Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Selene
Riven and I were still standing in the dim light of my living room when a fist hammered against the front door, rattling the frame in its casing.
“Selene! Open up!”
Riven tensed instantly, his posture shifting from exhaustion to defence. I waved him down.
“It’s Dane,” I said.
I unlocked the door and threw it open. Dane stood in the hallway, chest heaving, his face pale and slick with rain. He looked ready to kick the door down.
“You were supposed to be thirty minutes,” he growled, pushing past me into the flat. “It’s been an hour. I thought he—“
He stopped dead in the centre of the living room. His eyes landed on Riven, leaning calmly against the table, hands resting on the wood.
Uncuffed.
Dane turned on me, his amber eyes flashing. “You took the cuffs off?”
“He’s not the enemy, Dane,” I said, closing the door and locking it again. “Sit down. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Dane ignored the chair. He leaned against the wall, favouring his spine, and glared at Riven.
“I was about to come get you,” I said, pulling my phone out. “But since you’re here, let’s find out what is happening at the station.”
The screen seemed too bright in the dim room. I hit the call button for Mira and set the phone on the table. It rang once. Twice.
“Selene?” Her voice sounded exhausted over the station's background chaos.
“Is she booked?” I asked, bypassing pleasantries.
A ragged sigh crackled through the speaker. “She’s gone, Selene.”
Dane leaned over the table, his jaw locking. “What do you mean, gone? We had the warrant.”
“The ACD intervened,” Mira said, her voice thick with frustration.
“Morrow sent a legal team. They claimed jurisdiction over the evidence because of the ‘Magical Contraband’ clause. Without the body, the corporate manslaughter charge didn’t stick.
Her lawyers argued it was a workplace accident, and the Council backed them. ”
“They quashed the warrant,” I said flatly.
“They walked her out the front door twenty minutes ago,” Mira confirmed. “I’m sorry, Selene. Vance nearly punched the lawyer, but they’re untouchable.”
I ended the call. The screen went black.
Dane slammed his hand against the wall. “We had her.”
I walked to the window, staring out at the wet pavement below. “Morrow protected her. Just like he protected the evidence from the docks,” I said, the words tasting like ash.
“They operate above the law,” Riven said from the table, his voice etched with a tired certainty. “Because in this city, they write the law.”
I turned to look at him. “Korenth told me she’d be out before the ink dried,” I admitted. I touched my pocket; the badge felt like a useless piece of tin. “We can’t arrest them.”
“So what do we do?” Dane asked, his amber eyes catching mine. “If the law protects them, and a direct assault on Highspire starts a war…”
“The plan changes,” Riven said, standing up. “The police can’t stop this because they are looking for a killer. The Calysteri abductions, the drained bodies—that was just the setup. They were treating civilians like test subjects to create prototypes.”
“Prototypes for what?” I asked, dread coiling in my stomach.
“Empty shells kept in the sub-basement,” Riven said. “Korenth is done moving his pieces into place. Now, he is clearing the board for the opening. He mentioned the timeline this morning. We have seven days.”
“Seven days until what?”
“Until the Eclipse of the Shattered Dawn.”
The words hit me with a jolt of recognition. My hand dropped to the kit bag resting against the sofa, feeling the hard spine of the volumes through the canvas.
“The book,” I said, my mind flashing back to the study at Duskfall Manor. “The volume you gave me. The Echoes of Shattered Dawn.”
“Your mother wrote the history,” Riven said. “Korenth is trying to write the finale.”
“What does it mean?” Dane asked.
“I don’t know the mechanics,” Riven admitted, frustration tightening his jaw. “But Korenth spoke of it as a celestial alignment. A window of opportunity. He intends to use the canister of Eamon’s magic as the ignition source to tear open a Rift when that alignment peaks.”
“A Rift to where?” I asked.
“To whatever hell Korenth plans to let in,” Riven said. “The augmented soldiers are the infantry. Quinn Tower’s sub-basement holds something worse—empty shells he created to be filled once that door opens.”
Nausea hit me. They bled Eamon dry to power the end of the world. “We know when,” I said. “But we have no idea how to stop it, let alone close a Rift we don’t understand.”
“We need intel,” Riven said. “We need to know exactly what this Eclipse is.”
He looked at me, his gaze intense.
“The books,” he said. “Liora’s research. They are at the Manor. There are diagrams there, Selene. Star charts. Translations I couldn’t finish.”
“You think the answer is in there?”
“I think your mother knew exactly what Korenth was planning over twenty years ago,” Riven said. “And she left instructions on how to stop it.”
