Page 132 of Let Sleeping Vampires Lie

Then his projection broke.

He did not fade slowly. He snapped out, like a candle blown by a direct breath. One second, he stood in the corner near my dresser, all shadow and malice. The next, the space he had occupied was just empty air.

The temperature rose by a few degrees.

The pressure in my chest eased.

Raven stood in the middle of the room, staring at the space where he had been. Her hand still clenched the fragment. The edges had bitten into her palm. A thin trickle of blood ran down her wrist.

“Raven,” I said quietly.

She looked at me.

Her eyes shone, but the tears did not fall.

“I am fine,” she said.

She was not.

“Give me the shard,” I said.

She hesitated, then opened her fingers. The fragment sat in her palm, slick with a smear of red. It pulsed.

I reached out.

The metal kissed my skin.

The same deep resonance shuddered through me, connecting to the echo of the other pieces we had found, to the threads of magic that knit our world together, to something older I could not name.

For a heartbeat, I felt Valerian’s attention strain toward us again, from somewhere far away.

I closed my hand around the fragment.

“No,” I whispered.

I pushed back.

Not with fire. Not with brute force.

With will.

The sense of him at the edges of my awareness withdrew.

Not entirely.

But enough.

Raven exhaled.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Vault,” I told her. “Now.”

Her hand brushed my shoulder as she passed, a brief warm weight.

“I will see you in a few hours,” she said. “Try to sleep. Both of you.”

She left without waiting for a reply.