Chapter 39
Seraphina
We were back in Old Rose—the part of the city I swore I’d never walk again.
It used to be my whole world, before Blackdawn, before I even knew what power was.
The streets hadn't changed. Not really. The same cracked pavement, the same sour smell of piss and rot clinging to alley walls.
Same flickering neon sign above the old pawn shop where people traded memories for cash.
I pulled my hood lower and kept walking. I felt Callum's shadow behind me, just far enough not to be seen as with me—but close enough to kill anyone who gave me trouble.
This place was a graveyard of who I'd been. Before the knives. Before Blackdawn. Before I ever believed someone like Callum Devlin could care about someone like me.
I stopped at a rusted steel door, tapped twice, then three fast knocks. The rhythm hadn’t changed in years.
A slide in the door opened, revealing one dark eye.
"Well shit," a voice said. "Didn’t think I'd ever see you again, Sera. Thought you were dead or rich. Or both."
"Hello, Fin."
Finley Reece. Part-time informant, full-time opportunist. He used to run with the kids on the edge of the underground—the ones too slippery to get caught, too smart to get killed. He owed me, and he knew it.
He opened the door with a screech of rusted hinges, and I stepped inside.
Callum didn't follow, but I felt him. Waiting.
"You look different," Fin said, waving me toward the back. "All... clean."
"Don’t get used to it."
"What brings you crawling back to the underbelly? You finally get tired of pretending you ain’t part of it?"
"I'm looking for a ghost."
He paused.
"Your mother."
I didn’t confirm it. Didn’t have to.
"Last I heard, she was dead. Same as you."
"I want names, Fin. Anyone she was connected to in the last year before she disappeared. If she was working with someone. If anyone saw her after. Even whispers."
Fin ran a hand over his face. "You know ghosts don’t talk back, Sera."
"They do if someone kept their leash."
He sighed and turned to an old desk, flipping through a stack of yellowed ledgers and ratty notebooks. I watched him carefully—the twitch of his jaw, the way his fingers hesitated .
He was hiding something.
"There's one name. Only came up once. Real quiet. Real fast. A meeting, months before your mom vanished. Blackdawn contact. Payment exchanged." "Name." "Harlen Vex." My breath caught. "Vex?" Fin glanced at me. "Yeah. Why?" "That’s... my last name." "Huh. Weird. Thought it sounded familiar."
I shook it off, but unease prickled at the base of my spine. It couldn’t be a coincidence—but it had to be.
"He was running ops in Prague back then," Fin added. "That’s half a continent away." "That’s where she was last seen," I said quietly.
I didn’t speak. Just stared at the word etched in my mind. A man known for clean kills and dirty politics. A name that shouldn’t have crossed paths with my mother. But if it had...
"Anything else?"
"No one’s seen her since. There were whispers that she might have been absorbed. That she didn’t die—she just changed teams."
"Absorbed by Blackdawn."
He gave a slow, grim nod. "You didn’t hear that from me."
I left without another word .
Callum was waiting just around the corner, leaning against the wall like a wolf barely leashed.
"He lie to you?"
"No."
"You believe him?"
I hesitated.
"I don’t know."
We walked in silence until we reached the car. I didn't get in immediately. I stared out across the skyline—grey clouds curling over broken buildings and old wounds.
"If she's alive... and working with them..." I whispered, more to myself than him, "I'll end her myself."
Callum didn’t say anything. Just reached over, slid his hand into mine, and squeezed.
And that silence—that steady, furious silence—said everything.