Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Selene
The warmth settled deep in my bones, a dense, comfortable anchor. My eyelids peeled open, reluctant to trade the dark for the grey morning light. The ceiling was familiar, but the air in the flat had changed. It smelled of rain-soaked stone and ozone—electricity trapped in a bottle.
Riven.
Every instinct sharpened at the thought, a silent acknowledgement of territory. My body, traitor that it was, softened. It remembered safety. I hated that it remembered safety.
I pushed myself up, a groan catching halfway in my throat. My left side protested, but it was a different kind of pain. The scorching, alien burn had faded into a dull ache, like a bruise settling after a bone mends itself.
My magic, usually a frantic flutter or a dull annoyance, stirred beneath my skin. It was responsive. Calmer. The sheer normalcy of it unnerved me.
Flashes hit me, not of pictures, but of sensations.
First, the headache—a blinding, white-hot spike of pressure behind my eyes that threatened to split my skull.
Then Riven’s hand, hard and cool, pressing against my chest. My own hand flat against his heart, feeling the fast beat against my palm.
The jolt, a current of heat passing from him to me.
Feel it, Selene.
I clenched my eyes shut, shoving the images back into the dark corner of my mind. My magic murmured in response, a soft, treacherous purr beneath my ribs. I hated that too.
The kitchen called, a dull, domestic counterpoint to the chaos in my head. I padded in, bare feet flinching against the lino. A glass of water sat on the counter, still beaded with condensation. Beside it lay a small slip of paper.
If your power destabilises again, call. – R.
And a number.
His handwriting was angular, clinical. No flourish. Just the stark, brutal truth of the words. It was practical and protective, devoid of softness or emotion.
But he knew what giving me that number meant. It was a lifeline, distinct from our police work. And that made no sense.
He was Korenth’s enforcer, a shadow forced onto my case to police me, not protect me.
In the alley, he could have let me detonate and then arrested me for the fallout.
It would have been cleaner. Easier. Instead, he had stepped in.
He had grounded me. Why care about my stability?
Why give me a way to reach him? The man was a walking cipher, and this sudden concern was the most confusing part of him yet.
I thought about the stalls I’d passed in the Lows. The Lycan Surge cylinders sitting openly on the cloth—dangerous, illegal, but known. Common currency for desperate fighters.
But the conversation in the private booth at The Pit gnawed at me.
Jack Preston.
He had evolved since the Graves case. The desperate kid I dragged from the fire a year ago had hardened into a broker who knew how to blend into the brickwork.
Yet his loyalty held firm. With Toby serving out the rest of his sentence at The Reach—safe and alive because of me—Jack paid his debts in information.
He had whispered about something else. A new commodity kept off the tables. Unstable injection tools. Devices that transferred stolen magic rather than boosting it. Whispers of Highspire District. Someone upstairs enhancing guards. It clicked.
The corrupted Umbrakynn. The augmented magic. Whoever made it, wherever they were… they were powerful. And close.
An urge to act burned in my gut—to march into Highspire and drag the truth out of whoever was responsible. I crushed the impulse. Highspire swallowed detectives like Daniel Thorne whole. And despite its newfound calm, my magic still ticked.
I stared at the single letter scrawled at the bottom of the note. R.
He worked for them. A fixer for Korenth Vhail. By all rights, I should have burned this note and run in the opposite direction. But my hands were still trembling. The magic under my skin felt like a loaded gun with a hair trigger, and the alley proved I didn’t know how to engage the safety.
If I went into Highspire alone, unstable and blind, I was dead. Or worse—I’d hurt someone else.
I ground my back teeth. Beneath the unsteady rhythm of my heart, the magic hummed a quiet, insistent yes. Treacherous. But necessary.
Sunday dragged. The pale light outside my flat faded to the bruised charcoal of twilight without me leaving the kitchen table.
My thoughts blurred into a continuous loop: the case, the magic, the man. Finally, my phone buzzed against the wood, shattering the silence.
Hospital: Dane Lennox awake. Stable. You can visit.
Sudden relief nearly buckled my knees. Dane was awake. I pushed everything else aside—Riven, the Lows, the impossible pull of my own power. Right now, only Dane mattered.
