“It’s Dane,” I said.
I unlocked the door and threw it open. Dane stood in the hallway, chest heaving, his face pale and slick with rain. He looked ready to kick the door down.
“You were supposed to be thirty minutes,” he growled, pushing past me into the flat. “It’s been an hour. I thought he?—“
He stopped dead in the centre of the living room. His eyes landed on Riven, leaning calmly against the table, hands resting on the wood.
Uncuffed.
Dane turned on me, his amber eyes flashing. “You took the cuffsoff?”
“He’s not the enemy, Dane,” I said, closing the door and locking it again. “Sit down. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Dane ignored the chair. He leaned against the wall, favouring his spine, and glared at Riven.
“I was about to come get you,” I said, pulling my phone out. “But since you’re here, let’s find out what is happening at the station.”
The screen seemed too bright in the dim room. I hit the call button for Mira and set the phone on the table. It rang once. Twice.
“Selene?” Her voice sounded exhausted over the station's background chaos.
“Is she booked?” I asked, bypassing pleasantries.
A ragged sigh crackled through the speaker. “She’s gone, Selene.”
Dane leaned over the table, his jaw locking. “What do you mean, gone? We had the warrant.”
“The ACD intervened,” Mira said, her voice thick with frustration. “Morrow sent a legal team. They claimed jurisdiction over the evidence because of the ‘Magical Contraband’ clause. Without the body, the corporate manslaughter charge didn’t stick. Her lawyers argued it was a workplace accident, and the Council backed them.”
“They quashed the warrant,” I said flatly.
“They walked her out the front door twenty minutes ago,” Mira confirmed. “I’m sorry, Selene. Vance nearly punched the lawyer, but they’re untouchable.”
I ended the call. The screen went black.
Dane slammed his hand against the wall. “We had her.”
I walked to the window, staring out at the wet pavement below. “Morrow protected her. Just like he protected the evidence from the docks,” I said, the words tasting like ash.
“They operate above the law,” Riven said from the table, his voice etched with a tired certainty. “Because in this city, they write the law.”
I turned to look at him. “Korenth told me she’d be out before the ink dried,” I admitted. I touched my pocket; the badge felt like a useless piece of tin. “We can’t arrest them.”
“So what do we do?” Dane asked, his amber eyes catching mine. “If the law protects them, and a direct assault on Highspire starts a war…”
“The plan changes,” Riven said, standing up. “The police can’t stop this because they are looking for a killer. The Calysteri abductions, the drained bodies—that was just the setup. They were treating civilians like test subjects to create prototypes.”
“Prototypes for what?” I asked, dread coiling in my stomach.
“Empty shells kept in the sub-basement,” Riven said. “Korenth is done moving his pieces into place. Now, he is clearing the board for the opening. He mentioned the timeline this morning. We have seven days.”
“Seven days until what?”
“Until the Eclipse of the Shattered Dawn.”
The words hit me with a jolt of recognition. My hand dropped to the kit bag resting against the sofa, feeling the hard spine of the volumes through the canvas.
“The book,” I said, my mind flashing back to the study at Duskfall Manor. “The volume you gave me.The Echoes of Shattered Dawn.”
