Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
IRINA
I loved this café.
The moment you stepped into the garden-ringed patio, it felt like the city exhaled a too-long-held breath and time slowed.
The light turned honey-gold, even on gray days.
Green things grew where they shouldn’t have—ivy blooming in stone cracks, violets popping up near chair legs, moss threading the bases of coffee tables.
It was a secret haven, half-brewery, half-botanical daydream.
And this morning of all mornings, it betrayed me.
The moment the café owner —Lukas—grinned at me, the air changed.
Not badly. Not entirely. Just… complicated.
“Anything for the queen of chlorophyll,” Lukas said, beckoning us to follow as he moved to make my drink.
I smiled, because I always did. He had that kind of gravity. Warm, effortless. Like he knew you, even if you’d never met.
I’d known Lukas for a while. One of those long-running fixtures of Manhattan weirdness. Sometimes behind the counter. Sometimes absent for weeks. But always charming, always present when it mattered. I never asked what his deal was because I already knew he’d never give a straight answer.
Today, though—today he radiated a very different sort of intensity.
And Graven?
Graven had gone utterly still.
Not visibly so much as the way he watched Lukas now, like he was cataloging every breath, every shift in posture. It was the same way birds watch a snake in the grass.
The puppy noticed too. His hackles didn’t rise, exactly. But he planted himself firmly between them and refused to move. Every time Lukas leaned forward even a little, the dog repositioned.
That would’ve made me laugh any other day. Instead, it just unsettled me more.
“Cinnamon oat latte,” Lukas said, setting the mug down in front of me with a flourish.
He didn’t even ask. He just knew.
And then his eyes cut to Graven, sharp and assessing. “And for your… friend?”
Graven didn’t smile. “Black. Hot. No additives.”
Lukas nodded as if that answer confirmed something for him. He turned away, but I could still feel the pull between them, like magnets trying to figure out if they were facing the right poles.
I took a breath.
“Let’s sit outside,” I said, nudging Graven’s elbow. “It’s nicer.”
The puppy followed without hesitation. Graven did too, though slower.
Controlled. Like he was still doing threat assessment.
We found a small round table near the edge of the patio, half-shaded by a twisting vine-covered trellis.
The puppy curled at my feet with one ear turned outward—alert, but calm. For now.
I sipped my drink and exhaled. The quiet was warm, but weighted.
Graven finally lifted his mug and took a long swallow, his eyes never straying far from the door.
“You know him,” I said carefully.
His jaw flexed. “Yes.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Well,” I said, tracing the rim of my mug with a fingertip. “That makes three of us.”
Graven blinked at that. Just once. But I saw it—a flicker of amusement in the glacier of his expression.
The air shifted again—less from the tension, more from the knowing. I could feel something pressing around the edges of reality. Like the world was waiting for a signal. Or a decision.
I looked at him over the steam of my drink. “Tell me something true,” I said quietly.
He frowned. “About what?”
“You,” I said. “Tell me one thing that’s real. Not Thanatek. Not myth. Just you .” I didn’t even know why I added “myth” in that request. I couldn’t quite process everything Dr. Heinritz had said and frankly, I didn’t want to think on it too closely. Instead, I focused on Graven.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward.
It was thick. Alive. While Graven didn’t answer immediately, he held my gaze for a long moment.
With a half-formed sigh, he shifted his attention to the edge of the garden, past the fence where ivy curled around black iron and morning light filtered through the leaves.
He held his coffee like a shield, though his grip was loose. Calm.
But his eyes…
His eyes said everything wasn’t.
“I’ve lived in this city a long time,” he began finally. His voice was quiet but clear, like someone telling a secret to the space between breaths. “Long enough to know the difference between being alone and being unseen. ”
He paused.
The puppy lifted his head at that, and I stilled too. Graven didn’t look at me. Just kept watching something distant.
“I used to think solitude was just a side effect of purpose,” he continued. “That when your work matters, you don’t have to explain the empty spaces. They’re just… part of the shape of things. Tools don’t get lonely.”
His fingers tensed slightly around the mug.
“But lately,” he said, “I’ve started noticing the hours more. The repetition. The way the silence feels like a weight instead of a peace. The way even the city stops answering back.”
That caught me. The phrasing.
