Only when the grey light of dawn began to knock against the window did the fever finally break.
Riven drew the duvet over us. He pulled me against his chest, his arm a heavy band across my waist.
I curled into him, exhausted, sated, my magic quiet and content beneath my skin.
“Sleep,” he whispered into my hair.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me. The fear that had stalked me for weeks finally went quiet. I was safe.
TWENTY-TWO
Selene
I woke reaching for him.
My hand slid across the sheet, expecting heat, expecting weight, finding only cold cotton.
“Riven?”
My voice was a rasp. No answer.
I pushed myself up. The space beside me was empty. The pillow was indented, smelling of rain, static and him, but the flat felt hollowed out.
I swung my legs out of bed. His black shirt lay in a heap on the floor where he’d dropped it last night, a dark shadow against the wood. I stepped past it, unease prickling at my chest, and yanked on a pair of comfy trousers and a thick jumper.
I dressed with fumbling haste, needing the thick wool between me and the biting morning air before I walked into the kitchen.
Empty.
But there, on the counter, was a piece of paper torn from a notebook.
I’ll call you later. Stayhere.
Seven words. A clinical directive left in the space he had occupied only hours before. I stared at the handwriting—sharp, severe angles resembling carvings in stone. I set the paper down. He expected me to sit tight and wait for the all-clear. He was trying to protect me, to keep me static while he managed whatever fallout waited outside. He was wrong.
Sitting still made me a target. Varessia had marked Eamon at the station yesterday, and without Riven here, the flat offered no real cover. Waiting invited the inevitable strike. Riven understood the mechanics of the Silverite and the siphoning, but he lacked the context. He only held fragments of the history. Eamon held the rest. I remembered the shadow that crossed my father’s face whenever the past came up. He knew exactly what kind of monsters we were dealing with. He had survived them for hundreds of years. Riven was hunting the result, but I needed the cause. I had to stand before my father and extract the truth he had buried for two decades.
I dressed quickly—jeans, boots, leather jacket. I snatched my keys and headed for the door.
Riven could handle the present. I intended to fix the past. And this time, Eamon wasn’t shutting me out.
The front doorof my Dad’s terrace house was unlocked.
That was the first wrong thing. Eamon locked everything. Always.
I pushed it open. “Dad?”
Silence.
I stepped into the hallway. The air smelled wrong. The usual comfort of cedar and toast had vanished, replaced by the stench of violence—sweat, pulverised plaster, and the lingering, copper taste of aggressive magic.
I walked into the living room.
It was a wreck.
The armchair was overturned. The bookshelf—the one holding old books—was smashed, pages scattered across the floor like dead birds. The lamp lay in shards.
“Dad!” I screamed it this time.
