Chapter 6 #2
My breath knotted in my throat.
Riven Ashborne.
He stood silhouetted in a thin spill of light from the next aisle.
One hand rested on a shelf, the other held an open book.
His head was bowed in concentration, black hair tied back, catching the dim glow.
His profile was angular, his posture holding a stillness that made the surrounding air feel chaotic by comparison.
A jolt went through me—not just anger, not just danger. Something deeper. A pressure that was almost… familiar. My mark gave a hard, warning spike of heat. The scar knew him even if I didn’t want to.
I slowed, muscles locking up. I was unarmed—Archives rules—but my body reacted as if I were cornered. Though, looking at him, I doubted a weapon would help against whatever Umbrakynn skills he had anyway.
I started moving. Slow. Careful. One quiet step after another, using the towering shelves as cover. My heart hammered against my ribs. Catch him. Confront him. Make him explain why the shard vanished the moment he appeared.
He closed the book with a soft thud. He remained focused on the shelf, his gaze never wavering as he turned into the next aisle.
I surged forward, abandoning stealth, reaching the corner in three strides and swinging around it, ready to corner him.
The aisle was empty.
I skidded to a halt, boots squeaking on the floorboards.
“What?” I whispered.
It was impossible. The aisle was twenty metres long. There were no doors. No alcoves. Just an unbroken canyon of books. He should have been there. I should have seen his back. I should have heard his footsteps retreating on the creaky wood.
But there was nothing.
Dead air. Not the quiet of a library, but a vacuum—an unnatural muting of the world. I held my breath, straining my ears for the slightest sound—a footstep, a shifting stance, even the rustle of fabric.
I stepped forward, the hair on my arms standing up. The gloom at the far end of the row wasn’t sitting right. It looked… viscous. Like ink spilled in water, unravelling and dissolving into the floorboards as I watched.
My breath hitched. I turned in a slow circle, scanning the narrow gaps between stacks. The magic around me buzzed, low and insistent. Frustration clawed up my spine. Where the hell did he go?
I faced the empty space where he’d stood, pressing my palm to the ache under my collarbone. The sensation intensified, curling like a smoke ring around my throat.
Then, the air directly behind me dropped ten degrees.
“Looking for something, Detective?”
The voice was right at my ear—lethal as a blade.
My head snapped up. My breath caught. I spun around.
He was there, behind me, standing right inside my personal space, so close our arms nearly touched.
He held a closed book loosely in one hand, his posture infuriatingly relaxed for someone who had just materialised from the shadows.
Up close, the terrifying blur from the station resolved into something dangerously specific.
He was taller than me by a few inches, lean but clearly muscular beneath a charcoal suit that fit with irritating perfection.
Jet-black hair was pulled back severely from his face, highlighting high cheekbones and a short, dark beard that framed a jawline cut from stone.
Under different circumstances—if he weren’t Highspire property and if his proximity didn’t make my shoulder scream in agony—I might have lingered on the view.
He was striking, possessing a lethal sort of elegance that usually caught my eye.
But right now, the attraction was an unwanted complication, a confusing layer of heat beneath the warning bells ringing in my head.
His pale blue eyes were glass, unreadable, locking onto mine with an intensity that made the air around him shiver.
He watched me. I watched him. The air thinned until it felt like we were standing inside a held breath.
“You,” I managed, steady despite the tremor in my chest. “You’re here for the Silverite. Just like at HQ.”
A flicker—a ghost of a smile. Cold. Controlled. “A shared interest, then. A pursuit.”
“A shared problem,” I corrected. “We’re working a murder case, Mr. Ashborne. Not a research thesis.”
“Of course.” His gaze dipped to the book in his hand. “Though in this instance, research and murder appear… connected.”
I looked at the spine. The leather was ancient, the gold lettering worn.
The Echoes of Shattered Dawn - Fragments and the Metals That Caught the Light by Arin Brightleaf.