It was fully dark by the time I reached the hospital. The ward was a muted landscape of hushed voices and soft footsteps. Disinfectant hung cloying in the air, a chemical layer masking the undercurrents of fear and hope. Room 304.
He lay pale against the white sheets, a network of tubes disappearing under the blankets. The bruises on his face were a grim purple against his unnaturally white skin. But his eyes were open. They found me. Recognition flickered. And a weak, lopsided smile.
“Hey,” he rasped, his voice a dry whisper.
My throat tightened. I tried to smile back, but it felt like a grimace. “Hey yourself.”
I slid a chair close, the plastic dragging on the linoleum. Dane’s stare fixed on me, lucid despite the sedation.
“You look… rough,” he managed, a hint of his usual dry humour in the words.
I took a quick, controlled breath. “The feeling’s mutual.”
He shifted, a barely perceptible movement, and a wince crossed his face. “The alley,” he began, voice gaining a fragile strength. “I remember… he moved fast. Faster than any Umbrakynn I’ve ever seen.”
My chest tightened. “What else do you remember?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering himself. His expression went distant, his focus fixed on a horror only he could see as the moments before he nearly died played out behind his eyelids.
“His strength… it was unnatural,” he whispered.
“It was alien compared to a shifter’s power—borrowed.
Like something was fuelling him from the inside.
This sounds daft, but… something was burning under his skin.
An energy. A constant hum. And then a throb, like a heartbeat, but magical. Before it all went black.”
Borrowed power. It aligned perfectly with Jack Preston’s whispers in the Pit—the unstable injection tools and the transfer of stolen magic. I remembered the broker’s nervous hunch and the glowing sigil burning on the neck of that fighter. It was a weapon, and it had almost killed my partner.
His words confirmed my worst suspicions, but I kept the truth buried.
I wasn’t going to tell him about the box of Daniel Thorne’s secrets stashed under my floorboards, or that the name Korenth Vhail was now written in every shadow I saw.
Dane had only just clawed his way back to the light; he didn’t need the weight of a twenty-year conspiracy while he was still pinned to a hospital bed.
I’d wait until he was strong enough to hold a gun before I made him a target.
He nodded slowly, his eyes drooping. “You going to find who's behind this?”
“I’m going to finish it.”
Dane watched me. The sedation dragged at him, but his amber eyes remained sharp, cutting through the haze. He saw the tension in my shoulders, the way I was already mentally halfway out the door to hunt down the threat.
“I’m grounded, Sel,” he rasped, the reality of the bed pressing between us. “But my head still works.”
“I know.” I squeezed his hand, careful of the IV lines. “You focus on the recovery. Let me handle the legwork.”
“Deal. But keep the line open,” he muttered, his fingers curling weakly around mine. “I can’t watch your back if you go silent.”
He understood I had to hunt. He just needed to know I wasn’t running away.
“You’re just a call away, Dane. Always.”
“Damn right,” he breathed, letting his eyes close.
I stayed a bit longer, letting the quiet presence of friendship soothe the raw edges of my fear. When the nurse arrived to check on Dane, I left.
I slipped out into the corridor, my footsteps echoing against the sterile walls. The weight of what I’d discovered was immovable, a pressure my depleted magic wasn’t ready to face. I leaned against the plaster, closing my eyes against the cloying scent of antiseptic.
Riven. He was the only way into that fortress.
The name echoed in my thoughts, stark and unwelcome. He stopped me from exploding. He grounded me. He knew Highspire. He saw the Umbrakynn in the fight pit. He understood this kind of dark magic. He had answers I didn’t. He had resources I lacked.
The admission tasted like ash. Pride burned in my throat, but beneath it lay a sliver of brutal logic.
I needed him.
My hand dipped into my pocket, seeking the note. I fished it out, the thin paper soft against my thumb. It was creased from my grip, but the spidery script remained clear. His number.
I hated that I needed to do this. But there was no choice. There was Dane. There were the victims who never made it home. And there was the creeping, unstoppable darkness of Highspire.
I glared at the crumpled paper. Riven’s number. My thumbs hovered over the glowing screen of my phone, hesitating.
