Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Riven
Rain battered the roof of the car like a restless hand.
By the time I reached Highspire, it was close to midnight. The towers cut long, blue-black lines through the storm, glowing with the sheer arrogance of a place that believed it could legislate the weather.
I should have gone straight inside. Instead, I sat for a moment in the underground parking lot, the engine ticking as it cooled, my shirt still damp against my skin.
Her scent lingered on my hands. Her magic… on my mind. I needed to stay focused, to steady my pulse, so I turned my thoughts to the books.
Selene’s voice, quiet but certain, echoed in the small space of the car. “My mum wrote this one… She died when I was young.”
And in her flat—while the water ran behind the bathroom door—I had reached for the cloth-wrapped volume. The Tides Beyond the Veil. Liora Rowan’s work.
I should have recognised the name immediately. I had spent years hunting her texts—copied editions smuggled from old archives, fragments from abandoned libraries. But I’d never seen this edition. It was wrapped like a keepsake, her daughter’s fingerprints worn into the spine.
Liora Rowan. The woman who saw the end coming.
And the other book… The Little Sun and the Little Moon.
A children’s tale. A bedtime story. But the bones of it—the structure, the tempo of the myth—were unmistakable.
I knew that story. The real tale, stripped of the smiling suns and blushing moons found in human nurseries. The one about a world breaking in half. The one about a separation so violent it tore the sky apart.
The memory belonged to a different life, buried under layers of scar tissue.
And yet, there it sat in her flat, disguised as a fairy tale.
It changed everything.
Selene remained completely unaware of who she was. She lacked the context to understand what those books meant, or what her mother had hidden in plain sight. She was walking blind through a minefield.
I had fed her a fraction of the truth in the kitchen, keeping the rest locked down.
I needed to cross-reference her coverless book with my own archives before surrendering the full picture.
Her magic was still violently tethered to her emotions.
Dropping the absolute truth on her without a strategy would only light the fuse.
She was Liora’s daughter. The variables had changed. The timeline had accelerated.
If Korenth saw what I had just seen—if he connected the stray detective to the ghosts he was afraid of—he would unmake her. He would strap her to a table and tear the answers out of her blood.
I could no longer operate on the periphery. I had to intercept the blow before it landed.
I shoved the car door open and stepped into the subterranean garage. The biting air of the underground level hit my damp clothes instantly, a welcome shock to my system. Concrete echoed under my boots as I crossed to the private lift.
Inside, the flat felt colder than the storm. Or perhaps I was simply aware of it now—the emptiness, the silence. Too much space. Too much order.
I toed off my boots and unbuttoned my wet shirt, letting it fall to the floor with a dull, sodden sound.
The memory shifted to the silence after the water stopped. I had looked up from the books to find her simply standing there, steam following her like a cloak. Her magic bloomed warm and soft around her—a steady weight that reached across the room and touched me without permission.
I dragged a hand down my face, my jaw tight.
She was dangerous beyond her power; she was dangerous because of what she was doing to me.
I got into my own shower and slammed the water to cold.
It hit hard, biting down my spine, dragging the heat out of my head. It did nothing to drown the memory. It only made it sharper.
I braced my hands against the tiles, water streaming over my shoulders, but I was back in her kitchen.
The image of her flooded my mind—water beading down the long, elegant line of her neck. The towel had done little to hide the truth of her. It clung to the full swell of her breasts and the lush, dangerous curve of her hips, outlining a body that was undeniably, devastatingly real.
She was tall—statuesque—taking up space in a way that thinned the air. And that hair… a river of dark copper, weighed down by water, falling all the way to her waist against pale skin.
I saw her face again, slender and flushed from the heat, those deep brown eyes widening as they met mine. Her mouth—full and soft—parting in a silent breath.
I groaned, the sound lost in the spray.
I shut off the water and stepped out, steam curling around me despite the freezing air. My blood had yet to settle. It was hammering a frantic beat against my ribs.
I towelled off, threw on a clean t-shirt and joggers, and moved to the window. Rain ran like silver veins down the glass.
Highspire buzzed below—traffic, thunder, neon bleeding into puddles.
Her magic had stirred something in the air tonight. A resonance older than the city itself. It struck a chord deep in my chest—a familiarity that defied my thirty-three years. I knew the shape of her soul.
It was impossible. And yet, the recognition was there, undeniable.
