Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Selene
The week dissolved into a blur of procedural monotony, a loop of grey skies and damp pavement that Marcus called ‘duty’.
We spent the mornings in the Lows, running mundane checks and monitoring black market patterns. We filed reports on ‘low-level contraband’ and made our presence known in the shadowed alleys, a visible reminder that the MCIU was watching, even if our hands were tied.
Riven played his part perfectly. He kept his distance during the daylight hours, offering a careful performance that masked how the world had shifted between us. He stood in the background, silent and observant, ignoring the charged current humming beneath the surface.
The evenings were different. The evenings were for the quarry.
That was where the real work happened. Brutal repetitions under the cover of darkness, honing reflexes I hadn’t known I possessed.
He pushed me until my magic flared, then taught me how to crush it back down.
He goaded the fear, mined the rage, and forced me to master it.
By the time Saturday morning arrived, bringing with it a pale, undecided light that offered an apology rather than a promise, I was exhausted.
But I was also changed. The brutal repetitions had forged a proximity between us, though it lacked the shape I intended.
He was supposed to be a tool—a skeleton key to Korenth and the glittering towers of Highspire.
Yet, as my power bowed to his instructions, that primary objective blurred.
My magic, and perhaps my own traitorous mind, kept relegating the investigation to the periphery, replacing it with an inconvenient focus on the man himself.
I sat up in bed and stretched, arching my back slowly. My muscles protested just enough to remind me they existed, but the movements were fluid and certain. The persistent ache that had been my constant companion for weeks vanished.
It hadn’t twinged once all week—not during the drills, not during the quiet, tense drives, and not even when his hands gripped me to steady my form.
Instead, a hollow pull had settled low inside me, a faint twinge that only appeared when he wasn’t near. I refused to name it. I refused to think about it. It unnerved me all the same.
My magic had shifted, too. Obedient. Calmer. Almost… content.
It bristled less and answered faster. The rage he’d mined had worked. Each night, a new corner of my power bent to my will.
I moved into the kitchen, the emptiness of the flat pressing in. I hated that it was all thanks to him. I hated the memory of his blank gaze tracking every trace, every flare. Goosebumps trailed a path over my skin at the thought, not always unpleasant ones. Another thing I refused to acknowledge.
Suspicion remained my anchor, weighted by the secrets my father had spun and the brutal truth of Liora. After everything we’d endured, I didn’t trust Riven even by half.
He was still hiding something. A brittle tension snapped into place whenever certain topics arose.
He avoided my questions with practised ease, deflecting with a casual comment or simply shutting down, his eyes turning to chips of ice.
He might not lie outright, but he held the truth behind locked teeth.
I retrieved my phone from my pocket, scrolling idly through the message thread I had been avoiding. He didn’t send them every day, only after training sessions when we parted ways in the car park. Clipped messages. Sharp. Precise.
Faster next time. Find your anchor.
Instructions, always. Never sentiment. And yet… they grounded me.
He had warned me away from Highspire this week. Not directly, not with a command. More like a suggestion. You’re not ready yet, he’d said, that low voice of his carrying something heavier than the words. He saw the instability I still carried.
Highspire had always been a place where power congregated, where people with influence pulled strings from behind mirrored glass. If augmentation was coming from anywhere, it would be there. People like that didn’t miss weakness. They devoured it.
So yes—maybe Riven was right. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Not yet.
I was stronger now. More controlled. But the emotional landmines remained. Highspire’s predators would smell that instability on me from a mile off.
My mobile chimed on the counter, breaking the thought. The screen lit up with a notification from Marcus.
Marcus: Report to ACD liaison re: Lows patrol findings. Immediately.
The message was a transparent attempt by the top brass to keep us tangled in bureaucracy. Marcus’s hands were tied; he was simply a conduit for the ACD’s paranoia. I’d compile some surface-level data to placate him—just enough to look busy while we dug into what was actually happening in the city.
My thoughts drifted back to Jack Preston. He had provided the initial whispered clues regarding the injection tools and the augmented fighters. He warranted another visit. Best to go during the day this time, when the place is empty. No need for another near-explosion of magic.
I filled the kettle, catching my reflection in the darkened metal.
My eyes—usually warm brown—looked different today.
More defined, as if the magic bleeding into my system was actively rewriting my features, dragging old storms to the surface.
That strange pull low in my belly tightened again—the one that only appeared when he was absent.
The one I refused to name.
Everything inside me was shifting, rearranging itself into something new, and the buried part of my mind welcomed the alteration.
It was daunting. Exhilarating. Dangerous.
