsored programs and normal genetic spread—a lot of atypical traits are difficult to pass down, but not all of them. In the late eighties, though, he was definitely targeting young women that way. He kept track of their children, just in case.”

“He’s been watching us?”

She nodded. “I don’t know how closely. Even before I left, I don’t think he ever trusted me completely. But at a minimum, he’d know who you are and where to find you.” She hesitated before adding, “It’s all right, if you’re angry at me.”

“No,” Christa said automatically. “It’s not your fault.”

“That’s kind of you to say.”

There was nothing else she could have said. What would she gain by blaming the one person she truly needed as an ally right now? Christa shook her head a little. She was trying to remember how she’d met her Lord…Liam. He’d been so taken aback, it must have been at least mostly Liam then. You were not expected. She supposed, then, that Archangel had only sent Hades to investigate Jacob. Jacob was practically useless now, of course. But surely he wasn’t planning to possess her instead? “But if he has been watching us, do you think that’s why…?”

“Maybe,” Leila said. “I don’t know.”

She flexed her fingers slightly, and Christa felt the gradual onset of soft, warm vibrations against her face. They weren’t targeted at her, just lapping softly at her skin as they bounced off something else. “You’re still fairly powerful yourself, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, you could feel that? —yes. I was trying to remember if your case ever came up specifically.” Leila laid her right arm out on the table, palm up. “You can come along if you’d like.”

Christa hesitated. “I don’t think I would.”

“I understand. Just a moment, then.” The vibrations started up again, and for a second or two Leila became warm enough to glow. Then it all subsided. “No, I don’t see you anywhere,” she said. “I’ve always had great power over memories, others’ as well as my own. That’s how I do my good deeds—I help to heal what can be redeemed, and erase what’s too much to bear. I’ve wished for a long time that I’d been able to erase myself from Archangel’s mind before I left him.”

“Could you, if you encountered him again?” Christa asked.

“I believe so.” Understanding tinged her expression. “So you’re also thinking of taking him on.”

“Of course. I made a promise to protect the people he’s going after. And…I want to help you get Liam back.”

“I appreciate that offer,” Leila said. “If Liam’s really willing to defy his master for you, that may be enough to break the conditioning he’s under, as it was in my case. I think that’s as helpful as you could be.”

Christa allowed a deep frown to break out, not thinking. “But I can’t actually help? There has to be something I can do. I want to fight for…”

“You can’t. Christabel, what could you do against Archangel? Your powers are all physical, and he’s all spirit. You would lose that fight.”

“But I can’t do nothing!”

“It isn’t nothing,” Leila said, leaning in. “I wanted to meet you because I thought you could be trusted to work subtly. Liam seems attached to you, but you’ll have to lead him very gently, without letting him know you’re aware of his situation. Put it in his head that you’d defend him if he ever turned to good. Make sure that when his master finally decides you’ve become too much trouble, he already has the idea formed to spare you. He’s the greatest asset that Archangel has left. After we have him, then we can consider a plan of attack.”

Irritation bubbled up, but Christa did her best to smother it. The woman had a point; perhaps in this situation, the best thing she could be was bait. Would it work? Did Liam…could Liam possibly care as much for her as she did for him? She wouldn’t know unless she tried. “After we have him, then,” she agreed. “But I want to be involved the whole way. It’s personal now.”

The two exchanged phone numbers, Leila giving her a physical address in New York as well, and agreed to stay in touch regarding the Lady’s interactions with Lord Hades. Christa stayed sitting at the table for a long time after Leila had left, staring into the neatly squared hedge and thinking of the man whom—for his own sake, if nothing else—she could only hope might love her.

✨️✨️✨️

The next day, Christa set aside her growing feelings of dread and obediently trooped out to the Beltway to find out what unholy confluence of Baz Grimes, the United States Government, and herself could possibly count as “no trouble”. She barely made it through the lab door before Marissa spun around, holding up a safety lancet. “Hi! You’re going to hate me for this, but I need a finger stick. Psychic inflammation testing.”

