Chapter 5 #2
My yesterday’s clothes lay in a crumpled heap. I snatched them up, dressing quickly while Jamie watched from the bed, propped on an elbow. No promises. No expectations. Just a mutual need for distraction that had run its course.
“Right,” I mumbled, boots in hand. “Duty calls.”
He nodded, gathering the duvet higher. “Stay safe, Selene.”
I slipped out, closing the door quietly behind me. The corridor smelled of paint and sizzling sausages—someone else’s morning ritual. It smelled like safety. Like a life where the biggest worry was running out of milk.
By the time I hit the pavement, the cool air had stripped it all away. The warmth of the flat evaporated instantly, leaving me colder than before. The human world refused to stick to me, sliding off like oil on water.
I should have felt strange, sneaking out while the sheets were still warm, but I didn’t.
I never did. I’d tried. A handful of almost-relationships scattered across the last few years, all hitting the “Three Month Ceiling.” Long enough for dinners and shared jokes, short enough that no one bothered pretending there was a future.
They were good men. Kind, solid choices. Yet, a hollow silence always settled in my chest. I missed the current—that thrilling, high-voltage buzz everyone else seemed to find so easily. The kind that rattled your teeth. The kind I only ever felt when disaster was walking through the door.
Jamie was no different. I needed a painkiller, and he was uncomplicated. But the numbness hadn’t even lasted the walk to the stairwell. There was no ache as I walked away. Just the familiar emptiness I slipped back into like a second skin.
I waved down a taxi and slid into the back seat, the city yawning awake as we pulled off.
Orin’s call still echoed in my head—brisk, clipped, urgent. We have a problem.
Work first. Everything else can sit where it always did: behind me, fading fast.
The taxi ride across the city blurred past the windows. Every familiar street, every glittering strip of morning sun on glass, felt strangely distant—like I was passing through a version of Ravenholt that didn’t quite belong to me.
My own car was still languishing at the garage, its engine having died a few weeks back in a spectacularly inconvenient fashion.
I really needed the damned thing back; maybe I should call the garage later, bully them into an update.
I missed the sanctuary of it—the faint scent of old pine air freshener, the worn patch on the steering wheel under my thumb.
Ritual. Habit. My shield. Without that steel shell, I was exposed.
The city clawed at the armour I fought to keep intact.
Inside the MCIU bullpen, the air was dense. Not with magic, but with the foreboding quiet that precedes a storm. My footsteps echoed, too loud, too early.
The double doors swung open behind me, and Dane stepped through, bringing a gust of cold rain with him. He didn’t say a word, just grunted a greeting and made a direct line for the coffee machine like a man running on fumes.
He slotted a pod into the machine and glanced over his shoulder, taking in my rumpled clothes. Amusement flickered in his eyes. He offered a wry smile—an acknowledgement that some nights are for forgetting.
I gave him a tight grin in return, then marched towards Orin’s tech bay. The door stood open, a beacon.
Mira was just shrugging off her wet coat, hanging it on the back of her chair. She looked up as I approached, her expression brightening into a tease.
“Morning, sunshine,” she said, a sympathetic smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You look like you need a triple shot.”
“Make it a quadruple,” I shot back, rubbing a hand over my face. I needed the caffeine to even process the daylight.
I turned to Orin, ready to ask for an update, but the words died in my throat. He was hunched over his console, hair looking even wilder than usual, fingers flying across the keyboard.
“Orin?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
He pushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead, his bright blue eyes wide, almost frantic. “The shard. It’s gone.”
My chest tightened. The shard. The one that burned my shoulder, the one that resonated with a forgotten power.
“Gone?” Dane asked, his voice a low growl from behind me. He had moved silently, mug in hand, crowding into the small space with the stealth of a predator.
“Vanished,” Orin confirmed. “I logged in this morning. Couldn’t sleep, you know? Figured I’d get an early start, do a proper deep dive before Darian’s hounds descended. I went to retrieve it, but… nothing.”
“No entry?” I asked. “No transfer record? Nothing?”
He shook his head, running a hand through his already dishevelled hair. “Cleaned. Wiped. Not even a ghost on the system. It’s like it was never there.”
Mira slammed her palm against the console. “That bastard Darian. He knew. He took it.”
“Unlikely to be Morrow,” Orin said, fingers dancing over the keys. “The wipe was too thorough, too clean. Our system logs would’ve flagged his credentials. It was… someone else.”
He paused, a frown creasing his brow. “But I did get something yesterday. Before Marcus even granted me full access. Just a quick peek at the initial forensic scan, a little back-door entry.”
He projected up a holographic diagram, a translucent image of the shard. Lines spiderwebbed across its surface, glowing with a faint, internal light.
“Silverite,” he said, pointing at a section that throbbed faintly. “An enhanced alloy. Almost nothing on record about it. I mean, we have entries for runeforged metals, rare earth composites, but this.” His voice dropped, a note of awe in it. “It’s something else entirely.”
“What is it, then?” Dane asked, gaze fixed on the screen.
“Ancient. Powerful. And largely undocumented,” Orin replied. “I cross-referenced some old-world relic logs, a few fragments of pre-Settlement texts I managed to dig out from the deeper archives. The official MCIU database is useless. Same with the Arcane Registry. Surface-level stuff.”
“So, where do we go?” I asked, hand going to the spot. The warning ache was back, a low heat beneath the skin.
Orin gestured to a series of archaic-looking texts displayed on a separate screen, all swirling script and faded ink.
“The Ravenholt City Archives. That’s where the older, less digitised records are kept. The real history. My searches hit pay dirt on a few mentions of Silverite within their restricted collections. Old stories. Obscure myths. That’s our best bet for anything beyond what I’ve already extracted.”
He flicked to another screen, fingers tapping in a quick staccato. “You two head out,” he said. “I’ll push through a separate access request while you’re on the road—nothing tied to the active case. Hale can authorise it under a historical verification query. A routine cross-department audit.”
A faint, sly smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Perfectly legitimate. And nowhere near ACD jurisdiction.”
I blinked. “You can do that?”
“It’s not illegal,” Orin said, raising a brow. “Just… creatively procedural.”
“Right then,” Dane said, pushing off the doorframe. “Archives it is.”
He glanced at me—a silent question, steady and grounding. I met his gaze, then nodded.
The Archives. My mother’s domain. A hard knot formed in my stomach. The dust. The quiet. Her ghost waiting in the stacks. Where else would the answers about things that brand my flesh hide?