Varessia stood by the fireplace, though there was no wood burning. Instead, thick, inky shadows pooled in the hearth, drifting like liquid smoke. They were the source of the radiating a chill that seeped into the bones.
She wasn’t wearing much. She looked as though she had just emerged from a bath, draped in a silk robe the colour of falling snow, tied loosely at the waist. It was casual, intimate, and calculated to disarm.
She turned slightly, the light catching the sharp, aristocratic line of her jaw and the spill of silvery-black hair that gleamed like polished obsidian. Back then, a creature like this—flawless, luminous, radiating that terrifying grace—would have brought me to my knees. I would have looked into those ice-pale eyes and mistaken their shine for warmth.
Now, I just saw the predator beneath the porcelain. Her beauty was camouflage.
The air around Korenth exerted a crushing static force that demanded you kneel. Varessia operated on a different spectrum. As I watched, the shadows at her feet uncoiled like oil in water, defying gravity to lick at the hem of her robe. Her power moved as a tide—fluid and drowning.
“Korenth had instructions,” I said, staying near the door. I didn’t want to walk deeper into this trap.
“Korenth always has instructions.” She turned, a glass of clearliquid in her hand. “He thinks he is the architect of this city. He forgets he is simply the landlord.”
She looked at me. Her eyes were luminous violet, filled with a terrifying, archaic intelligence.
“Come in, Riven. Stop hovering. You used to like this view.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Was it?” She smiled. “It feels like yesterday.”
I forced myself to walk into the room. Every step was a push against a strong wind. The memories here were visceral—lessons on control that always ended with me drained and her revitalised.
“I have work to do, Varessia. The police?—“
“The police can wait.” She set her glass down on a crystal table. “I want to talk about the surge.”
She moved towards me. The air around her darkened, shadows bleeding from her skin to stain the light.
“A couple of days ago,” she whispered. “In the Old Quarter. A flare of pure light.”
“It was a disruption,” I said, keeping my voice bored. “Korenth thinks it was a leak in the Lows. He’s worried about exposure.”
“Korenth is a fool,” she snapped, the mask slipping for a fraction of a second. “He thinks about containment. I think about potential.”
She stepped into my personal space. The cold intensified, biting through my coat. The shadows on the floor lengthened, stretching towards my boots.
“That was a call, Riven. Someone out there woke up. Someone powerful enough to crack the foundation of this city.”
She reached out. She didn’t touch me physically. She struck with her mind.
A needle of ice pierced my mental defences. Invasive. Heavy. She was drilling for a reaction. She wanted to know if I had felt the surge, if it resonated with the dark power I kept buried.
She wanted to know if I was hiding something.
My instinct was to lash out. To shatter her hold with a blade of my own power. But I couldn’t. If I used the old strength, she wouldrecognise the frequency. She would know I was no longer the broken thing she discarded.
So I did the harder thing. I endured it.
I grunted, gritting my teeth as the strain built behind my eyes. I pulled my shields tight, wrapping my core in layers of grey static—the guise of a standard, useful soldier. I hid the vault and showed her the empty room. If she broke through, she would see the power I hid. Worse, she would seep into the cracks of my will like she used to, dulling the edges of my resistance until I forgot the reason I left. I would become hers again—a willing devotee, enslaved by my own compromised mind. That stood as a fate worse than the lab table.
“Still so guarded,” she murmured, her hand hovering inches from my chest. Shadows tightened around her wrist, seeking entry. “What are you hiding? A decade ago, you used to let me see everything.”
“A decade ago,” I grated out, fighting the urge to drop to my knees, “I didn’t know any better.”
She smiled. It was a small, cruel thing. “You were sweeter then. Less… scar tissue.”
She pushed harder. The chill turned to a blistering freeze. She was testing my limits, seeing how much force it took to crack the shell.