“It’s me, Marissa,” she said as she held her hand out and stared resolutely at the wall, shoulders tensing. It had been a while since she was up here, and there were new photos around the various collage edges. One from Jacob’s Christmas trip, even. They were good friends, weren’t they? Him and—everybody here, it seemed like. She was just his sister, hanging on less and less securely every time she checked in.

“Physically, sure.” The blade snapped against her finger, and Christa shivered somewhat at the release of anticipation. “Guess who was found dead last week with half his head blown away from the inside out?”

She grimaced and blinked slowly for a moment, still a little lightheaded. The new intern seemed to be accounted for, if that was the slight, boyish type checking a rack of test tubes at the other work table. “No one I know, I hope.”

“Probably not,” Marissa said as she pulled out the test strip and slid it into a different piece of equipment. “It was the data center contractor who set up the new server room when we moved in, including a whole bunch of security features designed to prevent exactly what happened Friday night. Which, I can’t imagine why, all happened to be disabled at the time of his death.”

In the turmoil of everything Leila had said, Christa had forgotten all about the break-in. Of course, that was why Archangel wanted their records: he was looking for candidates for his new body, as well as any progress on the depowering serum. She supposed it wouldn’t do to leave the playing field too cluttered once he finally had what he wanted.

She took a breath to say so, but the words suddenly stuck. No, she couldn’t. How could she explain her sudden access to inside information like that? She’d have to reveal her source, and even that might not save her from coming under suspicion herself. Knowing the truth about Archangel didn’t seem likely to help anybody, but exposing Leila would certainly risk losing her chance to rescue Liam. Christa was the only one who could help him, and including anyone else would both endanger that mission and further endanger them.

“Christa…? You feeling okay?” Marissa was still standing at the machine, looking up at her with a mixture of concern and creeping mistrust. It occurred to her that there had been some background noise; the other woman must have continued talking while she visibly zoned out.

“Oh—sorry, yes,” she lied. “I’m just tired. It’s been a lot of late nights recently.”

“Right.” That didn’t clear up the mistrust, and given that said late nights were all with Hades, Christa supposed she could understand why. Fortunately, something beeped just then and Marissa’s face slackened as she took the printout and taped it into a notebook. “You’re completely clean. I’m sorry about that, I promise.”

“I do understand,” Christa said. “Honestly, it’s a relief to see it.” She would have been an obvious target to go for. Come to think of it, why wasn’t Archangel trying to influence her? Was he simply content to keep her out of the way while he worked on other projects?

But Marissa was talking again. “Yeah. Where was I? …oh. Nothing important, you just wouldn’t believe how much paperwork it takes to properly report a data breach. I thought this is what I was getting an intern for.”

The college boy across the room looked up with an appropriately sheepish face at her elevated tone. “I’m almost done recording the paracrine factor diffusion changes from this last round, Dr. Cotlin…”

“No, no, that’s your job. I’m messing with you, kid.”

Sebastian came in and dropped a thick packet inside a report protector in front of Marissa without ceremony. “I brought you—”

“No!” She tried to hand it back to him. “I was just saying I’m up to my eyeballs already, no.”

“You don’t even have to read it, Rissa, Rick and I worked everything out. Just sign at the sticky note.” He looked over to Christa much more cheerfully than she’d expected. “Glad you could make it over.”

Christa returned a thin smile. “Well, you did ask. What’s going on?”

“Hold up,” Marissa said. “Josh, take a lunch.”

“Do we not trust him?” Christa said when the intern was gone.

“Oh, no, he’s fine. I’ve read him in on most of it already. But he’s a Lady Radiance fan, and I wasn’t going to break that part to him until after you’d left. I was actually thinking he could take over the PR stuff if you like him.” Marissa waved back at them as she flipped a page. “Continue.”

