Chapter 6
SIX
The Ravenholt City Archives loomed over the car park—a hulking slab of carved stone wedged between newer, sleeker buildings.
We stepped out into the drizzle. I didn’t bother checking the sky; rain was the only guarantee this city ever offered, the one promise it actually kept.
I turned my collar up against the damp chill, the cold instantly waking the ache in my flesh.
It pounded against the scar tissue, insistent and demanding.
“Meant to tell you,” Dane said, his voice raised over the sound of rain drumming on the car roof. “I pulled Thorne’s file last night.”
I stopped halfway to the entrance, ignoring the dampness clinging to my face. “Already? What did you find?”
“Not much.” He rounded the bonnet, falling into step beside me. “Most of it’s missing. Reports gone, interviews gone… half the damn thing looks like it was stripped for parts.”
A bitter laugh scratched its way out of my throat. “Of course it was.”
“But,” he added, leaning in as we reached the shelter of the stone overhang. “There was one thing left. His last known address.”
That straightened my spine. “Where?”
“Midtown Row.” He shook the water from his coat. “Old building. Might not even exist anymore, but it’s a lead.”
“Better than nothing,” I murmured. “Once we’re done here, we go there.”
“Works for me.” He swung the massive oak door open. “If anyone still remembers Thorne, we’ll find them.”
We stepped inside. The air shifted immediately. The scent of rain gave way to paper, varnish, and dust. Beneath it all lingered the metallic tang of a trapped storm. My senses prickled.
“Charming,” Dane muttered, eyeing the high, vaulted ceiling. “Bet the heating’s from the last century.”
“Let’s not insult the building until we get what we came for.”
The Main Reference Desk sat beneath a vaulted arch. The clerk glanced up, unimpressed, until he saw the badges landing on the wood.
“Morning,” I said, placing the folded authorisation slip on the counter. “We’re looking for someone who handles Restricted collections. We have clearance from Chief Inspector Hale to access specific materials.”
The clerk’s expression shifted—not quite alarm, but a healthy dose of respect. Restricted access in this place clearly wasn’t a daily request.
“Of course,” he said, smoothing the slip open to check the seal. “The Restricted Section is usually staffed by appointment only… but with this level of clearance—“ He nodded, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You’ll want Aelira Valtaris. She oversees most of the Restricted archives.”
Dane tilted his head. “Is she available?”
“I’ll call her down,” the clerk replied, reaching for the desk comm. “She’s usually upstairs. Might take her a moment. Please wait there.” He gestured towards a cluster of worn leather chairs near the stairs.
A short wait followed before soft footsteps echoed from a side corridor.
A tall woman emerged—elegant, precise, with that quiet Calysteri air of someone who had lived too long and seen too much. Pale-gold hair braided back, grey coat tailored close, and luminous eyes that seemed to take in everything at once without moving.
When she saw me, the polite distance evaporated.
Her gaze locked on, and the air between us shifted.
A sudden wave of warmth projected from her, washing over me with a vibrating hum of nostalgia.
It struck with the weight of a physical touch.
She stared at me with the raw, unguarded familiarity of a resurfacing memory.
“Selene Rowan,” she said softly. “It has been… a long time.”
I blinked. “Do we know each other?”
“You used to visit with your father.” Her voice remained warm, steady. “After your mother passed. You were very young.”
I swallowed. All I had from that time were fragments—warmth, the scent of lavender, someone humming in the dark. Nothing solid. Nothing shaped like this woman.
Aelira turned to both of us, the professional mask sliding back into place. “How may I help the Major Crimes Unit?”
“We’re looking for information related to a rare alloy,” Dane explained. “Old records, early metallurgy. We were told your Restricted Stacks might hold relevant material.”
She studied us a beat longer than necessary, then nodded. “Come with me.”
We followed her through the Public Hall to a locked iron gate. A swipe of her keycard, a soft buzz, and the gate opened.
The temperature dropped as we climbed the metal stairs, the air thickening with the scent of dust and age. Shelves towered overhead, forming a forest of old knowledge.
“This level holds our earliest collections,” Aelira murmured. “Folklore. Pre-Settlement technology. Artefacts with uncertain provenance.”
That word again. Uncertain. Deliberately vague.
I watched her profile, hunting for the hesitation or guardedness I usually found in people protecting city secrets.
Instead, a distinct current of anticipation radiated from her, prickling against my skin.
