I turned to Orin, ready to ask for an update, but the words died in my throat. He was hunched over his console, hair looking even wilder than usual, fingers flying across the keyboard.
“Orin?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
He pushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead, his bright blue eyes wide, almost frantic. “The shard. It’s gone.”
My chest tightened. The shard. The one that burned my shoulder, the one that resonated with a forgotten power.
“Gone?” Dane asked, his voice a low growl from behind me. He had moved silently, mug in hand, crowding into the small space with the stealth of a predator.
“Vanished,” Orin confirmed. “I logged in this morning. Couldn’t sleep, you know? Figured I’d get an early start, do a proper deep dive before Darian’s hounds descended. I went to retrieve it, but… nothing.”
“No entry?” I asked. “No transfer record? Nothing?”
He shook his head, running a hand through his already dishevelled hair. “Cleaned. Wiped. Not even a ghost on the system. It’s like it was never there.”
Mira slammed her palm against the console. “That bastard Darian. He knew. He took it.”
“Unlikely to be Morrow,” Orin said, fingers dancing over the keys. “The wipe was too thorough, too clean. Our system logs would’ve flagged his credentials. It was… someone else.”
He paused, a frown creasing his brow. “But I did get something yesterday. Before Marcus even granted me full access. Just a quick peek at the initial forensic scan, a little back-door entry.”
He projected up a holographic diagram, a translucent image of the shard. Lines spiderwebbed across its surface, glowing with a faint, internal light.
“Silverite,” he said, pointing at a section that throbbed faintly. “An enhanced alloy. Almost nothing on record about it. I mean, we have entries for runeforged metals, rare earth composites, but this.” His voice dropped, a note of awe in it. “It’s something else entirely.”
“What is it, then?” Dane asked, gaze fixed on the screen.
“Ancient. Powerful. And largely undocumented,” Orin replied. “I cross-referenced some old-world relic logs, a few fragments of pre-Settlement texts I managed to dig out from the deeper archives. The official MCIU database is useless. Same with the Arcane Registry. Surface-level stuff.”
“So, where do we go?” I asked, hand going to the spot. The warning ache was back, a low heat beneath the skin.
Orin gestured to a series of archaic-looking texts displayed on a separate screen, all swirling script and faded ink.
“The Ravenholt City Archives. That’s where the older, less digitised records are kept. The real history. My searches hit pay dirt on a few mentions of Silverite within their restricted collections. Old stories. Obscure myths. That’s our best bet for anything beyond what I’ve already extracted.”
He flicked to another screen, fingers tapping in a quick staccato. “You two head out,” he said. “I’ll push through a separate access request while you’re on the road—nothing tied to the active case. Hale can authorise it under a historical verification query. A routine cross-department audit.”
A faint, sly smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Perfectly legitimate. And nowhere near ACD jurisdiction.”
I blinked. “You can do that?”
“It’s not illegal,” Orin said, raising a brow. “Just… creatively procedural.”
“Right then,” Dane said, pushing off the doorframe. “Archives it is.”
He glanced at me—a silent question, steady and grounding. I met his gaze, then nodded.
The Archives. My mother’s domain. A hard knot formed in my stomach. The dust. The quiet. Her ghost waiting in the stacks. Where else would the answers about things that brand my flesh hide?
SIX
The Ravenholt City Archives loomed over the car park—a hulking slab of carved stone wedged between newer, sleeker buildings.
We stepped out into the drizzle. I didn’t bother checking the sky; rain was the only guarantee this city ever offered, the one promise it actually kept. I turned my collar up against the damp chill, the cold instantly waking the ache in my flesh. It pounded against the scar tissue, insistent and demanding.
“Meant to tell you,” Dane said, his voice raised over the sound of rain drumming on the car roof. “I pulled Thorne’s file last night.”
I stopped halfway to the entrance, ignoring the dampness clinging to my face. “Already? What did you find?”