“Appreciate the permission,” Baz said ironically, while Christa mentally adjusted her appraisal of Intern Josh. “Look, I just need to make sure you’d be okay if you ever couldn’t call me for backup. I know Jake’s dropped out on you already.”

“I haven’t had any problems recently,” she said, unsure when she’d last even asked him for help. Her Lord hadn’t made her feel threatened in quite a while, and all her other fights had been alongside others from the Lighthouse. “But I’ve got some new people I’m working with, so I could always call them if I had to.”

“Told you so,” Marissa said. “You worry too much.”

“I wasn’t…” He glanced over his shoulder and saw her with the folder opened. “Are you readin’ all of it?”

“Yeah. This is what I do.”

“Sheesh.” Baz sighed, scrunching his nose up as he turned back to Christa. “I feel responsible, that’s all. I got you into this.”

“It was my choice to keep going,” she said. “I promise, I’ll be fine. What would you be doing that I couldn’t call you?”

“Private protection,” he said. “Legal decided to put their foot down on me playin’ both sides of the field, so to speak. They knew I was never gonna put up with the official affiliate process, and nobody really wants me leavin’ this place undefended. So, basically I get amnesty for what I was doin’ anyway, but they get me on their register and I’m restricted to jobs where my employer’s involved.”

“That makes sense,” Christa said. Baz had never really been careful about his identity; of course whoever he’d been dealing with over the lab’s supervillain troubles would have caught on that he was moonlighting. “No, I’m glad it’s worked out. It sounds like a good deal for everyone, really.”

“Guess so.” He chuckled. “It’d be a better deal if she was payin’ me.”

Marissa’s head popped up again at that. “I’m sorry? I thought DiFusion was taking you on as a contractor under the DHS grant.”

He shrugged casually. “Oh, well…you were going to have to recertify that every ten months, and then you couldn’t keep me if you lose the grant, and there’s background checks, minimum benefits, tax stuff, timesheet logging…you know, just way more trouble than it was worth to anybody. Not like I really want the money anyway. So we found a workaround.”

“A workaround?” Christa said, exchanging a skeptical look with Marissa before the other turned back to the contract to start flipping faster.

“Yeah, but it ain’t sketchy or anything. It’s all signed off, so—”

Marissa’s face suddenly flushed. “No. I can’t sign this, absolutely not.”

“Okay,” Baz said, raising a hand. “I told Rick you weren’t gonna like it—”

She turned in her chair to smack him across the leg. “You two wrote this up for me, and you have ‘spousal exemption’ stamped over the terms of employment section! Of course I don’t like it!”

“Can I finish a damn sentence? That’s just what the stamp says. Ignore it. The point is, I won a compliance exemption in the negotiations and he had to figure how to make it work.”

“I can…go,” Christa said uncomfortably, feeling very much like she shouldn’t be here.

“You stay. Maybe it’ll make her behave herself,” Baz said. “Look, I said I got it signed off, didn’t I? Nobody has to do anything. There’s another exception initialed in for the documentation.”

Marissa turned the page and exhaled in a huff. “So I see.”

“Well, there you go. No problems.”

“No problems is stretching it,” she said sharply. “Don’t think I don’t know what this is about.”

“Hey, give me one good reason not to take the deal, and we’ll reconsider. Just one.”

Marissa looked back hard at Christa, intensifying her feeling that she’d been dragged into this mostly to avert some argument that nobody wanted to have in front of her. Unfortunately, she’d never been as good at disappearing into the floor as she sometimes wanted to be.

Her friend finally groaned and shook her head before flipping another few pages and picking up a pen to scribble her signature. “Here. Take it before I change my mind.”

“Thank you,” he said, reaching for the back of her chair. Marissa gave an indignant squeal as he tipped it back, and Christa looked over to study the wall again as she realized he intended it to be an obnoxious kiss and not a brief one. That photo looked like New Year’s, with…some college friends? Very fun. A sour inner voice which she recognized from its very rare appearances as something best squashed immediately asked when she’d last heard from her college friends. Or anybody else who didn’t need her for one job or another. Even Leila was in this for Liam, not for her.

