I flinched, air seizing in a harsh rasp—a physical assault on my senses.
“Focus on me,” I said, my voice dropping to a rough whisper, fighting the urge to retreat. “Don’t look at the magic. Look at me.”
She stared at me, her pupils wide, the gold in her eyes swirling against the brown. My shadows rose without permission, constricting around my wrist, grounding her light. It was an intimate, terrifying wrongness.
“Push it down,” I commanded, my jaw tight.
She held my gaze and pushed. The flare died. The light under her skin receded, dragging the heat back into her core, coiling it deep. She sagged, exhaling a long, ragged sound.
I caught her arm before she stumbled, her weight hitting me.
“I did it,” she whispered, sounding dazed. She looked at her own hands, then up at me, fear and adrenaline spiking in her gaze. “It stopped. How did it stop?”
I snatched my hand back. The loss of contact left a biting chill on my skin. I needed space. The air between us thinned, charged with a static that raised the hair on my arms. My heart hammered to an alien rhythm.
“Because you had something to push against,” I said, keeping my voice flat. “An anchor.”
She watched me, chest heaving, hair plastered to her forehead. She looked wrecked. She didn’t say anything else. She nodded, accepting the logic without seeing the reality of it.
I stepped back, putting necessary distance between us. Whatever that resonance was, it was a liability. It was a hook buried in my chest, and she was holding the line without even knowing it.
I clenched my jaw, forcing the sensation down, locking it away behind the same walls I used against Korenth. I had to uncover thesource of this connection before Korenth destroyed it. I needed answers, not complications.
“That’s enough for today,” I said, my voice raw.
She nodded, still catching her breath. We walked back to the car in silence. Her magic was quiet now, held. She had learned in twenty minutes what took me many years to master.
I started the engine, gripping the wheel tight enough to whiten my knuckles. She was learning control. But every time we touched, my own splintered. And that terrified me more than Korenth ever could.
SIXTEEN
Selene
The week dissolved into a blur of procedural monotony, a loop of grey skies and damp pavement that Marcus called ‘duty’.
We spent the mornings in the Lows, running mundane checks and monitoring black market patterns. We filed reports on ‘low-level contraband’ and made our presence known in the shadowed alleys, a visible reminder that the MCIU was watching, even if our hands were tied.
Riven played his part perfectly. He kept his distance during the daylight hours, offering a careful performance that masked how the world had shifted between us. He stood in the background, silent and observant, ignoring the charged current humming beneath the surface.
The evenings were different. The evenings were for the quarry. That was where the real work happened. Brutal repetitions under the cover of darkness, honing reflexes I hadn’t known I possessed. He pushed me until my magic flared, then taught me how to crush it back down. He goaded the fear, mined the rage, and forced me to master it.
By the time Saturday morning arrived, bringing with it a pale, undecided light that offered an apology rather than a promise, I was exhausted. But I was also changed. The brutal repetitions had forged a proximity between us, though it lacked the shape I intended. He was supposed to be a tool—a skeleton key to Korenth and the glittering towers of Highspire. Yet, as my power bowed to his instructions, that primary objective blurred. My magic, and perhaps my own traitorous mind, kept relegating the investigation to the periphery, replacing it with an inconvenient focus on the man himself.
I sat up in bed and stretched, arching my back slowly. My muscles protested just enough to remind me they existed, but the movements were fluid and certain. The persistent ache that had been my constant companion for weeks vanished.
It hadn’t twinged once all week—not during the drills, not during the quiet, tense drives, and not even when his hands gripped me to steady my form.
Instead, a hollow pull had settled low inside me, a faint twinge that only appeared when he wasn’t near. I refused to name it. I refused to think about it. It unnerved me all the same.
My magic had shifted, too. Obedient. Calmer. Almost… content.
It bristled less and answered faster. The rage he’d mined had worked. Each night, a new corner of my power bent to my will.
I moved into the kitchen, the emptiness of the flat pressing in. I hated that it was all thanks to him. I hated the memory of his blank gaze tracking every trace, every flare. Goosebumps trailed a path over my skin at the thought, not always unpleasant ones. Another thing I refused to acknowledge.
Suspicion remained my anchor, weighted by the secrets my father had spun and the brutal truth of Liora. After everything we’d endured, I didn’t trust Riven even by half.
He was still hiding something. A brittle tension snapped into place whenever certain topics arose. He avoided my questions with practised ease, deflecting with a casual comment or simplyshutting down, his eyes turning to chips of ice. He might not lie outright, but he held the truth behind locked teeth.
