3. Elena
This can’t be happening again.
I think as I pace the room for what feels like the fifth time, the echo of the closing door still lingers behind Alexei and Fletcher.
The pulse thrums at my throat, hot and angry.
It was all supposed to be over and done with.
Alexei shot and killed my grandfather after he shot me.
He made sure he would never be able to hurt me again.
He handled Kravino back at the compound.
And Wendell. Wendell behind bars.
Correction: was.
I stop in the middle of the room, breath catching. What am I doing? Since when do I fall apart and wring my hands like some helpless damsel waiting to be rescued? That has never been me, and I refuse to start now.
I take a deep breath and make myself move, easing down onto the edge of the bed.
My hands fold neatly in my lap, more for discipline than comfort.
Alexei may not want me involved physically, but I can help in other ways.
With my abilities. With my gift, he has continued to encourage me not just to tolerate it, but to train. To strengthen. To use.
A flicker of hesitation shivers through me.
There are still days when Sloan’s lifeless eyes haunt my dreams—less when Alexei is here to chase them away, worse when he’s gone and those memories slither out of the dark.
The guilt still clings to me, knowing Sloan’s wife and children lost a husband and father because he’d promised my parents he’d keep me safe.
But Alexei was right. My ability isn’t a curse. Not if I learn to control it, to use it the way he uses his acute hearing, strength, his instinct for danger.
So I began to contact Sloan’s former colleagues.
Some were willing to help, but nothing worthwhile, until one of them suggested I consult with a professional clairvoyant.
I don’t have the ability to talk to the dead, nor would I want to, but Sloan believed if I wanted to control my ability I could learn how a clairvoyant manages their skill.
That led me to Zoe Thompson, an American who, from childhood, had utilized her gift.
She’d touch an object or brush past a stranger, instantly receive a message from a loved one that needed to be passed along.
Her accuracy built her career: television shows, tours, and a long list of police departments grateful for the cold cases she helped close.
Ten of them to date. Ten families that finally had answers because of her.
“Close your eyes,” I murmur softly to myself. “Open your mind.”
I go down the checklist Zoe drilled into me.
Relax my jaw. Loosen my shoulders. Breathe from the diaphragm.
And then, most important, let the walls down.
The walls I’ve spent years perfecting, keeping my mind locked and bolted unless I force it otherwise.
Zoe always said that was my biggest obstacle: I’m too good at shutting everything out.
If there is a message to be received, it will come, Zoe’s voice echoes through my memory. Focus your mind. Call out to it.
I let my breath out and let my shoulders slump, prying my mind open.
Okay… I’m here. My thoughts flow outward, reaching. Wendell escaped. How did he do it? Who helped him? What does he want? Where is he?
The questions spill through me like water through open fingers, but all I get is static, thick and numbing.
Come on…
Nothing.
My eyes open, disappointment cutting through me. My hands fall uselessly to my sides. And then?—
A cold ripple shoots up my spine, sharp enough to steal my breath. I gasp, head snapping up as a voice, one I’ve never heard, not even in visions, whispers through me: Cells. Go to the cells.
My heart seizes. Alexei and Fletcher are at Wendell’s cell right now.
If there’s something I’m meant to know… if there’s a message trying to reach me… then the only place I’ll get answers is in that cell.
And I’m done waiting.
My guards jerk their heads up when they first see me, surprise flashing across their faces before they recover, bowing slightly to clear my path. My stomach knots tighter the farther I walk down this dim corridor. Cold stone walls seem to pulse with an unspoken warning.
As I walk further in, the muffled murmur of Fletcher and Alexei’s hushed voices cuts through the stillness. I lift my head at the sound of my name, but the words are too indistinct to make out, until I round the corner.
“…until we know more,” Alexei is saying.
“Know more about what?” I ask, stepping fully into view.
Fletcher’s eyes widen. Alexei’s spine stiffens. I don’t need a vision to know that whatever they were discussing, they plan to hide from me.
I step into the cell. The same shiver from earlier lances up my spine, sharper now, more insistent. “I think I can help,” I say, turning slowly in a circle. Nothing appears unusual. Nothing stands out as wrong, except that everything still doesn’t sit right.
“Your visions?” Fletcher asks.
I nod. Alexei steps closer, the air growing heavier with his nearness. My gaze goes to him instinctively. “You know I’ve been working with Zoe… learning how to call on my abilities instead of waiting for them to ambush me.”
“Did you see something?” Alexei asks.
I shake my head. “Not exactly. But I got a feeling, something is here. Something I might be able to find if I open my mind in this room.”
Alexei and Fletcher meet eyes, wordless, which they try, and fail, to conceal.
“Have you already found something?” I ask sharply.
“No,” Alexei says, too quickly. Far too quickly. His jaw tightens, a slow, deliberate clench that pulls the muscle beneath his cheek taut. It’s a subtle tell, but one I’ve learned never to ignore.
I stare at Fletcher. His lips are pressed tight, eyes hard. He gives nothing away, but the tension is unmistakable. Something happened before I arrived. Something they don’t want me to know.
