“Riven Ashborne,” Dane said quietly. “He’s a Private Consultant. Highspire property.”
“Consultant?” I repeated, the word tasting like bile. “Consulting on what?”
“No one knows for sure,” Dane said, his voice grim. “Rumour has it he answers directly to Korenth Vhail. But whatever his job title is… he’s dangerous.”
Korenth Vhail. The name carried the weight of the city’s tallest towers. He was the architect of Highspire, the man who dictated the atmospheric pressure of the city’s power. He ran the district as the source of its gravity. In Ravenholt, Vhail was the absolute power—the shadow that eclipsed everything else.
This man—this consultant—was his hand. He was the blade sent to do Vhail’s bidding and manage the containment of Highspire’s secrets. As the primary instrument of Vhail’s will, he was dangerous and untouchable.
An icy prickle of static moved across my skin, a warning shot fired from my marrow. Riven Ashborne. The name meant nothing, yet my heartbeat spiked again.
“I’ve never seen him before,” I murmured, rubbing the ache in my chest where the strange feeling was still buried. “Not here.”
“He comes and goes,” Dane said, watching the closed door. “Shadows the ACD on the high-profile cases. Usually standsin the back, doesn’t say a word. Easy to miss if you aren’t looking for him. I guess that’s part of his Umbrakynn charm.”
I shook my head, as if that could dislodge the lingering burn. The pull was still there, a ghost tether stretching through the closed door of the Chief’s office, vibrating with a frequency that felt exactly like my own heartbeat.
Coincidence. It had to be. Because the alternative—the one I couldn’t let myself think about—was something I was entirely unready to face.
FOUR
The exhaustion hit the moment I shut the front door behind me—a suffocating collapse of the scaffolding holding me upright. The house was silent, Eamon not yet home, but the residue of the day’s violence clung to my skin like a film I couldn’t wash off fast enough.
The hallway of my Dad’s house was narrow, smelling of lemon polish and the still, heavy air of a place that had remained unchanged for decades. To my left, the living room and dining area stretched back towards the kitchen, a layout I could navigate blind. It was a home maintained with a detective’s obsessive precision, yet every piece of furniture showed its age. He had retired overnight ten years ago, coming home with a crushed right hand and claiming a botched raid meant he was getting too old for active duty, but the rigid habits of the job had never left him. The velvet on the high-backed armchairs was worn smooth at the armrests, and the dining table bore the faint scratches and rings from years of files and cold tea. This was the house where Eamon had raised me since I was five, a space where time seemed to have stopped. Every frame on the mantle and every cushion on the sofa sat exactly where it had been when I moved out.
The physical toll of the magic settled deep in my limbs, a deadweight dragging at my muscles as I climbed the narrow staircase. The wood groaned under my boots. On the landing, the weak bulb above the bathroom wavered, casting jumping shadows as I pushed the door open.
I twisted the shower handle until the water thundered out scalding. Steam filled the room within seconds, fogging the mirror completely. I stripped quickly, dropping my damp clothes into the hamper, and wiped a hand across the glass to check the damage.
My reflection stared back—red-haired, eyes dark. It was the same body I’d always had, though it felt foreign tonight. Tall, with hips that sat on the curvier side of normal and a chest that had been a logistical nightmare for uniform fittings since I was seventeen. Practicality had always been a struggle against biology, but tonight, I was just… exposed. Vulnerable.
I craned my neck to see my back in the reflection.
My gaze dropped instantly to my left shoulder blade. The scar remained exactly as it always had—a silvery web, raised against my skin. The “Great Barbecue Incident,” according to Dad. A childhood burn from when I was little. It was the story I’d told doctors, lovers, and friends my entire life. Innocent. Dead tissue.
But beneath the skin, a low purr travelled down my nerve endings. I touched it, fingers tracing the familiar ridges. Cool to the touch.
“Liar,” I whispered to the reflection.
It was gaslighting me. It lay dormant, but I knew what I had felt today. It woke up in that warehouse. It reacted to that metal. And now it wouldn’t go back to sleep.
I turned away from the mirror before I started spiralling and stepped under the spray. The heat hit like a physical blow, shocking the chill from my bones. I scrubbed at my skin, trying to wash away the metallic taste of the warehouse and the stale, coffee-stained grind of the station. By the time I came out, wrapped in a towel, the steam had softened the sharp edges of the day, but the ache remained.
My old bedroom waited just a few steps down the hall. It wasmore of a guest room now, but still mine in the way childhood things linger. The air smelled exactly as I remembered—old paper, lavender from a sachet tucked into a drawer years ago, and the faint trace of warm cedar.
I dropped my bag by the door and sank onto the edge of the mattress. The springs gave a long, exhausted groan. Everything was exactly where it had been left… and somehow nothing fit anymore. The band posters peeling at the corners. The stack of notebooks filled with spiralling doodles.
My eyes drifted to the bookshelf.
I stood before I’d decided to. Most of the shelves held what you’d expect: battered fantasy paperbacks, old school readers. But my hand went straight to the middle shelf where a small book waited.
The Little Sun and the Little Moon.
The front cover had vanished sometime during my childhood—torn off by careless hands long before I was old enough to notice. The title and author were long gone, stripped away and lost to the bin years ago. Only the back cover remained, holding the pages together by a thread. But I didn’t need the label. That story had been read to me so many times, for so many years, that the missing cover was irrelevant.
Dad always said it was one of her favourites, one she read to me whenever she could.
Liora. My mother.