“You talk about the city like it’s alive,” I said softly, echoing what he’d said to me earlier.
At that, he glanced at me. Just for a heartbeat. But something in that look made the ground feel less stable under my feet. Like I’d stepped too close to the edge of something vast and ancient.
“It is,” he said. “In its way.”
Another breath. He looked down into his coffee.
“I spend my days making decisions that move other people’s endings. Quietly. Sometimes mercifully. Sometimes... not. The work fills the hours. The hours blur. There’s never a shortage of need, or memory, or death.”
The last didn’t shock me. Not from him.
“But none of it…” He hesitated, voice going even softer. “... matters. Not the way it should. Not the way I think it used to. There was a time I thought that was enough. That fulfilling the function was the same as living. ”
He looked at me then. Really looked. And everything he wasn’t saying hummed in the air between us.
“But now?” he said. “Now I’m not so sure.”
The puppy let out a low breath and leaned his head against my boot. I reached down and rested my hand on his soft ears without thinking. When I looked up at Graven, my instincts told me that what he’d said was true.
But it wasn’t all.
While he wasn’t lying, he was holding something back.
Something vast and older than the language we used. Something throbbed beneath his skin, wild and insistent, like a lost current trying to surge back to its source.
Gods. Powers Monsters. Life. Death. I swallowed hard. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “For telling me that.”
His shoulders eased a fraction. “You said you wanted something real.”
“I did. I do.” I meant it, even if it scared me a little. Even if it felt like we were standing at the edge of a cliff and daring each other to jump. The moment lingered. The birds in the trees went silent, just for a beat. Like they knew something was shifting too.
Then—
“Irina.”
Lukas’s voice called from behind us. Bright. Familiar and laced with a knowing I didn’t like.
“You forgot your biscotti,” he said, holding out a small plate. He winked. “Thought maybe your friend might need something to sweeten him up.”
Graven’s expression didn’t shift, but the tension rolled back in like a tide.
This time, it wasn’t subtle.
I rose to take the plate, offering a neutral smile in return. “Thanks, Lukas.”
“You know where to find me,” he said, his gaze landing just a little too long on Graven before he turned and sauntered back inside.
I sat again, feeling like the sun had gone behind a cloud.
Graven didn’t speak, though his knuckles were white where he gripped the cup now.
The puppy exhaled and stood, positioning himself once more between the two of us and the door to the café. Protective. Watchful.
I looked at Graven and tilted my head slightly. “Still doing okay?”
He let out a slow breath. “That depends,” he said, eyes on me now. “Are you going to keep asking me things that matter?”
I smiled, even if it felt a little like standing too close to a flame. “Yes,” I said.
This time, he smiled too. I let the silence breathe for a few moments.
Graven sipped his coffee again, slower this time, like the act itself grounded him. The sun was beginning to break more boldly through the trellis above us, scattering gold over the table, glinting off his dark coat like flecks of embers had landed and didn’t quite want to go out.
I didn’t look away from him. “Can I ask you something else?”
His brow lifted slightly. “You already did.”
“Another something.”
He gave a single nod, quiet and consenting. That almost-smile hovered again, like it was learning how to live on his face.
I curled my fingers around the mug, suddenly aware of how tightly I kept holding my own breath.
“Do you even enjoy what you do?” I asked, voice soft. “The work you talked about—the decisions, the weight. It sounds like you do it because you must. But if you could choose— really choose—what would you do instead? What’s something you’ve always wanted to do… and never let yourself try?”
That got him.
He didn’t flinch. But his stillness sharpened. For the briefest moment, the air seemed to tighten around us, like a net had been cast. I wanted to dismiss the sensation, but I didn’t dare. So much I didn’t understand intellectually, yet my gut seemed to comprehend.
Graven set his mug down gently. Then he leaned back, eyes never leaving mine. His posture didn’t threaten. It invited. “You want another truth,” he said, thoughtful. “A deep one.”
“That’s the deal.”
He tilted his head, considering me like I was both a puzzle and match-flame. “Then we make it fair,” he said. “One for one. If I tell you another truth, you have to give me one of yours. Not a small one. Not something practiced. Something honest. ”
His invitation, a match for the one I’d already made, curled in my chest like heat. I hesitated, just long enough for him to notice, and then nodded. “Deal.”