“Then we go to your house,” I decided. “We tear those books apart until we find a weakness.”
Dane pushed off the wall. “I’m driving.”
“No,” Riven said.
He looked at Dane. His gaze held no hostility, yet a cold, impenetrable barrier remained.
“You are not coming to the Manor.”
Dane bristled, his hands curling into fists. “I’m her partner.”
“And that is my home,” Riven said quietly.
He just refused, offering no explanation or excuse. I looked at him, seeing the way his shoulders were set, the protective tension radiating off him. He guarded that house like a fortress. It was the only place in the world that was truly his, and he didn’t trust easily.
Dane opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off.
“It’s ok, Dane.”
I reached out and put a hand on Dane’s arm. Beneath the wool of his jacket, the muscle was trembling. The adrenaline from the extraction had faded, leaving him grey-faced and stiff. He was running on fumes and stubbornness.
“I can fight,” he insisted, though his voice was thin.
“Not tonight,” I said softly. “Look at me.”
He turned, his amber eyes full of frustrated loyalty.
“You just walked out of a hospital bed with a spine that is barely knit together. If you come with us, you’ll collapse before we even get to the place.”
“I’m not leaving you with him,” Dane growled, shooting a glare at Riven.
“I know,” I said. “But I need you here. If we all disappear now, Morrow will send a manhunt. He’ll think we’re regrouping for an attack.”
I squeezed his arm.
“I need a ghost, Dane. No one saw you at the tower. As far as Morrow knows, you’re still recovering.”
“Go home. Call Mira. Help her draft the appeals. You know the regulations better than anyone—find the loopholes she missed. Coordinate the legal push from your flat so it looks like I’m the one burying them in paper.
Let Morrow think we’re bogged down in bureaucracy while Riven and I find the answer. ”
Dane hesitated. He saw the logic. He hated it, but he saw it.
“You’re sidelining me,” he muttered.
“I’m placing my rearguard,” I corrected. “I can’t watch my back if I’m worried about you passing out in the passenger seat. And if things go wrong, I need someone on the outside who isn’t burned.”
I held his gaze.
“I will call you every six hours. If I miss a check-in, you send the cavalry. Deal?”
Dane let out a long breath, the fight draining out of him. He looked at me, then at Riven.
“Deal,” he said. He pointed a finger at Riven. “If she misses a check-in by five minutes, Ashborne, I’m coming for you. And I won’t bring a warrant.”
“Understood,” Riven answered.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We walked out of the flat and down the narrow stairs. The street was cold.
Dane walked to his car. He watched us for a moment longer, then drove away, the taillights disappearing into the gloom of the Old Quarter.
“My car is around the corner,” I said, pulling my keys from my pocket.
Riven nodded. He fell into step beside me, silent and watchful, as we walked towards the only lead we had left.
The drive to Seacliff Row was quiet, the engine’s hum the only sound in the dark car.
I kept my eyes on the road, the headlights cutting through the mist clinging to the coast, but my mind remained stuck on the things Riven had said before we left Dane.
“Back at the flat,” I said, breaking the silence. “You said, that my mother knew what Korenth was planning.”
Riven stared out the passenger window, his profile sharp against the passing streetlights.
“She wrote the books,” he said. “The dates align. She was researching the resonance and the alloy right when Korenth was building his first facility.”
“But how do you know that?” I asked. “You said you only found the books recently. How do you know what Korenth was doing two decades ago?”
Riven didn’t answer immediately. The quiet stretched between us, thick and brittle.
“Because I was there,” he said finally. His voice was devoid of emotion, which somehow made it worse.
I glanced at him. “You were working for him back then?”
“No,” Riven said. “I was ten years old. I was a specimen, Selene.”
I gripped the wheel, my pulse spiking as I fought to keep the car on the road.
“What happened back then?” I whispered.
He turned to look at me. His eyes were dark, the magic swirls moving sluggishly.
“From what I can piece together, Korenth has been trying to bridge the gap for a long time,” he said.
“Twenty-three years ago, he didn’t have Eamon.
He didn’t have the infrastructure he has now.
He just had a theory that he could tear the veil if he had enough power to pry it open, and an anchor strong enough to hold it. ”
He touched the centre of his chest, absentmindedly rubbing the spot where the tattoo covered his scar.
“Back then, he used me.”
“He tried to reap you,” I said, the horror of it settling in my gut.
“He tried to siphon me,” Riven corrected. “I’m not sure what exactly he was planning, but he tried to empty my magic.”
He stared out at the passing streetlights.