Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
MORGANA
The room is a cage wrapped in luxury.
Black silk sheets. Velvet furniture that probably costs more than my entire wardrobe combined.
Floor-to-ceiling windows stretch across one wall, revealing a city that shouldn’t exist. Buildings that spiral into a bruised purple sky.
Bridges made of solid shadow connect impossible towers.
Lights glow without any visible source, pulsing faintly as if the city is breathing.
Beautiful. Alien. Completely useless for getting me out of here.
I’ve tested every door. Three in total. All locked, but not with anything I can pick. When I twist the handles, shadows writhe across the wood like living things, pushing my hands away. Not violently, almost gently, like something trying to guide me instead of hurt me.
That somehow makes it worse.
The windows are no better. They look like glass. They feel like glass when I press my palm against them. But when I grabbed the crystal decanter from the side table and threw it at one, I learned better.
The shadows caught it mid-air. Literally caught it. Wrapped around the crystal-like hands and lifted it back to the table as if gravity was optional here.
Then they dragged me back to the bed.
I fought. Obviously. Thrashed, cursed, clawed at anything I could reach.
It was like trying to fight smoke. The shadows didn’t hit back.
They just tightened around my wrists and ankles, not enough to hurt, only enough to move me, and placed me on the mattress as if I weighed nothing at all. Like I was inconvenient.
I would honestly prefer violence. Violence, at least, has the decency to admit that it is violence.
That was hours ago.
Now I’m on the floor with my back against the bed, knees pulled to my chest, trying very hard not to completely lose my mind.
Through the windows, the city keeps moving as if it is alive. From this height, the people look almost normal. Almost. But there is something wrong with the way they move. Too smooth. Too sudden. One second in one place, the next somewhere else entirely.
And then there are the elements.
I watch someone lift a hand, and fire curls between their fingers like it is answering a familiar call. Another gestures, and shadows ripple around them, bending like obedient animals.
Aethermoor. That is what he called it. A realm of magical humans. Elementals.
The word does not belong in my head. It feels borrowed. Stolen. Unreal. But I saw what poured through that tear in reality. I felt the air change when he moved. I remember the way darkness obeyed him as if it were trained.
So I cannot afford to call it a hallucination anymore.
But right now, I don’t care what it’s called. I just need a way out.
Prague tries to come back to me in flashes—the bleeding sky, the screams, the things crawling down buildings—but I shove it away. Guilt is useless unless I survive long enough to do something with it.
I’ve stolen from dictators. Crime lords. Billionaires who would have me erased without blinking and replace me before breakfast. I’ve hung off skyscrapers, slipped through security grids, smiled at armed guards while picking their pockets.
There’s always a way out. There’s always leverage.
Not here.
No lock to pick. No guard to bribe. No camera to blind. No schedule to exploit. No Marcus in my ear telling me where to run.
My hands are shaking. I press them hard against my knees, forcing stillness into them. It doesn’t work.
“Get it together, Bellamy,” I mutter. My voice sounds wrong in the silence. Too small. Too contained. “You’ve been in worse situations.”
The laugh that follows is sharp and humorless. I swallow it before it turns into something worse.
The door opens.
I’m on my feet before I register the movement, heart slamming hard enough to hurt.
He doesn’t walk through it but appears from the shadows in the room's corner. One moment, there’s nothing. The next, there is him, as if the darkness assembled itself into a man. Every shadow in the room seems to turn toward him, obedient as courtiers awaiting command.
Azrael Nightveil.
He looks different from the way he did in the museum.
No armor. No relic aura. Now he wears something closer to formal attire, though it feels wrong to call it clothing.
Black fabric that seems to swallow light.
Silver fastenings that catch what little glow filters through the windows.
Everything tailored, precise, dangerous in its simplicity.
He looks like something designed to be obeyed.
And worse, like something that expects it.
I grab the decanter from the table and throw it at his head.
He catches it without looking.
Doesn’t even glance at it. Just lifts a hand and stops it mid-flight, as if it forgot its purpose halfway through the air. His eyes remain on me the entire time. Storm-grey. Unblinking.
“Feel better?” he asks.
“Go to hell,” I snap.
“I rule the closest thing to it,” he says calmly and sets the decanter back down as if I had not just tried to kill him. “So technically, I am already there.”
I hate that something in my chest almost reacts to that. Almost.
He steps further into the room. Not rushed. Not cautious. Just present. The space shifts around him, the way it did in the museum. The room feels smaller without changing size.
“We need to talk,” he says.
“About how you kidnapped me?” I fold my arms. My nails press into my skin. “Dragged me across reality? Locked me in a luxury prison?”
“Yes,” I say sharply. “Let us talk about that.”
“About fixing the catastrophe you created.”
There it is again. That certainty. Like I already agreed to a crime I did not commit.
I tilt my head toward the window instead of looking at him. “Option three is you let me go.”
“That is not an option.”
“Then we’re done talking.”
I turn away fully because staring at him feels like giving him something I don’t want to give.
His voice follows anyway.
“Option one,” he says. “I kill you. Right now. Quick. Clean. Relatively painless. You destroyed seven years of work and destabilized two worlds. Your death would be appropriate.”
