Chapter 30
THIRTY
Selene
The hall went dead. Silence pressed against my eardrums, a ringing vacuum where the screams and snapping bone had been only seconds before.
Riven’s grip on me was desperate, his fingers digging into the back of my coat, but then he stiffened. The shift was instantaneous—from the frantic embrace of a survivor to the cold rigidity of a soldier. He recoiled, his hands sliding from my waist to grip my shoulders, pushing me to arm’s length.
His eyes were no longer wild. The adrenaline had vanished, replaced by a glacial clarity. The silver in his irises, usually drifting like smoke, was now still and sharp.
“We have to go,” he said. His voice was a low rasp, stripped of any relief. “Now, Selene.”
“The guards,” I started, glancing towards the mess of broken bodies on the landing. “If they reported in—“
“It’s not the comms I’m worried about.” Riven released me, turning to scan the high ceiling of the manor, his jaw working tight.
“The wards are shattered. The air is screaming with it. We just lit a beacon. The amount of power we used… Light and Shadow, entwined like that? It’ll bleed out into the atmosphere.
Every sensor in Highspire, every distinct magical sensitive within ten miles will feel the tremor. ”
He was right. Now that the adrenaline was receding, the magical pressure dropped, the air growing thin and brittle.
“Let’s move,” he urged, guiding me firmly towards the study door at the end of the hall. “There’s a leather-bound ledger on the desk. It contains the schematics. Grab it, and anything else of Liora’s that matters. I need to get to the cache.”
“Where are you going?”
“Meet me at the car. Two minutes, Selene. If we’re not rolling in three, we don’t leave at all.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and sprinted down the stairs, taking them three at a time, disappearing into the darkness of the foyer below.
I scrambled down the hallway, my legs feeling like lead, my heart hammering a ragged beat against my ribs. I practically fell into the study. The room, usually a place of dust-mote stillness and peace, felt violated. The air smelled of burnt copper and smoke.
I hit the desk. My shaking hands knocked a stack of papers to the floor, but I ignored the mess. I dumped my bag onto the mahogany, scanning the clutter.
Piles of volumes by various authors cluttered the space—standard histories and theory that meant nothing right now. I shoved them aside, hunting for the specific item Riven had described.
There. Half-buried under a stack of correspondence lay a thick, leather-bound ledger. I snatched it up and flipped it open. Pages of star charts, geometric ritual diagrams, and arithmancy calculations filled the paper. Liora’s usually elegant script had degraded into a jagged, desperate scrawl.
The instructions.
This was the roadmap. If Korenth was planning to tear the sky open in seven days, the mechanics of how to stop him were in these pages.
I shoved the ledger into my bag, zipped it shut, and threw the strap over my head.
I took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the protest of my bruised muscles. I reached the bottom landing just as Riven emerged from the narrow door beneath the staircase that led to the basement.
He looked different. The panic was gone, replaced by a grim, terrifying resolve. He was carrying something wrapped in thick, oil-stained canvas. It was the size of a shoebox, but the way his biceps strained against the weight told me it was incredibly dense.
“What is that?” I asked, breathless.
Riven marched past me towards the front door, kicking aside a piece of splintered railing. “Something I have kept hidden. I’m driving.”
I hurried after him into the damp air, digging into my pocket, and tossed him the keys as we reached the car.
He caught them without breaking stride. He wedged the object onto the floor behind the driver's seat, then slid behind the wheel. I climbed in beside him.
He fired the ignition and reversed aggressively, gravel spraying against the wheel arches. I just looked at him, leaving the unasked question hanging in the tense space between us.
He spun the wheel, swinging the car towards the gates.
“It’s a box lined with iron and lead to dampen the signature,” he said, his eyes flicking between the road and the rear-view mirror.
“It holds a piece of metal from my past. Korenth thinks it vaporised in the lab explosion—that the machine overloaded and melted to slag. I let everyone believe it.”
The car shot forward, picking up speed as we tore down the winding private drive of Seacliff Row. The trees were blurs of gnarled black wood in the fog.
“You were ten years old, bleeding out, and you took the heart of the machine?” I whispered, turning in my seat to look at the innocuous bundle in the back.
“I didn’t know what it was, not really. I just knew it was the thing that hurt me.
The thing that was eating the magic.” Riven’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, the leather creaking under his grip.