Christa did her best to push that away. She had Jacob, didn’t she? And she had Marissa…sort of. She was currently trying to put her boyfriend off with a series of threats that Christa didn’t think she had the physical capacity to enact, much to his amusement. No, somehow her Lord had come to be the person she felt she could count on most. Generally what she counted on was him doing his best to ruin her day, true, but he never really succeeded at it. No matter how much stronger she became, he was always just half a step behind her. I don’t believe he wants to hurt you…oh, if only. The roiling ache creeping up beneath her heart was making itself identifiable now as his absence.

She no longer needed answers if she were to catch Lord Hades. Maybe one or two, but not a full explanation. That could wait. What she needed was a way to make him stay even a little longer. He had to be redeemable, and she had to redeem him. The thought of his siding with his master and her being forced to treat him as a real adversary, as a hero should, had suddenly crushed all the breath out of her.

Yes, she loved him. At the very least, she loved the man she thought he could be. But was that man, immolated on the Lady’s pyre, a price she was willing to pay for believing that goodness truly existed in the world?

✨️✨️✨️

Friday came again, and Hades didn’t call. Nobody called. Christabel sat up half the night in his corner, ostensibly making some repairs to her costume, but worrying so intensely that she didn’t even condescend to move into the good light. Questions clouded her thoughts—could he have found out she’d talked to Sylph? Had some other hero finally gone after him? Had she, perhaps, simply lost his interest—or Archangel’s?

Saturday and Sunday passed in an anxious haze; she stayed out for hours jogging around the bounds of her wards, burning the spells into the dirt under her feet, because it was the only thing she could think of to get her Lord’s attention. Jacob was around somewhere, she supposed, but she was hardly aware of him. He made no serious impression on her until she nearly ran into him while turning onto the landing Sunday night, still shoving things into her bag for the commute.

“I guess you don’t have a minute, then,” Jacob said.

She frowned at him as she caught her lip gloss in midair and got it into a pocket this time. “No, I don’t. Half the team is busy already, and Clarevoyant just put out a heads-up that the Cephalomancer’s coming up the Anacostia. Apparently he’s figured out how to get his overgrown squid minions to tolerate freshwater.”

“All right. Well—you have fun with that. But I want to talk when you get back. I can wait up for you.”

Christa looked back up at him from the bottom of the stairs. “Why, what is it?”

Jacob turned a hand back and forth on the railing, thinking. “I just wanted to know if something’s…happened. You’ve been acting weird lately, and I’m not the only person who’s noticed.”

“Nothing’s happened,” she said firmly. “I’m fine. You’re the one who’s been acting strangely, remember?”

They hadn’t discussed that between themselves yet. To be honest, they hadn’t talked to each other much this month at all. Christabel didn’t know why he’d been quiet, but from her perspective, with so much at stake, it simply seemed safest. Seeing the guilty look on his face, she turned away and kept going for the back door. “Anyway, there’s nothing to talk about,” she called. “Don’t wait up for me. It’s already late. I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe.”

<#5 || Directory || To #6.5 // #7>

Thanks so much for reading! Radiance #7, I Just Come Here For The View, is scheduled to go up on December 5. I’m taking some time with family between now and then, and won’t be sending any posts. In the meantime, you can follow me on Notes (no drama, very chill. Last week I drew teenage Baz with possibly the worst haircut that the mid-90s had to offer, because I can.)

I’ve also added navigation links to the original Radiance starting point, the Hades POV piece You’re My Lady, I’m Your Fool, which takes place ‘tomorrow’ morning. #7 picks up where it leaves off, from Christabel’s perspective…Sylph has high hopes, but is Lady Radiance even capable of the subtlety she expected from her?

If you enjoyed this installment of Radiance, you can show it by leaving a like or comment, sharing this post, or just continuing to read. :) Everyone’s welcome in the fan club!