Chapter 63. Don’t Let Them Take You from Me

Julian’s POV

They speak her name like it means nothing.

Selena.

Stephens mutters it like a nuisance, the way you talk about a rat in the pantry. But I feel the shape of it like a brand beneath my skin. I hear it like a blade through glass. That name, it doesn’t just catch in my chest anymore. It echoes. Because I’ve seen her.

I’ve heard her voice, cool, clear, and laced with a power she barely restrained. I still remember the sting of her magic crackling across my cheek after I made the mistake of underestimating her.

The look in her eyes when she struck me; there was no fear. Just precision. Like she’d been waiting her whole life to land that hit.

They told me she was powerful. They didn’t tell me she’d feel familiar.

That’s the part that still bothers me. Not the wound. Not the humiliation. But the echo that rang through my ribs when our bodies collided. A sensation like recognition. Like I’d been searching for something and found i