“I took it because I wanted to break it. I wanted to make sure they couldn’t turn it on again. ”
“And you’ve had it at the Manor all this time?”
“Buried under three feet of stone and a blood ward,” he replied grimly. “We can’t let Korenth have it back.”
We hit the tarmac of the main coastal road. The tyres screeched as Riven corrected a slide, the back end of the car fishtailing on the wet surface.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The Archives,” Riven said. “It’s the only place with wards old enough to mask the signature. And Aelira is there. She knows the histories. She might know how to destroy it.”
The road ahead was a tunnel of grey fog and dark pines. Riven pushed the speed, the wipers thrashing against the drizzle. I leaned back, clutching the strap of my bag, staring into the blur of the trees.
We rounded a sharp bend, the headlights cutting through the gloom.
“Riven, slow down,” I warned, squinting. “The visibility is—“
A shadow loomed in the centre of the road.
Not a shadow. A mountain.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Riven hit the brakes.
The car locked up. We skidded, the rubber screaming against the asphalt, sliding sideways towards the figure standing immovable in the mist. The smell of burning rubber filled the cabin. The car shuddered to a halt, the bonnet less than two metres from the man’s knees.
It was silent again, save for the idling engine and the deafening thud of my heart.
The figure stood immovable in the sweeping rain. Water streamed off his long, tattered coat, and his broad shoulders seemed to block out the rest of the road. He was colossal, holding a stillness that felt older than the forest around him.
Riven slumped back in his seat. He released the wheel, let out a long, defeated exhale, and killed the engine.
“Who’s that?” I asked, my hand instinctively dropping to the door handle, ready to run. “Is it one of Korenth’s?”
Riven stared through the rain-streaked windshield. The man in the road tilted his head, his dark eyes catching the glare of the headlamps.
“No,” Riven whispered. “It’s Goran.”
Riven opened the driver’s door and stepped straight into the storm. He held his hands raised slightly, palms open—a gesture of surrender I’d never seen him make.
I scrambled out after him, adjusting my bag against the extra bulk of the ledger. Goran held his ground, ignoring the blinding headlights and the biting rain. He watched Riven come.
“You’ve grown,” Goran said. His voice was a low rumble, deeper than the thunder rolling off the coast. “Since the last time I saw you.”
Riven stopped a few feet away, rain plastering his hair to his skull. A faint, crooked smile touched his lips—a familiar, weary expression.
“And you haven’t changed a bit,” Riven replied. “Same old brooding wolf.”
Goran stared. His black eyes shifted to me, dark and unreadable.
He watched me with a slow, cold focus, as if deciding whether I was worth the space I occupied.
I braced for an attack, my magic pressing hot against my veins, demanding an outlet.
I glanced at Riven, waiting for the shadows to bleed from his fingers the second the man twitched.
Riven remained perfectly still, his stance completely relaxed.
Then Goran looked past us, up the winding road towards the Manor.
“The wards are shattered,” he said flatly. “You lit the sky up, boy. They’ll be here in minutes.”
“I know,” Riven said.
“Then we move.” Goran turned, his coat swirling around his boots. “Hide the car. The side track, past the pines. It’s overgrown, but it will hold.”
Riven returned to the driver’s seat without a second of hesitation. He steered the car off the road, forcing it through a dense thicket of gorse until the branches swallowed the chassis. The headlights cut out, plunging us into grey gloom.
I stood on the verge, clutching my bag tight against the rain to protect the books inside. Goran waited beside me, silent and solid as a rock formation. I kept my guard up, but I let Riven take the lead.
Riven emerged from the brush a moment later, the iron box locked in his arms.
Goran turned immediately to a gap in the old hedge and marched through, expecting us to keep up.
“We should follow him,” Riven said, his voice low.
We plunged into the dark. The path was narrow, an animal trail through wet bracken and stinging nettles. We moved fast, slipping on the mud. Goran set a punishing pace, silent as a ghost despite his bulk.
He led us away from the cliffs, cutting inland towards a cluster of derelict outbuildings that belonged to a farm long since reclaimed by the sea mist.
He stopped in front of a small, stone shed. The roof was caved in; the door hung off one hinge. It looked like a ruin.
Goran crossed the threshold. Riven moved to follow, but I stopped, taking a defensive stance.
“Wait.” I planted my feet on the wet grass.
Riven froze, half-turned. “Selene?”