Chapter 11
RAFE
For the first time in years, something close to peace settles into my bones.
Not satisfaction or accomplishment. Just this.
Moira's hair spilling across my chest in dark waves.
Her hand resting over my heart. Salt and magic clinging to her skin, mingled with my scent.
Evidence of last night written in the sheets tangled around us, in the faint marks on her neck where my teeth grazed skin.
Last night wasn't supposed to happen. Tactical alliances don't include sex on my desk that leaves water streaming down the walls. But somewhere between hunting evidence and her appearing at my study door, the line between professional and personal dissolved completely.
Mine. The thought surfaces unbidden. Reckless thinking for someone who learned the hard way that claiming anything invites loss.
I trace the curve of her spine with one finger, feeling each vertebra, the dip of her lower back, the soft skin that shivers under my touch even in sleep.
Her magic responds to mine even now—I feel it humming beneath her skin, salt and storm recognizing shadow and night. Power calling to power in the dark.
Moira stirs against me, consciousness returning gradually. Her fingers flex against my chest. Then she goes still—that particular stillness that means she's remembering where she is and what happened. Her breathing changes. Becomes more controlled. She's awake but not ready to face this yet.
I give her the time she needs. Don't push. Just keep that slow stroke down her spine, letting her know I'm here, I'm aware, and I'm not going anywhere.
"Morning." I keep my voice low. Non-threatening. Giving her space to process without pressure.
She lifts her head, meeting my eyes. Her hair's a mess, tangled from sleep and my hands. Sleep marks crease one cheek. Mascara smudged beneath her eyes. She's never looked more beautiful.
"Morning." The word comes out rough, sleep-hoarse. "So that actually happened."
"Want to pretend it didn't?"
"No." Quick. Certain. Then softer, vulnerable: "Do you?"
"Not even a little bit." My hand traces down her spine again, watching her eyes darken at the touch. "But we should probably talk about what this means."
"Does it have to mean anything?" She props herself up on one elbow, and the sheet falls away from her body. The morning-after shyness I expected doesn't materialize. She meets my gaze without flinching, without trying to cover herself. Brave woman. "Can't it just be... what it was?"
The question carries weight. She's giving me an out. A way to keep this simple. Uncomplicated. One night of release before returning to the hunt.
"It could be." I study her face, looking for what she's not saying. The fear beneath the bravado. The hope she's trying not to show. "If that's what you want."
"I don't know what I want." Honest. Raw. Her hand spreads across my chest, over my heart where it hammers harder than it should. "Except more time to figure it out before—"
My phone vibrates against the nightstand. Once. Twice. Three times in rapid succession. The emergency pattern that means someone's dying or dead or about to be.
"Shit." I grab it, already sitting up. Moira rolls away, pulling the sheet with her. "Something's wrong."
The messages from Santos scroll across the screen:
Jefe. Loading dock. NOW.
Someone hurt. Bad.
He's asking for you.
My blood turns cold. Asking for me. Someone from my organization, then. Someone who knows my name.
"I have to go." Already moving, pulling on clothes from the night before. The jeans that ended up on the floor. The shirt she tore open. "Stay here. Lock the door. Don't leave until I come back."
"What's happening?" She sits up, sheet clutched to her chest, and the concern in her voice does something to my chest. Makes it tight.
"Don't know yet. But Santos doesn't panic easily." Shirt on, buttons fumbled because my hands won't steady. Pants. Shoes. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
She stands, wrapping the sheet around herself like armor, and crosses to me. Her hand catches my arm. "Be careful."
The words stop me at the door. Concern in her voice. Real concern. For me. When was the last time someone worried about me coming back?
"Always am." The lie tastes bitter. I'm never careful. Just fast and mean and lucky. But she doesn't need to know that. Then I'm gone, taking the stairs two at a time, my panther already prowling beneath my skin, sensing threat.
The morning shipment crew should be unloading cargo, the usual chaos of forklifts and shouted instructions and crates getting checked off manifests.
Instead, they're clustered at the loading dock entrance, speaking in hushed voices.
The kind of quiet that follows violence.
That comes when men who work with death for a living see something that shakes them.
