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I've wanted men before. In dreams, mostly, in the dark where it was safe to. I just never let it be more than that.

What's new is him. A guy who barely knows me. A guy who could have anybody he wants. A guy who keeps looking at me like I'm something worth paying attention to.

Why me?

I don't have an answer.

But the more I think about it while crossing the sleeping campus, the less I can shake the feeling that the two things rattling around in my head might not be separate after all.

Ciaran Virel keeps turning up everywhere, and somehow every path I follow keeps ending with Sola. His family owns Black Chapel. They own half this city. People lower their voices when they talk about them, and the first real lead I've had in years pointed me straight at their front door.

It's probably a coincidence, but I don't believe that for a second.

By the time I reach the end of the corridor, I've already changed direction.

The library is quiet at this hour, and if I'm going to spend another morning thinking about Ciaran Virel, I might as well find out whether there's a reason he keeps colliding with the same mystery I've been chasing for three years.

Maybe I'm seeing connections that aren't really there. Or maybe the reason he keeps finding me has nothing to do with me at all, and everything to do with Sola.

The east wing is deserted, the corridor dim and too quiet as I move deeper into the building. The lamps throw weak gold light across the stone, leaving long stretches of shadow between them. By the time I reach the library, my shoulders are tight enough that I'm aware of every step.

The door is unlocked. Growing up on Düren taught me that empty places at odd hours usually mean trouble, and some instincts don't disappear just because you've moved to a nicer planet.

I hesitate at the threshold, then ease the door open and slip inside, letting it shut behind me.

The room is huge. Bigger than I expected, and somehow more beautiful for being empty. Dark wood shelves rise in tall rows, climbing toward a high vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. Long study tables stretch through the center of the hall, their lamps dark now, and above them the glass dome catches what little light the city still throws through the windows.

Somewhere deeper in the building, a door closes. The sound is soft, and it shouldn't matter, but it still sends a prickle up the back of my neck.

I shake the feeling off and head for the nearest catalog station. For a moment I just stand there, staring at the dark screen, before finally sitting down and touching it. The display blooms blue beneath my hand, illuminating the empty dark.

If I'm here, I might as well do what I've wanted to do since the day I arrived—find something. Anything.

I reach into my jacket and pull out the photograph, the edges worn soft from how many times I've handled it. I found it weeks after Sola disappeared, buried in an old article thread. Hours of searching her name, my name, every variation of our family name I could think of, until my eyes burned and my head hurt. I printed it that same week, because threads get scrubbed and files disappear, but paper is mine to keep.

This was the first thing that felt like more than nothing.

The image is grainy and cropped from some larger event photo, reposted so many times it's lost half its detail, but I just know it's her. Even blurred and half turned away, I recognize the line of her face, the pale fall of her hair pinned back from one side, and the hint of a smile that always looked like she was about to say something sharp.

She's standing at some kind of formal event, dressed too well for anywhere she should have been, with a crowd gathered around her and light catching the edge of glass somewhere out of frame.

And next to her, just behind her shoulder, stands a man in a dark suit, half turned toward her. His face is lost to the angle and the age of the image, but he stands close, near enough that nobody looking at the photograph would mistake him for a stranger.

She isn't twisted away from him or trying to escape the frame. She's standing beside him like she belongs there too, her shoulders bare above dark silk and that small, private smile on her face that I know too well.

All dark clothes and expensive light, a stretch of old stone behind them and the edge of a black sign cut off at the side of the image.

It wasn't enough on its own.

After I found the picture, I spent weeks chasing every scrap I could find. Old event photos. Local arts coverage. Public archives. Anything tied to Sero that might match what little I could see. I never found the original image, but I found enough to convince myself the photo might have been taken at Black Chapel. Enough to make me walk in there on my first night and pretend I wasn't searching for her. Enough to believe Sola might really have been on Sero.

With a sigh, I set the photograph beside the terminal and start searching.

The first thing I type in is Black Chapel, and this time, searching from inside Sero instead of from Düren, I get a lot more than scraps and dead ends. Local articles. City event coverage. Donor announcements. Enough to tell me the place is real, old, and tied to amounts of money far beyond anything I grew up around.

The deeper I go, the uglier it starts to feel. There are glossy write-ups about private performances and donor evenings, mentions of restoration grants and cultural trusts, and then the same name starts appearing over and over again.

The Virel Foundation. Virel Cultural Holdings. Virel Restoration Committee. Private patron circles.