Arin Brightleaf. The author Aelira hinted at.
“What did you find?” I demanded, reaching for the book.
He shifted. Subtle. Swift. Just enough to put it out of reach.
“That would undermine my own efforts, wouldn’t it, Detective?”
“I’m not interested in your games,” I kept my voice dead level. “A woman is dead. Her magic was drained. And the only physical clue we had disappeared the moment your name cropped up.”
His mouth twitched, something like amusement. “Are you suggesting I removed evidence from police facilities?”
“Did you take the shard?” My heart hammered. I had to hold my line. “Answer me.”
His eyes locked onto mine. Blue, flat and endless. Nothing in his face moved. But the density of his magic pressed closer, heavy and intimate. My flesh burned.
He finally spoke—soft as a blade slipping free. “My interests occasionally intersect with… disappearances. But I try not to leave anything traceable.”
Not a denial. Not a confession. Exactly what he wanted.
“The book,” I pressed. “What does it say about the Silverite?”
He glanced at the spine, a trace of something unreadable shifting in his expression. Then he looked back at me, his gaze dropping to my shoulder—to the heat there, to the way I shifted my weight to guard it.
“You look… unwell,” he observed.
The pain spiked behind my eyes. My scar pulsed. He saw too much.
“That’s none of your concern. Hand it over.”
“Perhaps another time.”
He stepped back. The shadows behind him seemed to lengthen, to reach for him.
“Stay out of the dead zones, Detective,” he said softly. “You aren’t built for them.”
Before I could grab him, before I could even shout, he slipped around the corner of the stack. I lunged after him, rounding the bend a heartbeat later.
But the aisle ahead was empty. No footsteps, no door swinging shut—just dust motes dancing in the stillness.
Shadow-walking. A signature of a high-level Umbrakynn, but witnessing the physics of it up close made my skin crawl.
He was gone. Just gone.
I stood rigid, breath rasping my throat. The static faded, leaving only dust and old paper in the silence. More than a confrontation. A collision. My hands curled into fists. He had the book. And he just walked away with it.
“You find anything?” Dane’s voice echoed down the aisle, solid and grounding after the ghost Riven left behind.
“He was here,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “Riven Ashborne. He walked off with the book I needed.”
Dane reached me, eyes scanning the empty aisle. “I figured. Felt him on the edge of things. What was he after?”
“Same thing we are,” I muttered. “Silverite. The book he had was called The Echoes of Shattered Dawn.”
Dane frowned. “Brightleaf, right? Funny—I just found something by her too.” He gestured down the aisle. “The Last Celestial Dawn. Sounds myth-heavy, but maybe connected?”
I took the book from him. Dense. Thick. I flipped it open to the back leaf, expecting a biography of some long-dead scholar. Instead, a full-page author portrait stared back at me.
It was a black-and-white drawing, crisp and very detailed. A woman with bright, intelligent eyes and a smile that tilted slightly to the left.
Ice pooled in my stomach. I knew that face. It was the face from the few framed photos my father kept on the mantle. The face I had lost when I was five years old.
“Liora,” I breathed.
It was my mother. Younger, her hair braided in a style I didn’t recognise, but unmistakably her.
My eyes darted to the caption printed in bold beneath the photo: Arin Brightleaf.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. My hands shook, the volume trembling in my grip. I flipped frantically to the copyright page, desperate for logic to reassert itself. I needed this to be a reprint, a tribute, a mistake.
The ink was faded, but the numbers were damning.
First Edition.
I stared at the year printed next to it. This book—and the image inside it—had been printed over three centuries ago.
“How?” The word tore out of my throat.
My mother was supposed to have been born, lived, and died in this century. But the woman in the photo was staring at me from a past that predated her own birth by three hundred years.
I looked at the face again—the stranger wearing my mother’s skin. The silence of the Archives pressed in, suffocating and complete. Everything I thought I knew about my mother was a lie.