Chapter 24 #2
The pack business vanished from his face, replaced by a stark gentleness.
“Selene,” he said, his voice rough.
I closed the door and leaned against it, the energy leaving my legs. The mask crumbled. “You heard.”
“The news reported a gas leak,” he said quietly. “An industrial accident. Tragic.”
“It wasn’t a leak,” I whispered.
“I know.” His jaw tightened. “And I know Eamon didn’t just ‘wander’ into a restricted zone.”
I dragged a chair to the bedside and sank into it. I couldn’t tell him about the lab. Or the Silverite. Or Riven standing next to Varessia. If I said those words out loud, I would shatter.
“He’s gone, Dane. He’s really gone.”
Dane reached out. His movement was stiff, pained, but he ignored it. His hand closed over mine on the bedsheet. His grip was weak, but warm. Solid.
“I’m so sorry, Sel. I’m so sorry.”
I stared at our hands. His knuckles were scarred. Mine were shaking.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “The house… it’s empty. It feels like a museum of a life I didn’t actually live.”
Dane squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to go back there. You have keys to my place. Go there. Drink my terrible whisky.”
A small, watery laugh escaped me. “Your whisky really is terrible.”
“Top shelf swill,” he agreed, a faint smile touching his lips.
We sat in silence for a long time. This quiet lacked the suffocating weight of my flat—it was a companionable calm. The steady, rhythmic flash of the heart monitor gradually drowned out the phantom sirens still ringing in my head.
“Eamon didn’t die in an accident,” I said, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat. “He was hunted.”
I felt Dane’s hand tighten on mine. “Selene? What are you talking about?”
“My parents… their lives were a fabrication,” I said. “He and my mother, came from somewhere far beyond the Old Quarter. He called them Aetherkind.”
I looked up then, meeting Dane’s amber eyes. They were wide with a stark, arrested shock.
“Survivors of an ancient lineage that shouldn’t exist anymore.”
Dane stared at me, his expression shifting into a fierce, protective stillness. He remained silent, meeting my gaze with absolute gravity rather than doubt. He simply gripped my hand harder.
Once the dam broke, the rest of the truth followed. I told him about the history Liora had hidden in folklore stories and the seal she had placed on me to keep us safe. I told him that the seal was fracturing, and that the monsters Eamon had spent a lifetime hiding from had finally found us.
“I’m getting out, Selene,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, predatory growl. “And then we are going to find who did this. Screw the ACD. Screw the official report. If there’s going to be a fight, then you just recruited a Varkyn who’s tired of sitting in a hospital bed.”
My throat tightened. He was ready to fight for me.
For Eamon. Despite the exhaustion etched into his face, he was already bracing himself to stand between me and whatever came next.
I kept the truth about Riven locked away.
The betrayal burned, but the confusion ran deeper.
Riven had saved me, then stood at Varessia’s shoulder; the logic was fractured.
I needed to confront him myself—to force the truth into the light—before I unleashed the wolf on him.
“Two days,” I repeated, forcing a smile. “Okay.”
The door opened. A nurse bustled in, efficient and brisk, checking her watch.
“Visiting hours are nearly over, love,” she said to me, though her attention remained fixed on Dane’s chart.
Then she paused. She looked at me, expression shifting from professional to recognition.
“Oh! It’s you.” She smiled, a kind, tired thing. “Detective Rowan, isn’t it? Good to see you upright. You gave us a scare the other week.”
I blinked, pulling my hand from Dane’s. “I… yes. Thanks.”
“You healed remarkably fast,” she said, adjusting Dane’s IV. “Though I suppose having a guardian angel helps.”
The word caught in my throat. “My father?”
“Well, him too. He was a wreck, poor man.” She chuckled softly. “No, I meant the other one. The tall one. Dark hair, blue eyes that look like they could freeze water?”
“What?”
“The day you were brought in,” she said, oblivious to the ice spreading through my veins. “He came in after shifts changed. Very persuasive. Said he just wanted to sit with you.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve been a nurse for twenty years, love. I’ve never seen someone sit that still. He sat in that armchair in the corner for six hours straight. Never looked away. Never slept. Just… watched you.”
She glanced at me, a teasing glint in her eyes. “Is he the boyfriend? He certainly looked like he was ready to murder anyone who woke you up.”
The room spun.
I remembered the feeling in the hospital. The presence in the corner. The block of ice. The sense of being watched by something ancient and terrifying.
The sensation was familiar—it was Riven.
He sat with me. He watched over me while I was broken. He was guarding me before the partnership ever existed. Before he ever touched me.
Why?
If he was a monster… if he was Varessia’s creature… why did he guard me when I was useless to him?
“No,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “He’s not… he’s not anything.”
The nurse patted my shoulder. “Well, if you say so.”
I stood up. I needed air. The questions were clawing at my throat.
“I have to go,” I told Dane.
He looked concerned, trying to sit up straighter. “Selene? What is it?”
“I’ll be back,” I promised. “I just… I need to figure something out.”
I moved through the hospital, passing the nurses’ station and the sterile, white-tiled corridors without truly seeing them.
Riven had played my partner for weeks. Then he had stood by and watched my father die. The facts were irreconcilable. I needed an explanation—a lead to determine exactly where he fell in this mess.
I clutched my bag tighter, the stiff spine of The Little Sun and the Little Moon pressing against my ribs. I needed the weight of it—something of Eamon’s to anchor me before I drifted away entirely.
I pulled the book out. With the cover missing, the first page showed only the bare title. I turned it, stopping on the second page before the familiar story even began. The dedication.
I had seen it a thousand times as a girl, though the words had always been invisible—a hurdle to clear before reaching the pictures.
