Chapter 9
Fresh air did not fix centuries of emotional damage, but it helped me pretend for a few minutes.
The room felt too small once Con left. The walls held his voice, his scent, the echo of words I wasn’t ready to sit with in the dark. My magic wouldn’t quiet. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face when he said you already have me and then walked away.
So I did what I always did when my mind felt too crowded.
I moved.
I slid off the bed and pulled on my boots, ignoring the protest in my muscles. The window showed the hint of pale-gray at the edge of the horizon. Dawn would creep up soon, but we had a little time before the first rays reached the grounds.
I slipped out into the hallway. The mansion at this hour breathed softly in its sleep. No clatter from the kitchen, no murmur of clan members trading gossip, no clang from the training yard. Shadow Bone finally living up to its name.
My feet carried me by memory down the stairs, past the silent foyer, through the side door that led to the older part of the estate. The door groaned a little on its hinges, announcing my escape before easing shut behind me with a soft thud.
Cold air kissed my face. Damp. Crisp. It tasted like wet stone and cut grass and something older that lived between graves.
The cemetery stretched beyond the grove of twisted oaks, their branches clawing at a sky that was lightening by fractions. Headstones rose out of the ground in neat lines near the walkway, then in more chaotic clusters near the back, where the oldest of our dead lay.
I walked between them, hands in my pockets, eyes tracing familiar names carved into marble and slate. Death dealers, fledglings, elders, soldiers from a dozen different wars. People I’d trained, fought beside, argued with, lost.
The cemetery had always soothed me. It reminded me of what we fought for and what awaited if we failed. It smelled like endings, and that made every breath feel sharper, more precious.
I stopped near the angel statue at the center, the one Raven once called “morbidly pretty.” The stone was weathered and streaked, wings chipped at the tips, face half-smoothed by time. I leaned against the pedestal and tipped my head back, staring at the thinning stars.
The conversation with Con replayed itself without my consent. His voice. His eyes. His confession. The way he said he couldn’t survive losing me. The way he stepped back anyway.
Idiot.
Powerful, infuriating idiot I… cared about more than I wanted to admit, even to myself.
I scraped a hand over my face and let out a rough breath. “Get it together, Cass. World ending, king dying, warlock on the loose. No time for romantic complications.”
The night didn’t answer, which was probably for the best.
I hadn’t been alone long when footsteps crunched softly over the gravel path behind me.
They were careful, controlled. Familiar.
“Stalking me now, Constantine?”
“I don’t stalk,” he replied, voice closer than I expected. “I track.”
I huffed a half-laugh and glanced over my shoulder.
He stepped into view between two rows of headstones, coat unbuttoned, hair slightly mussed like he’d run a hand through it a dozen times on the way out. Dawn light licked the edges of his silhouette, outlining him in pale-gray.
“How’d you find me?” I asked.
“You always come here when your head gets noisy,” he said. “I checked the training yard first, in case you decided to work it out by beating something to death. When you weren’t there, this was the obvious choice.”
I turned back to the angel statue. “Maybe I wanted to be alone.”
“I don’t want you leaving the mansion alone,” he said. “We’re not safe. Not even here.”
He stopped a few feet away, gaze scanning the edges of the graveyard out of habit.
“I know,” I murmured. “I just needed some air.”
“Because of me.”
I sighed. “Because of everything. You’re not the only thing getting on my nerves.”
A humorless sound escaped him. “Good to know I’m not special.”
“Oh, you’re special,” I said. “You’re just not the whole problem.”
His eyes flicked to my profile. “You shouldn’t be out here without backup.”
“I have backup,” I said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
His posture eased by a fraction. “Not the point.”
“Then what is the point?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer right away. The breeze tugged gently at my hair, lifting a few strands from my cheek. Somewhere in the trees, a bird decided it was close enough to morning to start complaining.
“The point,” Con said finally, “is that our enemies know where we are. Valerian laughed in our foyer. Enhanced humans attacked our teams in the field. The cemetery is open ground. If they want to send a message, this is where they’ll do it.”
I considered that.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Funny,” I said, “I was thinking this is the one place they wouldn’t dare. Too many of our dead are buried here. A lot of them died ugly. If their ghosts linger, they’d be on our side.”
“Ghosts don’t fight enhanced humans,” he replied.
“Maybe they should start.”
A small sound left him that might have been the beginning of a laugh, but it never quite formed.
