Half Of A Second Child – Aycee Lucy

Aila asked Leland. A snake poked its head out of her satchel and hissed. I gave it a weak smile of acknowledgment, wondering why everyone Leland associated with was a Seven. Ash, Trist, Aila. Skye, potentially. And me, for lack of a better term. “A thousand, we said?” My mouth popped open. A thousand gold? This whole meeting was taking place in Privacy, with Aila on edge and an Enchantress who helped them enter invisibly. Not to mention the nature of our meeting location, a place where every server’s memory was wiped at the end of the day.

My thoughts flashed to all the long-sleeved shirts Skye had picked out for me, at what I now guessed was Leland’s instruction. To keep my wrists covered and the magic suppressants concealed. I didn’t think magic suppressants were rare. In that moment, I realized they were illegal. Aila placed a white shopping bag on the table and stood in synchrony with Ari.

“I have no others if she burns through them.” Leland tossed Aila the heavy sack of gold, and she caught it in her satchel without a thought, her lips pursed as she settled the satchel’s strap on her shoulder. “It’s been a pleasure, Leland. Tell Vyra” — she looked directly at me, though she was definitely speaking to him — “that we say hi. And I hope her voice has recovered from all the moaning last night I’m certain wasn’t real.”

Moaning? Vyra was with Leland and moaning? Everything went to hell. My blood was scorching, mere seconds away from what I knew came next, glitching followed by an unwanted tug to the ether. Leland cast Pitch Black, drowning out all light. His arm swung out, looping around my waist as he searched for my wrists and fixed the cuffs on me.

The cold rings of iron were smooth on my skin, and Leland’s hands were firm, holding me steady against the hard wall of his side. “Put the lights back on, Leland,” Aila said through her teeth. His mouth dropped to my ear, and I gasped. “You don’t have these,” he whispered. I shrugged away from the intimacy of his breath.

“Keep them hidden.” “Lights!” Aila’s voice was sharp, threatening to rip him apart. “I got it,” I said defensively, tugging my sleeves down. I knew I was whole. I had to be for his arm to be wrapped so tight. “You can let me go now.” He released me. There was a flash of light so brief I might’ve imagined it, then the room darkened. Though this darkness wasn’t Pitch Black. It was a different kind.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2025 by Aycee Lucy All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

No generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used at any point in the writing of this work. Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models. First paperback edition December 2025 Book cover design by Story Wrappers Character Art by Stephanie Brown at Offbeat Worlds Editing by Shannon Cave and Clara Abigail Interior formatting by Taylor Navis Ebook formatting by Travis Hasenour ISBNs: 979-8-9932842-1-7 (paperback); 979-8-9932842-2-4 (hardcover); 979-8-9932842-0-0 (e-book) www.halfofasecondchild.com OceanofPDF.com To Hb and Bert, for being the best little family I could ever ask for.

OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS Front Cover Title Page Copyright Character Art Content Warning Part 1 Prologue One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Part 2 Twenty Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight Twenty-Nine Thirty Thirty-One Thirty-Two Thirty-Three Thirty-Four Thirty-Five Thirty-Six Thirty-Seven Epilogue Character Art Acknowledgments About the Author OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com CONTENT WARNING This book contains content intended for an 18+ audience, as well as content/themes that may be difficult for some readers, including: Abductions Agoraphobia Anxiety Child abuse Depression shown through isolating, self-neglect, and low self-esteem Implied grooming of a minor (three-year age gap) Implied teenage sex Intentional murder of an animal Neglect Non-consensual physical contact and assault (never sexual), including: sedating, restraining, hand-to-hand combat, knife violence, and choking with shadows Underage drinking World condition of male infertility World condition of maternal death in childbirth (not depicted) OceanofPDF.com PART 1 HARTIK’S HOLLOW OceanofPDF.com B PROLOGUE EMBER Eight Months Before irthday without the Happy was more apt.

Mine certainly wasn’t happy, and both times I’d heard those words today, the closest I’d come to smiling was a twitch at the corner of my mouth. Not that it was unhappy. Today was what it was supposed to be: drizzling, uneventful, and the same as every other year. Though I suppose, last year, on my seventeenth birthday, there hadn’t been this pit of dread in my stomach. I stared at the cracked-open window on the other side of Gray’s room, my eyes tracking the long path of a raindrop slowly rolling down the glass.

A gust of cold air blew in and speckled his desk with freezing rain. Shivering, I shifted closer to him in his bed.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: df25298ab73cf78c
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,460,727 bytes (3.3 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9798993284217, 9798993284224, 9798993284200
• Pages: 397
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 693.55 minutes
• Total Words: 138,710
• Total Characters: 751,311
• Average Words per Page: 349.4
• Average Characters per Page: 1892.47

Most Frequent Words

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