The emotion hit me clearly: relief. She carried herself with the suppressed energy of a woman who had spent years waiting for someone to ask these specific questions.
She moved with decisive speed, guiding us down a narrow aisle where the air tasted colder. Dust drifted like slow snowfall in the beam of the overhead lights.
Aelira stopped before a long row of aged bindings and turned to us.
“Your mother worked extensively in these sections,” she said gently. “She organised much of what still remains here. If there is anything connected to your investigation… this is where her traces would lie.”
A tightness caught beneath my ribs. I was five when she died. Too young to know anything about her work. Everything I learned later came from Eamon—soft-edged stories, half-spoken explanations, grief turning details into ghosts.
“I didn’t realise she handled collections this old,” I admitted quietly.
Aelira’s eyes softened, deep with memory. “Children aren’t meant to carry their parents’ burdens. And adults rarely manage to pass down the truths they tried to protect.”
The words landed heavy between us, saturated with regret. Dane caught the slip immediately. He stepped forward, his focus narrowing into an interrogation. “What truths are you referring to, Ms. Valtaris?”
She held his gaze, her expression unyielding.
“The kind that get buried,” she said, her voice dropping.
She gestured to the shelves stretching out before us, answering him with the room itself.
“This aisle contains materials related to rare alloys and artefacts whose origins are… older than our sanctioned records.”
Dane frowned, his gaze flicking from the shelves back to her. “Older how?”
Aelira hesitated—just for a breath. Enough to change the charge of the moment. “There are histories whispering beneath this city,” she said softly. “And names we no longer speak outside of stories.”
A faint chill traced my spine.
“There is… something you should know before you begin,” she said, voice lowering.
She led us deeper into the maze of stacks. The metal walkways grew narrower, the ceilings lower until the fluorescent lights overhead hummed like trapped insects. Each step echoed. The air grew denser, thick with unseen stories.
“You aren’t the first ones searching for enhanced alloys today,” she said, her voice barely a murmur now, almost lost in the hushed expanse. “A gentleman was here earlier. Quite insistent.”
My spine stiffened. Dane’s posture shifted, shoulders squaring. “Who?”
“He presented a warrant permitting entry, but no identification,” Aelira explained. “Unusual, but the seal was high-clearance. Procedurally valid.”
She stopped abruptly at the mouth of a new aisle. Identical to countless others, yet this one radiated a faint, insistent energy.
“Materials on archaic Aurathen-forged metals and what some call ‘mythic tempering.’ If the records for your metal alloy exist, they’ll be among these. The name you are looking for is Arin Brightleaf. Her books on our world’s ancient history are the most comprehensive regarding these materials.”
She gestured down the aisle. “I have other duties. Old Liora had a brilliant system, but others… less so. Any questions, you know where to find me.”
She started to turn, but Dane stepped into her path.
“Ms. Valtaris,” he said, his voice low but commanding. “You led us straight to this specific section. You know what this metal is.”
Aelira paused, meeting his gaze with an even, unbothered expression.
“I know the rumours, Detective. The name appears in the old fables, usually alongside warnings I never paid much attention to. But I am an archivist, not a smith. I catalog history; I don’t pretend to understand the alchemy behind it.
” She pointed to the shelves. “If answers exist, they are sleeping in those pages, not in my memory.”
She offered a small, polite smile, then turned, her footsteps receding into the quiet.
Dane watched her leave, his jaw ticking. “Interesting. Someone else is digging.”
“Yes,” I said quietly, a flat edge in my voice. “We’re not alone on this.”
“Right. Let’s split up. You take the left, I’ll take the right. Shout if you find anything.”
I nodded, already moving down the left side of the aisle.
The shelves stretched into a shadowy distance, each one groaning under the weight of oversized tomes. Their titles blurred: The Cartographer’s Myths of the Old World. Spirit-Lore and Ancestral Rites. Chronicles of the First Settlers.
I scanned the spines, words swimming into meaningless patterns, while the air around me grew stagnant and still, pressing against my eardrums like held breath.
And then it started.
The burn.
A sudden, searing heat beneath my collarbone drove the air from my lungs. It mirrored the moment the lift doors opened in the bullpen yesterday. Static crawled across my skin—a metallic charge that made the hairs on my arms stand up.
He was here.
A shade blurred at the far end of the aisle. Too swift for Dane. Too tall. Too… contained.