Just like him.
By the time I reached my father’s house, the morning had turned bleak and oppressive. The familiar red-brick terrace looked the same as ever—stubborn, tired, holding itself together through the years purely by will.
I stepped inside. The old floorboards creaked beneath my boots, a sound I had known since I learned to walk. The warm air carried the faint scent of cedar and old paper.
Eamon appeared in the hallway almost instantly. He must have been waiting.
His shoulders loosened when he saw me, the tension easing just a fraction.
“You look… better,” he said. His tone was soft and guarded, hovering somewhere between a question and approval.
I shrugged, keeping my hands in my pockets to hide the tremor I couldn’t quite shake. “I’ve been resting.”
It was a lie, and we both knew it, but neither of us touched it.
We moved into the living room, the familiar, slightly suffocating warmth wrapping around me.
Everything remained the same—the worn armchair, the thin curtains, the row of framed photographs lining the mantelpiece.
I drifted towards the hearth. The first picture showed Liora, a stack of books tucked securely under her arm.
Beside it sat another of my parents; Eamon was looking at her with absolute devotion, while she smiled wide for the camera.
The final frame held a picture of me at eight years old, taken during a springtime trip to the city zoo.
The memory surfaced with a dull ache. I had seen a litter of wolf cubs that day and instantly decided I needed one.
I had told Eamon, with complete childhood stubbornness, that when I grew up, I would get a wolf to be my fluffy friend.
The dream had materialised, in a twisted sort of way. Dane was a wolf, and he was my closest friend, even if he wasn’t exactly the cuddly companion my eight-year-old self had envisioned.
Eamon sank into his armchair, the old springs groaning under his weight.
“How is he?” he asked, watching me closely. “Dane?”
“Awake,” I said, leaning against the mantle to keep my legs steady. “He’s stable. Complaining about the hospital food, so… he’ll be fine.”
Eamon let out a breath that seemed to deflate him slightly. “Good. That’s good.”
He looked at me then, the cop in him surfacing through the father’s worry. “I heard about the official report. ‘Dormant mana-pocket’. Ruptured and burned itself out.”
“It’s a lie,” I said flatly.
“I know,” Eamon murmured, his eyes hardening. “No witnesses. No forensics. A scene that clean isn’t an accident, Selene. It’s a correction.”
He met my stare, the old detective in him surfacing to validate the threat. A clean scene meant professional erasure. It meant we were living on borrowed time.
He held his ground. He knew the game, and he knew me.
I was the one holding the badge now, and he respected the weight of it.
But his posture shifted, the sudden activation of a sentry.
He stood watching from the periphery, eyes keen, waiting for a crack in my defence.
He was the fallback. If the wall broke, he would be there.
Silence settled between us. We circled the safe topics: work, the weather, Marcus’s terrible communication style. We avoided the truth hanging in the air—the thing he had told me in the kitchen, the confession that had cracked the ground under my feet.
I glanced at him. At his tired eyes. The lines around his mouth. A thousand questions rose in my throat. Why didn’t you tell me? Who else knew? What else are you hiding?
But the questions knotted together, anchored too deep to force out. If he answered… I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it. Not from him. Not yet.
So I swallowed them back down where all the rest lived.
After a moment, I cleared my throat. “The book in my old room… the children’s one you used to read me and the story written by Mum. Can I take them?”
His expression shifted—surprise, then a flash of pain, quickly smoothed away. He nodded and disappeared upstairs without a word.
Eamon returned with two books held carefully in his hands. He offered them like something fragile.
The Little Sun and the Little Moon—worn, loved, edges soft from years of use.
And the cloth-wrapped volume—The Tides Beyond the Veil. My mother’s words. Her stories. The story she left for me.
He hesitated before placing them in my hands. “I thought you might want them one day.”
My throat worked. “Thanks.”
He studied me. Worry, regret, and fear shifted behind his eyes.
I wanted to speak—to say something that mattered—but everything inside me was brittle. If I opened that door even a fraction, I feared what would pour out.
So I nodded instead. He nodded back.
He opened his mouth, leaning forward slightly. “Selene, I—“ He stopped. His shoulders dropped as the words died in his throat, the tension draining out of him. He wasn’t ready either.
“Look after yourself,” he murmured, swallowing whatever confession he had almost offered. The words landed as a goodbye. “Please.”
Something twisted inside me—sharp and unnameable. I gripped the books tighter. “I will.”
I left before the emptiness cracked me open. I stepped into the city air with my favourite children’s book and my mother’s stories pressed against my ribs, the unasked questions anchored in my chest.