I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The apartment was in chaos. Drawers hung open, their contents spilled across the floor. Clothing lay scattered, half-folded, abandoned in the middle of packing. A cup of çay sat on the table, its surface filmed with cold, and beside it a plate of bread that had begun to harden at the edges.
No Hakan. No Elif. No note.
"Hakan?" My voice echoed in the silence. "Elif?"
Nothing.
I searched the apartment with growing desperation. The bedroom, where Elif's dresses still hung in the wardrobe but her traveling cloak was gone. The kitchen, where supplies for a journey had been gathered and then left behind. The small washroom, where Hakan's razor still sat beside the basin.
They had been here. Recently. And then they vanished.
Something glinted on the floor near the door. I bent to retrieve it, and my heart clenched.
Milan's ring. The silver band he wore on his right hand, the one he never removed. It lay in the dust like a discarded promise.
"I wondered how long it would take you to get here."
I spun, light flaring around my fists, and found Melo sitting in the window frame. Her russet fur was ruffled, her turquoise eyes sharp with concern beneath her usual sardonic expression.
"Melo." I lowered my hands. "What happened here?"
"I don't know yet." She leaped down from the window and padded toward me, her tail swishing. "I've been following you since the palace. The whole district is crawling with Light Court patrols — guards knocking on doors, dragging people out. Someone's stirred up a hornet's nest."
"Hakan and Elif —"
"Gone. The apartment reeks of old magic. Shadow magic, but not his kind. Something fouler. Older." Her ears flattened. "Whatever took them, it was fast."
I looked down at the ring still in my hand. Melo sniffed at it.
"That's Milan's," she said. "He never takes it off. Whatever happened here, it happened fast and it happened hard."
I closed my fingers around the ring. It was still warm. I slipped it into my pocket without knowing why — instinct, maybe, or the need to hold onto something that belonged to someone who loved Hakan when the rest of the world was trying to destroy him.
Before I could respond, the air in the center of the room began to shimmer.
Melo's hackles rose. "Get back."
A tear opened in reality—darkness pouring through like water through a crack in a dam. And then a figure stumbled out, collapsing to his knees on Elif's worn carpet.
Milan.
He looked terrible. His dark hair had come loose from its tie, hanging around a face that was ash-gray and sheened with sweat. His clothes were torn, and there was blood on his hands, though I could not tell if it was his own.
"Milan!" I rushed to his side, catching his shoulders before he could fall further. "What happened? Where are Hakan and Elif?"
He looked up at me, and his eyes were wild, unfocused. "The portal. I opened a portal — the guards were at the door, Serkan's decree — I was taking them to a waystation between realms." He shook his head, pressing his palm to his temple. "We stepped through. All three of us. But something was waiting on the other side. The darkness — it grabbed them and threw me back. Sealed the portal behind me before I could —" His hands clenched. "I've been trying to reopen it for hours. I can't get through. Whatever took them, it's stronger than anything I've ever felt."
"Who took them?"
"I don't know. But the magic — it was old. Ancient. The kind of power that belongs to gods, not men." His gray eyes found mine, and the fear in them was something I'd never seen from Milan before. "Ada, they have Hakan and Elif. And I can't reach them."
"Breathe." I gripped his shoulders harder, forcing him to focus on me. "Milan. Breathe."
He sucked in air, his hands trembling. "Something took them, Ada. Something intercepted my portal and took themsomewhere else. I've been trying for hours to trace the path, but it's like they vanished into —"
Melo circled him once. Stopped. Her hackles rose so fast it looked like a wave passing through her fur.