For my little Spark, whose laughter is brighter than dawn… May you always remember: light is never lost. — A.B.
I stared at the initials.
A.B.
Arin Brightleaf. My mother. The story was hers.
Riven’s admission in my kitchen finally clicked. If he knew the true history, he possessed the book. He had my mother’s words locked away at Duskfall Manor, and he had chosen silence. I stepped out of the hospital, finished with fairy tales.
If Riven Ashborne thought he could silence her voice, he was about to learn exactly how little I had left to lose.
The drive to Seacliff Row blurred into a streak of reckless speed. The Manor House rose from the mist, a jagged tooth of black stone against the starlit sky. It looked impenetrable—a fortress built to keep the world at bay.
I rolled up to the iron gates. I stepped out, forced the heavy latch, and shoved the iron inward.
I drove up the path, leaving the engine running in front of the main doors.
Headlights glared against the stone as I stormed the steps.
I seized the handle, shoving the front door open with a crash that rang through the hall.
“Riven!”
My voice tore through the vaulted hallway. No answer. I marched towards the stairs, knowing exactly where to look. I knew where he kept the secrets. I reached the study and kicked the double doors hard enough to make them bounce off the walls.
The room was exactly as I remembered—the smell of cedar and ancient paper. And Riven.
He was here. He stood by the window, watching the headlights of my car cut through the fog.
He turned slowly. His eyes were steady, blue, and unblinking. He was still wearing the suit from the lab—stained with dried mud, the tie gone, the shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
“I wondered how long it would take you,” he said, his voice a low, dry rasp.
“You stood by while they hollowed him out.” My voice was completely dead. “You just watched.”
“I did,” Riven said softly. His quiet admission was utterly final.
“You knew what she was planning,” I snarled, stepping into the room. “I sent you the location. I called for backup.” My voice cracked, raw with fury. “And you brought the monster to the door. You let him die.”
“Selene—Eamon…”
“Don’t you dare say his name!”
The restraint snapped. The grief I had been holding back finally broke, rushing outward in a raw, unrefined wave. I didn’t think. I just shoved.
A blast of light erupted from my palm, slamming into his chest with the power of a battering ram. Riven flew backward. He hit the old oak bookcase with a sickening crash, wood splintering under the impact. Leather-bound volumes rained down around him, thudding against the floorboards.
He slid down the shelving, a wisp of smoke curling from the centre of his shirt where the fabric was scorched black. I stood there, chest heaving, my hand still raised.
He accepted the blow, unmoving, while his shadows gathered around him. He chose surrender over defence. His gaze was flat, drained of anything but a terrible, hollow resignation.
“Do it again,” he rasped, wiping a trail of blood from his lip. “If it helps… do it again.”
My hand trembled. The fire in my veins cooled, replaced by a sudden, sick feeling. He stood there like a penitent waiting for the executioner. I lowered my hand. I needed the truth.
I pulled the battered children’s book from my bag—The Little Sun and the Little Moon. I held it up.
“This is a bedtime story,” I said, the words feeling thin and fragile in the vast room. “A sanitised version for a child who didn’t know better. You told me you had the original text—the history she wrote for those who were actually meant to hear the truth.”
I scanned the library, the shelves blurring into an endless wall of leather and dust. The massive oak desk was empty.
I looked back at Riven. “Where is it? The book that explains what I’m becoming?”
Riven stared at the worn book in my hand. He pushed himself off the floor, leaning heavily against the splintered wood. “That one was your mother’s way of protecting you from reality. If you want the answers, you have to look at the legacy she was forced to hide.”
He crossed to a shelf near the fireplace, slid two books free, and dropped them onto the desk.
The first was bound in dark leather: The Forgotten Light: A Retelling of the Star Myth by Arin Brightleaf.
The second—its binding ancient, the gold lettering worn—was titled The Echoes of Shattered Dawn.
The same book he had taken from the City Archives. The one about Silverite.
“The first is the history of the Sparks—the truth behind the fairy tales,” Riven said, his voice dropping to a rough edge.
“The second is the connection. It holds more than the Silverite formula. I took them to understand the friction that follows us, Selene. I needed to know if your mother found an answer to what is between us.”
He drew a bundle from his coat, setting it gently on the books. I recognised the blue fabric instantly—an old shirt of Eamon’s.
“He wanted you to have this,” Riven said, his voice strained. “He made me promise to give it to you when it was over.”
The fury that had battered down his doors vanished, leaving a sudden, sickening drop in my gut. Promise. Eamon had known he would be taken.
I stared at the bundle. It smelled of my father. Of toast and old paper.
“Liora’s journal,” Riven said, stepping back to put the desk between us. “The rest of the truth. The parts I couldn’t tell you.”
He looked at me one last time, his gaze travelling over my face as if accepting the hatred there as his due. “You are the Light, Selene. Burn bright. Burn them all down.”
He turned and walked towards the shadows at the back of the room.
“Riven? Where are you going?”
“To buy you time.”
The blackness swirled around him, thick and suffocating. He stepped back, slipping into the shadow-walk, and the darkness swallowed him whole.
He was gone.
I was alone in the stillness of the manor. I reached out and touched the rough cloth of the bundle. Eamon’s legacy. Liora’s truth. And the books that explained why they had died.
The grief remained—a hollow ache in my chest—but something beneath it was hardening into something cold and sharp. I gathered up the books and the journal and turned my back on the empty room.
I walked out to the car, throwing the haul onto the passenger seat. I put the car in gear and drove away from the cliff.
The house stood silent in the rear-view mirror as I abandoned it to the night.
The woman who trusted the shadows was gone. The one driving away was going to fight back.