Santos stands in the center, his Barcelona accent sharper than usual as he barks orders that no one's really following. They're all staring at something on the ground. Something I can't see yet through the crowd.
He sees me. Relief flashes across his face, followed quickly by something else. Grief. "Jefe. This way."
The crowd parts like water around stone. And there, lying on concrete near the loading dock doors still wet from morning rain, is one of my dock workers.
Marco Ruiz. Twenty-two years old. Started working my docks three months ago after his father kicked him out for gambling debts.
Good kid who showed up on time, kept his mouth shut, and did the work without asking questions about what moved through my warehouse after dark.
Sent half his pay home to his mother every week, even though his father didn't deserve it.
Now he's dying on my loading dock, and the smell of seawater and blood and something darker fills the air.
I drop to my knees beside him, concrete cold and wet through my jeans.
Dark hair plastered to his skull with seawater, strands of kelp tangled in it like he'd been pulled from the ocean floor.
Clothes soaked through, dripping steadily onto the concrete.
Lips blue from cold or drowning or both.
But his eyes are open, lucid, tracking my movement with desperate focus.
"Marco." My hand finds his shoulder, careful not to jostle. His skin is ice cold beneath the wet fabric. "Who did this?"
His mouth works. No sound comes out at first, just water trickling from between his lips. Pink-tinged water that means internal bleeding. Then a whisper, barely audible even with my enhanced hearing: "She said... had to deliver a message."
"Who said? What message?" I lean closer, trying to hear over the blood rushing in my ears.
"The woman in black." His hand clutches at my jacket with failing strength, fingers slipping on the leather. "At the ritual site. She was there. Made me watch while she..." A cough brings up water and blood in equal measure, spilling across his chin. "While she drowned them."
My stomach drops. "How many?"
"Multiple victims." The words come gargled, each one harder than the last. "She made me watch. Held my head so I couldn't look away. Then she did this to me." His other hand trembles toward his chest, trying to show me something.
That's when I see it. Carved into his shirt in symbols glowing faintly with necromantic power. Not drawn on. Carved through fabric and into skin beneath, precise cuts that must have taken time. Must have hurt. The same marks from the ritual sites. The same pattern Moira identified as binding magic.
But worse. These symbols are fresh, still bleeding, still pulsing with power that makes my skin crawl. The necromancer didn't just kill him. She marked him. Turned him into a message written in flesh and magic.
"She said to tell you." Marco's grip tightens with desperate strength, the last surge before the end.
"Said the sea witch is pretty." Blood trickles from his mouth, steady now.
"Said the sister will have company soon.
" His breath rattles. "The ritual is almost ready. The last death will be special."
Cold spreads through my chest like poison. "Marco, stay with me. Tell me where. Tell me who she is. Give me something I can use."
"Didn't see her face. Just her voice." His eyes fix on something beyond my shoulder.
Something I can't see. Something that makes his pupils dilate with pure terror.
"Cold. Like nothing lives there anymore.
Like the bottom of the ocean where things die slow in the dark.
" He shudders, entire body convulsing. "She knows about the sea witch now.
Knows the sea witch is with you. She says. .."
"What does she say?" I shake him gently, trying to keep him focused. Trying to keep him here.
"That love makes beautiful targets." Marco's hand falls from my jacket, hitting the concrete with a wet slap. "That the last death will hurt the most. That you'll watch her drown like I watched them drown. That you'll feel what I felt."
"Marco." Firmer shake. "Marco, stay with me."
But his eyes are already empty. Fixed on that invisible thing beyond my shoulder. Chest still. The water that had been trickling from his mouth stops flowing.
I stay kneeling there, one hand still on his shoulder, feeling the cold seep from his body into mine.
Holding someone who trusted my organization to be safer than the streets.
Who died delivering a message meant to terrify.
Who spent his last moments watching people drown and then drowning himself, used as a puppet to deliver threats.
The necromancer is escalating. Not content with taunting us at the cove, she's bringing the war to my doorstep. Using my people as messengers.
The necromancer just declared war. On my territory. On my people. On the woman sleeping in my bed three floors below.