But it was the memory of her skin—warm, damp and within reach—that terrified me.
And Liora’s stories sitting on her counter?
No. No coincidence.
Selene Rowan was the key. And if I was right—if she was what I suspected—then the storm outside was nothing compared to what was coming for her.
For all of us.
Next morning, I sat at the kitchen island, a mug of cold coffee forgotten near my hand. The rain had stopped hours ago, leaving behind a weak Sunday sunrise that bled through Highspire’s towers, painting the chrome and glass in shades of sterile grey.
My flat was a mausoleum. Too quiet. Too empty without the ghost of her warmth.
A violent plunge in temperature sucked the heat from the room. The shadows in the corners lengthened, stretching inward like oil on water.
Varessia.
I didn’t move to the door. There was no point. The lock clicked open with a snap of metal, bypassing the biometric wards, treating them like polite suggestions rather than security measures.
She stood there, framed by the pale morning light, silver-black hair gleaming, her tailored suit dark as obsidian.
She walked inside.
The clack of her high heels struck the floor with a slow, measured rhythm. She moved with a clinical, lethal elegance.
“Riven,” she purred. “You really shouldn’t rely on locks. They give such a false sense of safety.”
She moved to the living area, running a hand along the back of my leather sofa. The shadows in the room rippled in her wake, darkening the leather where she touched it, leaving a trail of frost.
“You’ve been scarce,” she said, settling onto the arm of the sofa, watching me from across the open-plan room. “Even Korenth has noticed. He thinks you’re working. I think you’re… drifting.”
“I am working,” I said, my voice flat.
“Are you?”
She stood up and crossed the room, moving into my space. She didn’t stop until she leaned against the counter beside me, close enough that her scent—winter frost and expensive silk—filled my lungs.
She reached out. It looked like a casual gesture, a hand moving to touch my forearm, but I sensed the intent behind it—a spike of invasive magic, icy and dense, aimed straight at the lifeblood in my veins.
She wanted to read me. To taste the magic I was hiding.
I forced my muscles to lock. I let the shadows beneath the counter rise—just an inch. A thin, unyielding barrier of darkness coated my skin.
Her finger touched my arm.
The air hissed, a sound like a candle being snuffed out. Her magic collided with my shield and dissipated into a wisp of grey smoke.
She pulled her hand back, gaze sharpening. A hint of genuine surprise crossed her face—followed by delight.
“Still so guarded,” she murmured, rubbing her fingertip. “What are you afraid I’ll find, Riven? That you haven’t found the source of the surges? Or that you have… and you’re keeping it for yourself?”
“I report to Korenth,” I said. “Not you.”
“Semantics.” She rested her elbows on the counter, turning to face me fully. “Korenth thinks the problem is in the Lows. Scattered interference. But I’ve been looking at the data from two weeks ago.”
My heart hammered against my ribs—once, hard—but I kept my face stone.
“The spike in the Old Quarter,” she said softly. “The residential grid. It was a beacon, Riven, not a simple tremor.”
She smiled, a slow, predatory thing.
“I’ve narrowed the search radius. Whoever—or whatever—lit up that grid is powerful. Raw. And they are slipping up.”
I forced myself to take a sip of the coffee, masking the terror tangling in my gut.
The Old Quarter—where Selene lived.
“Legacy noise,” I lied, dismissing it. “The district is full of old wards degrading. It happens.”
“Perhaps,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “Or perhaps someone is hiding there.”
She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“Which brings me to the other rumours. I hear you’ve been assigned a partner. A female detective. From the MCIU.”
She watched my pupils. She watched the throb in my neck. She was hunting for a flinch.
“Detective Rowan,” I stated, forcing the name to sound like nothing. Like dust. “A requirement of the liaison protocol. A distraction.”
“A distraction.” She tasted the word, rolling it around her mouth. “I hear she’s… persistent. Resentful. Still sniffing around the Calysteri files even after the ACD took them away.”
“Insignificant,” I corrected. “She is a tool. Nothing more.”
The lie burned like bile in my throat.
I forced myself to meet her stare, hunting for a hint of disbelief. She watched me with absolute stillness. Her smile stayed fixed, framing the cold calculation in her eyes. She accepted the answer for the moment, filing the suspicion away for later.
Varessia smiled. “Good.”
She straightened, the oppressive chill lifting just fractionally as she stepped away from the counter.