The kitchen called, a dull, domestic counterpoint to the chaos in my head. I padded in, bare feet flinching against the lino. A glass of water sat on the counter, still beaded with condensation. Beside it lay a small slip of paper.
If your power destabilises again, call. – R.
And a number.
His handwriting was angular, clinical. No flourish. Just the stark, brutal truth of the words. It was practical and protective, devoid of softness or emotion.
But he knew what giving me that number meant. It was a lifeline, distinct from our police work. And that made no sense.
He was Korenth’s enforcer, a shadow forced onto my case to police me, not protect me. In the alley, he could have let me detonate and then arrested me for the fallout. It would have been cleaner. Easier. Instead, he had stepped in. He had grounded me. Why care about my stability? Why give me a way to reach him? The man was a walking cipher, and this sudden concern was the most confusing part of him yet.
I thought about the stalls I’d passed in the Lows. The Lycan Surge cylinders sitting openly on the cloth—dangerous, illegal, but known. Common currency for desperate fighters.
But the conversation in the private booth at The Pit gnawed at me.
Jack Preston.
He had evolved since the Graves case. The desperate kid I dragged from the fire a year ago had hardened into a brokerwho knew how to blend into the brickwork. Yet his loyalty held firm. With Toby serving out the rest of his sentence at The Reach—safe and alive because of me—Jack paid his debts in information.
He had whispered about something else. A new commodity kept off the tables. Unstable injection tools. Devices that transferred stolen magic rather than boosting it. Whispers of Highspire District. Someone upstairs enhancing guards. It clicked.
The corrupted Umbrakynn. The augmented magic. Whoever made it, wherever they were… they were powerful. And close.
An urge to act burned in my gut—to march into Highspire and drag the truth out of whoever was responsible. I crushed the impulse. Highspire swallowed detectives like Daniel Thorne whole. And despite its newfound calm, my magic still ticked.
I stared at the single letter scrawled at the bottom of the note. R.
He worked for them. A fixer for Korenth Vhail. By all rights, I should have burned this note and run in the opposite direction. But my hands were still trembling. The magic under my skin felt like a loaded gun with a hair trigger, and the alley proved I didn’t know how to engage the safety.
If I went into Highspire alone, unstable and blind, I was dead. Or worse—I’d hurt someone else.
I ground my back teeth. Beneath the unsteady rhythm of my heart, the magic hummed a quiet, insistentyes. Treacherous. But necessary.
Sunday dragged.The pale light outside my flat faded to the bruised charcoal of twilight without me leaving the kitchen table.
My thoughts blurred into a continuous loop: the case, the magic, the man. Finally, my phone buzzed against the wood, shattering the silence.
Hospital:Dane Lennox awake. Stable. You can visit.
Sudden relief nearly buckled my knees. Dane was awake. Ipushed everything else aside—Riven, the Lows, the impossible pull of my own power. Right now, only Dane mattered.
It was fully dark by the time I reached the hospital. The ward was a muted landscape of hushed voices and soft footsteps. Disinfectant hung cloying in the air, a chemical layer masking the undercurrents of fear and hope. Room 304.
He lay pale against the white sheets, a network of tubes disappearing under the blankets. The bruises on his face were a grim purple against his unnaturally white skin. But his eyes were open. They found me. Recognition flickered. And a weak, lopsided smile.
“Hey,” he rasped, his voice a dry whisper.
My throat tightened. I tried to smile back, but it felt like a grimace. “Hey yourself.”
I slid a chair close, the plastic dragging on the linoleum. Dane’s stare fixed on me, lucid despite the sedation.
“You look… rough,” he managed, a hint of his usual dry humour in the words.
I took a quick, controlled breath. “The feeling’s mutual.”
He shifted, a barely perceptible movement, and a wince crossed his face. “The alley,” he began, voice gaining a fragile strength. “I remember… he moved fast. Faster than any Umbrakynn I’ve ever seen.”
My chest tightened. “What else do you remember?”
