“I’ll go?—”
Rocco yanked me against his chest, knocking the wind out of me. “You’re staying with me. You’re not going off by yourself. Period.”
I wanted to argue, but the words died in my throat. Vex had taken Raven. Raven—who had the strength of three bloodlines pumping through her veins—Dragon. Golden Demon. Fae. The most powerful creature I’d ever met, and Vex had snatched her like she was nothing.
I was just a vampire. No ancient bloodlines. No special powers. Just fangs and stubbornness.
If Vex could take Raven, he could break me without trying.
“We start with this floor,” Rocco said, his voice low and controlled–the voice of someone used to giving orders, even when the world was falling apart, reminding me of the prince he once was. “Selena and I will take one side and you take the other.”
We moved—but every step was a fight. The Keep pushed back against us like we were wading through chest-deep water. Doors that should have been ten feet away felt like fifty. My legs burned with the effort, my muscles screaming against a resistance that had no source and no shape. Vex wasn’t just hiding from us. He was draining the clock one sluggish step at a time.
There were six doors. Four opened into bedrooms—empty, decayed, reeking of dust and old blood.
Nothing. No sign of her anywhere.
No Vex.
Each one a dead end that cost us precious minutes we didn’t have. My hands were shaking — not from fear anymore, but from the helpless fury of being trapped in a maze while a woman's life bled away somewhere above or below us. Every wrong door felt like a nail in Raven's coffin. I wanted to scream, to tear the walls apart with my bare hands, to do something other than open another door to another empty room.
The other two led to turret staircases that spiraled upward into darkness. Lucien had already cleared one. That left the other.
I paused at a narrow window cut into the stone. Through the glass—or whatever barrier Vex had conjured — I could see the others. Rose and Alice sat on the ground, pale and spent. Valentin paced back and forth like a caged animal. Darius stood still, his face tilted up toward the Keep, staring straight at me.
Could he see us? Maybe. His silver eyes didn’t waver. Their trust pressed down on me like a physical thing. Rose, Valentin, Alice, Darius — all trapped on the other side because they'd spent everything they had getting us in. If we failed, their sacrifice meant nothing. Raven died. And we'd have let down every single person who'd believed in us enough to cross an ocean.
I wasn't going to let that happen.
They couldn’t help us. Not from out there.
Rocco and I left the turret and headed back down. Lucien was at the bottom of the stairs, vibrating with barely contained fury.
“Time’s running out,” he said. “Where the fuck is he?”
“I don’t know,” Rocco said. “But we keep looking.”
Keep looking. Keep opening doors to empty rooms while the clock bled out. The futility of it was maddening — and beneath the frustration, a fury was building that rivaled Lucien's. Vex was toying with us. Dangling Raven's life like bait while we stumbled through his funhouse. And every second we wasted was a second he won.
The second floor held another hallway lined with doors. Lucien took one side, Rocco and I took the other. We moved as fast as the Keep would let us—which wasn’t fast enough. Every hallway stretched longer than it should have. Every door resisted before it opened, as if the castle was deciding whether to let us through.
My patience was fraying, thread by thread. Fear had burned away somewhere around the fourth empty room, replaced by something hotter — a white-knuckle rage that made my fangs ache and my vision sharpen. I was done being afraid of this place. Done being herded. Done playing Vex's game.
We came upon a library. Books were scattered across the floor, their spines cracked, pages torn loose and curling at the edges. Bookcases lay toppled like dominoes. Paintings hung crooked on the walls, their frames split, their subjects watching us from tilted angles.
Empty. Again. The rage tightened another notch. How many more rooms? How many more dead ends before midnight arrived and we lost everything?
A doorway at the far end led to a balcony. The air shifted as we approached — heavier, warmer, pressing against my skin like a hand. Every instinct I had was telling me to back out. To hide. To not take another step.
But that resistance — that push to stay away — was exactly why I kept walking. The Keep had been fighting us since we'd crossed the barrier. Empty rooms didn't fight back. Whatever was out on that balcony, the castle didn't want us to find it.
Rocco pushed through the doorway. I followed close behind, stepping out onto a balcony overlooking a courtyard. Dead trees. Empty flowerbeds. Weeds choking what must have once been a manicured lawn. A place that might have been beautiful, centuries ago, before something poisoned it.
“The trees were alive recently,” Rocco said quietly.
“How do you know?”
He pointed. “Dead birds in the branches. Birds don’t nest in dead trees—they need leaves to hide from predators. Something killed these trees after the birds settled.”