My spine locks. I don’t turn around.
“And option two?” I ask.
“You help me fix it.”
Now I look at him.
He stands a few steps away. Close enough that I have to tilt my head slightly to meet his gaze. His expression doesn’t change, but something in it sharpens, like attention becoming weaponized.
“How?” I ask.
“The mirror can be repaired,” he says. “The pieces are scattered across Earth and Aethermoor. We collect them. Perform a ritual. Seal the rifts permanently.”
“Simple,” I say flatly. “Send me back, and I’ll get right on that.”
“You will be coming with me.”
I let out a short laugh. “That’s not happening.”
“It has to,” he says.
He steps closer. Not threatening. Not rushed. Just inevitable.
“The ritual requires someone with both shadow magic and human life force,” he continues. “It is rare. Almost impossible.”
“Then you’re out of luck, because I am completely human.”
“You are not.”
I have been called many things in my life. Heiress. Thief. Problem. Disappointment. But never not human.
For a second, I just stare at him.
“What?”
“Your bloodline carries diluted shadow heritage,” he says, as if he is discussing something trivial. “Distant. Very diluted. But enough. Enough that you could touch the artifacts without dying. Enough that your mind did not fracture when you arrived here.”
His eyes narrow.
“Enough that you are the only person in either world who can fix what is happening.”
My heartbeat turns loud. Unsteady.
“That is bullshit,” I say.
“Is it?” He tilts his head. “You’ve never noticed anything… strange? Shadows that move when they shouldn’t? An unusual comfort in darkness?”
I open my mouth, then close it again.
The lights in my apartment flicker constantly. Every security system in every apartment I have ever owned glitches in the rooms where I sleep. Every nightlight I had as a child burned out within a week. That time in college when I swore I saw something move in my shadow that shouldn’t have?—
“Coincidence,” I say, though my voice sounds weak even to me.
“Denial is unproductive.” He is closer now. When did he move?
The room feels too small. Too warm.
“Some choice.”
“It is more than you deserve.”
Anger flares, sharp and useless. I want to hit him. Want to scream. Instead, I force my voice steady.
“Fine. I’ll help. But the moment we are back on Earth, I’m gone. You will never find me.”
His smile changes. Slow. Dangerous. Something almost pleased, almost hungry, like I had just confirmed something he already knew.
“I know you, Raven.”
I freeze. The name goes through me like a blade.
He shouldn’t know that name. Nobody knows that name except Marcus and maybe two other people in the underground.
I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars to use intermediaries so my clients never know the exact name of who they hire.
Raven is a shadow with hands, a rumor that moves through locked doors and impossible places.
Morgana Bellamy is something else entirely.
Wealth. Charity galas. Carefully polished smiles.
A life that does not bleed into the dark.
They are never supposed to meet.
“How,” I say, and my voice breaks just slightly before I catch it, “do you know that name?”
He starts circling me.
I turn with him.
Predator. Prey.
"I've watched you for five years. Studied your patterns.
Your methods. Your tells." Another step.
"I know you prefer rooftop entries over ground-level.
That you never work on Tuesdays. That you have a contact named Marcus who handles your tech.
" His gaze sharpens. "I know everything about you, Morgana Bellamy.
Every secret. Every carefully constructed lie. "
My heart hammers against my ribs. "You're bluffing."
"Am I? You have a scar on your left shoulder blade from a job in Berlin three years ago. Your mother calls twice a year—birthday and Christmas—and you never answer. You haven't been to your family estate in Connecticut since you were seventeen."
Anyone with enough money could find out about the scar. The rest feels like him reaching into a locked drawer inside my chest.
He stops directly in front of me. Too close.
"You steal because you're bored. Because nothing in your perfect, empty life makes you feel alive."
There’s that scent again: ozone and darkness and something I can’t name, something that makes my instincts scream without telling me what to do with it.
Something in my chest tightens, like a fist closing around bone.
"You are clever. Resourceful. The moment I turn my back, you will run." His eyes gleam.
“Damn right I will.”
“Good.”
That single word should not unsettle me.
It does.
“So let us make this interesting. A wager.”
The air shifts the moment he says it, like the room itself is leaning closer to listen. For a fraction of a second, the shadows beneath his collar move wrong, like something under his skin has heard the word and wants out.
My heart kicks. Different rhythm now. Not fear.
Anticipation.
“What kind of wager?” I ask before I can stop myself.
For the first time, he looks almost satisfied.
“Win, and I will send you back to Earth with your memories wiped clean. You can return to your life. Your trust fund. Your thrill-seeking. As if none of this ever happened.”
“And if I lose?”
“You give me five years of your life.” He leans in. Just slightly. “Five years where you belong to me. Completely. To do with as I wish. No more vanishing into aliases. No more choosing which life you wear. For five years, Raven and Morgana both answer to me.”
The surrounding shadows seem to respond, pulsing faintly, stretching like they are breathing.
I should step back.
I should refuse.
I do neither.
For the first time since Prague, he has offered me something I recognize: a system I might be able to break.
My pulse is no longer fear alone. Something sharper threads through it now, something that feels dangerously like curiosity.
“What’s the game?” I ask.
His smile sharpens into something final.
“Magic.”