Gloam Room. Back booths. Need to talk.
I smashed send, the words feeling as stale and forced as the air in my flat. He’d probably respond with a single, cryptic symbol. Or nothing at all. Either way, the message hung in the digital ether, a grudging request.
The Gloam Room was pulsing, the Sunday night crowd spilling out onto the pavement. Purple light bled across the matte black facade, a neon bruise against the gloom. Two Varkyn bouncers nodded me through, their eyes sliding over me without interest.
Inside, the air was thick with spilled drinks, cheap perfume, and the thumping bass of escapism. Humans packed the sunken dance floor, a tangled mass under the strobing lights.
I skirted the heaving crowd and headed for the back lounges. My usual spot was empty—a curved booth of muted obsidian velvet tucked deep into the shadows.
I slid in, checking my phone. A single word on the screen: Confirmed.
He was coming.
I ran the calculations again. Highspire didn’t send a consultant like Riven Ashborne for a cargo theft case. He was a containment measure.
They sent him for the anomalies. The dead Calysteri. The missing shard. The attack in the Lows where the crime scene had been scrubbed clean.
Someone had moved our bodies. Someone had erased the evidence of the surge—my surge.
A realisation settled in my gut. Eamon had warned me about eyes watching from the dark. If Highspire was hunting for the source of that power, Riven was their bloodhound.
He was placed here to watch. To control.
If he wanted to be the observer, fine. I would use that. I would position myself as the essential asset, the only one who could help him navigate the investigation he was trying to steer.
He was my way in, a clearance code with a heartbeat, and I intended to use him to tear the truth out of his handlers.
I pushed myself up, abandoning the booth, and headed for the bar at the rear.
“Selene?”
A hand touched my waist. Warm. Familiar.
I flinched, turning to find Jamie standing too close, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“I knew I’d find you back here,” he shouted over the music, grip on my waist tightening playfully. “You owe me a drink for running out on me.”
He leaned in, breath smelling of gin, his other hand coming up to brush a strand of hair from my face.
The crowd flinched. A shadow detached from the corner, solidifying into a wall of black wool directly behind Jamie.
The club’s bass continued to vibrate, but the noise vanished, trapping us in a suffocating vacuum.
Past Jamie, arctic blue eyes held nothing human.
The radiating threat made my teeth ache.
Jamie’s smile died. He jerked his hand from my waist, turning slowly to trace Riven’s height. All colour drained from his face.
“I…” Jamie stammered, stumbling back. “I was just leaving.”
Riven tilted his head, just a fraction. Run.
I turned from the bar, leading the way back to the booth. Riven followed. His weight tracked me, shutting out the club’s noise.
I slid into the velvet seating. "Did you have to terrify the poor bloke?"
He ignored the question. "Why are we here, Selene?" He crowded me, backing me deeper into the corner. His posture was an act of pure containment.
“Because I need something,” I said, seizing the moment. “And you’re the only one who can get it for me. Access. To Highspire.”
He went still. The possessiveness in his eyes shifted into calculation. “Why?”
“The stolen cargo we’re investigating is linked to your boss,” I said, holding his gaze and praying he couldn’t sense the lie. “I need to ask Vhail a few questions to find out who siphoned it and why.”
Riven studied me for a long time. “You don’t just walk into Highspire for a chat. You would be dead before you cleared the perimeter. Not while your magic is buzzing under your skin like a live wire. The wards would strip you bare.”
“Not if I’m with you,” I countered. “Take me in as your assistant. Your prisoner. I don’t care.”
“It’s dangerous,” his voice dropped.
“So are you,” I said. “But I’m still sitting here.”
A hint of something dark passed through his eyes—grim respect.
“I’ll take you. On one condition. You learn to control your magic. Properly. It’s a beacon, Selene. You’re leaking light all over this room. If we walk into Highspire like this, Korenth will smell you from the lobby.”
He stepped back, the crushing weight of his presence receding. “HQ car park at 1800 tomorrow. Be there.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” He turned to leave, pausing just long enough to look back over his shoulder. “If you want to enter the lion’s den, Selene, learn how to hide from the teeth.”