He moved a step closer, eyes still sweeping the shadowed rows of stones. “If you need air, next time you get me and I’ll come with you.”
“You were already there,” I pointed out. “You left.”
He tensed, then turned his head toward me. “You wanted me to go.”
“I implied,” I corrected. “You decided.”
His mouth twitched. “Semantics.”
“Always.”
The tension between us hadn’t faded. If anything, the quiet and the grave markers made it feel more intense. We weren’t shouting anymore, but the argument still lived under our skin. His worry. My defiance. Everything we’d admitted. Everything we’d danced around.
I pushed away from the statue, boots crunching on the gravel. “I didn’t come out here to fight with you again.”
“Neither did I,” he said. “I came because I knew you would.”
“I’m predictable now?”
“In some ways.” His gaze softened. “In others… not at all.”
Something rustled at the far edge of the cemetery.
We both heard it.
The sound was subtle, a scrape of stone, the soft thump of disturbed earth, like a boot dragging across grass.
I stilled.
Con’s head snapped toward the noise, his entire body shifting from guarded to ready in a heartbeat. Warrior, not lover. The room argument vanished from his eyes, replaced by the cold focus I knew too well.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“Not one of ours,” he said. “All patrols are on the perimeter. Nobody’s assigned inside the graveyard at this hour.”
“Could be a deer.”
“Could be,” he agreed. “But it isn’t.”
We both reached for our weapons at the same time.
The familiar weight of my compact spear snapped into my palm as I clicked the release. The shaft extended with a whisper of metal and a soft hum of power as the sanctified tip responded to my touch. Serenity felt like an old friend at my side, reliable and lethal.
Con drew twin blades from their sheaths at his back, steel catching the early light. He moved ahead of me by a fraction of a step, not shielding, but flanking.
We advanced between the graves, senses straining.
The noise came again. Closer now. A whisper of motion behind a cluster of older markers, where the stones leaned, and the ground dipped slightly.
Then silence.
The unnatural kind.
My grip tightened around the spear. “They move like ghosts,” I murmured.
Con’s jaw flexed. “They’re trained to.”
He was right.
Enhanced humans didn’t breathe like we did. They didn’t stumble or mutter or drag their feet. They glided. They watched. They waited for the perfect opening.
“Careful,” Con said under his breath. “We don’t know how many.”
The answer came a second later.
Six figures stepped out from behind a row of weathered graves.
Their movements were fluid, precise, unnervingly synchronized. They wore dark tactical gear, blending with the shadows between the stones. No insignias. No colors. Anonymous war.
Their eyes, though—
Their eyes were wrong.
Not glowing like a vampire’s, not golden like a lycan’s. Their irises held a metallic sheen, as if something inside them reflected light in ways that didn’t belong in human biology.
One of them tilted his head, assessing us.
I recognized the stance, the distance, the way their weight balanced over their feet.
Not random.
Not scouting.
Ready to strike.
“Well,” I said softly, “I guess the graveyard isn’t off-limits after all.”
One of them smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Target located.”
Yep. Definitely not deer.
“Six against two isn’t fair,” I replied. “For you.”
Con’s blades shifted into a ready position. “Cass.”
“I know,” I said, rolling my shoulders. My heart rate picked up, not with fear, but something sharper. Familiar. Battle felt easier than feelings.
“Alive if possible,” I added.
“No promises,” Con said.
The enhanced humans moved first.
They didn’t charge like untrained fighters. They flowed, fanning out to limit our escape routes, using the graves as cover, testing our reaction time. Two darted left, two right, two came straight down the center.
They really did move like ghosts.
Fast. Silent. Precise.
My spear hummed in my hands, hungry for contact.
“Ready?” Con asked.
I smirked, adrenaline cutting through the emotional fog like a blade. “I was born ready.”
And the graveyard erupted into chaos.
Gravel sprayed under my boots as the first enhanced human lunged. He came in low, knife flashing, aiming to gut me in a single, efficient strike.
Too predictable.
I pivoted, planted my heel, and let Serenity’s shaft slide through my grip until the tip dropped. The blade met his forearm with a quick crack. Metal slid against bone, then bit deep. His knife clattered to the ground as he hissed, stumbling sideways.
Before he could recover, Con slipped past me.
His right blade sliced across the attacker’s throat in a smooth, economical motion. No wasted movement. No flourish. The enhanced human dropped without a sound, eyes already empty before his knees hit the earth.
One down.
The others didn’t flinch.
They adjusted. Closed in.