I looked back at Riven. “Where is it? The book that explains what I’m becoming?”
Riven stared at the worn book in my hand. He pushed himself off the floor, leaning heavily against the splintered wood. “That one was your mother’s way of protecting you from reality. If you want the answers, you have to look at the legacy she was forced to hide.”
He crossed to a shelf near the fireplace, slid two books free, and dropped them onto the desk. The first was bound in dark leather: The Forgotten Light: A Retelling of the Star Myth by Arin Brightleaf. The second—its binding ancient, the gold lettering worn—was titled The Echoes of Shattered Dawn. The same book he had taken from the City Archives. The one about Silverite.
“The first is the history of the Sparks—the truth behind the fairy tales,” Riven said, his voice dropping to a rough edge. “The second is the connection. It holds more than the Silverite formula. I took them to understand the friction that follows us, Selene. I needed to know if your mother found an answer to what is between us.”
He drew a bundle from his coat, setting it gently on the books. I recognised the blue fabric instantly—an old shirt of Eamon’s.
“He wanted you to have this,” Riven said, his voice strained. “He made me promise to give it to you when it was over.”
The fury that had battered down his doors vanished, leaving a sudden, sickening drop in my gut.Promise.Eamon had known he would be taken.
I stared at the bundle. It smelled of my father. Of toast and old paper.
“Liora’s journal,” Riven said, stepping back to put the desk between us. “The rest of the truth. The parts I couldn’t tell you.”
He looked at me one last time, his gaze travelling over my face as if accepting the hatred there as his due. “You are the Light, Selene. Burn bright. Burn them all down.”
He turned and walked towards the shadows at the back of the room.
“Riven? Where are you going?”
“To buy you time.”
The blackness swirled around him, thick andsuffocating. He stepped back, slipping into the shadow-walk, and the darkness swallowed him whole.
He was gone.
I was alone in the stillness of the manor. I reached out and touched the rough cloth of the bundle. Eamon’s legacy. Liora’s truth. And the books that explained why they had died.
The grief remained—a hollow ache in my chest—but something beneath it was hardening into something cold and sharp. I gathered up the books and the journal and turned my back on the empty room.
I walked out to the car, throwing the haul onto the passenger seat. I put the car in gear and drove away from the cliff.
The house stood silent in the rear-view mirror as I abandoned it to the night.
The woman who trusted the shadows was gone. The one driving away was going to fight back.
TWENTY-FIVE
Selene
The key yielded with a hollow clunk.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the flat. The air inside was dense and still, a stagnant tomb.
I locked the door behind me and threw the deadbolt. The gesture seemed meaningless—a piece of metal would hardly stop whatever decided to come for me next.
I walked into the living room and placed the cloth-wrapped bundle on the coffee table—an unassuming piece of old fabric holding the gravity of my history.
I peeled off my coat. Underneath, I was still wearing my jumper and Riven’s shirt. The cotton dragged against my skin, the friction setting my nerves on edge. I should have taken it off. I should have burned it.
But I didn’t.
I sat on the floor in front of the table, legs crossed, and reached out to untie the knot of the blue cloth. It fell open. Inside lay a single book bound in faded green leather, the spine cracked from decades ofuse. The cover was worn smooth in places, as if it had been held and re-held a thousand times.
Liora’s journal.