Fletcher clears his throat. “I’m going to oversee the preparations I requested and bring Lady Camille in for questioning.” He strides out before I can respond.
I turn to Alexei, an eyebrow arched. “Lady Camille? She’s involved in this?”
“Not likely,” Alexei answers. “But she’s visited Wendell several times. We’re covering our bases.” He regards me closely. “Tell me more about this feeling.”
“Just that… if there’s a clue left behind, it’ll be here.”
“Anything I can do?”
I smile faintly. “Silence. So, I can concentrate.”
His mouth twitches at the corner as he edges backward out of the cell, and he waits beyond the doorway, still close enough that I can feel him.
I turn away, stepping into the center of the room. Closing my eyes, I begin the steps Zoe taught me, peeling back the walls in my mind one layer at a time.
The cold hits instantly, stronger than in my room. My body shudders violently.
One will fall.
The same words Inanna, the Ancient, spoke to me after I had been shot and almost died. The same ancient who gifted Alexei and my powers.
“Hello, Elena.”
The voice cuts through me like a blade, finding the soft space beneath my ribs.
For a heartbeat, I forget how to breathe.
The room doesn’t freeze, but it tilts, enough to throw everything off balance.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzz louder than they should, a thin, electric whine that drills into my skull.
The air feels shallow, as if someone has quietly stolen half the oxygen without bothering to tell me.
My fingers cinch around the phone until the edge presses into my palm, sharp and grounding. Pain. Pressure. Proof.
My pulse falters, then surges, hammering as if it’s trying to outrun something it knows is already too close.
“Inanna?” The name slips out before I can stop it.
“You called out to me,” she says, her voice smooth and distant, like it’s traveling a long way to reach me.
“But you said?—”
“That I would not visit you again,” she finishes, unbothered. “You have questions. They call loudly to me.”
My throat tightens. I swallow, the sound too loud in my own ears. “If I ask them,” I say carefully, “will you answer?”
Silence stretches between us. Not empty; measured. Weighted. The kind that presses in, daring me to fill it with desperation.
“You ask for the future,” she finally says. “Those answers I simply cannot give.”
“Can’t,” I argue, my grip tightening, “or won’t?”
A soft exhale drifts through the line. Almost amused. “Would it matter?”
I straighten instinctively, shoulders drawing back even though she can’t see me.
Old habits surface, the ones carved into me as I built a shield while living at the orphanage.
The ones that never learned how to stand down.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I admit.
The words scrape on the way out. “I don’t know what any of this means. Or why can’t I access it.”
“I warned you there would be challenges,” she replies. Her voice slides under my skin, cold and deliberate, each word another piece of a puzzle I never asked to solve. “Tests.”
“And one would fall,” I murmur.
The image of her forms more clearly now, her shape outlined in light that doesn’t belong to this world. She inclines her head once. A nod. Heavy. Final.
My chest tightens. “Who?”
The line crackles, the sound sharp and brittle. Her outline flickers, edges blurring like smoke caught in a sudden draft.
“No,” I murmur, panic threading through my thoughts. I focus, clamp down hard, trying to anchor the connection. It strains against me, vast and powerful, like trying to hold back the tide with bare hands.
She shakes her head.
“Please,” I whisper. The word tastes like defeat.
When she speaks again, I know, too late, that whatever comes next will only make this worse.
“This is not only about you, Elena,” she remarks. “It is about the dominoes that fall because of you. Your choices.”
Her form drifts farther away, the light dimming. Receding.
“You can change the world,” she continues, “or you can be responsible for the beginning of its end.”
“No—wait!” I lunge forward even though there’s nowhere to go. My voice fractures. “You can’t just leave. What does that mean? Why me?”
Her gaze lingers on me for a fleeting second longer, something unreadable passing through it.
“Good luck, child.”
The connection snaps.
The quiet of the cell rushes back in all at once, the lights glaring, the hum unbearable.
And the silence she leaves behind is louder than any answer she could have given.
Alexei steps forward.
“I’m okay,” I reassure.
His voice is a low threat. “Talk to me, Elena, or I’m going to think the worst.”
A grin tugs at my lips despite the chill. His protectiveness warms something deep in my chest. I refocus, reaching outward for the threads I’ve followed in past visions, colors, shapes, scents, anything.
Something coalesces at the edge of my inner sight. A hazy shape. Unsteady. Disorienting. My stomach flips. My steps go wobbly, as though I've been drinking—which I’ve never done—but this is close enough.
Instinct tugs me across the cell. I’ve already mapped the room mentally, so I won’t knock over any furniture. I shuffle toward the bed, arms extended. My fingertips brush the metal frame, and the air crackles.
Every hair on my arm rises. The haze sharpens into a bright orb that leaps toward me, my inner hand reaching out to grasp it, and the vision slams into me.
Not a normal vision. Not the immersive kind where I simply witness.
This is fragmented. Chaotic. Pieces of a puzzle thrown at me too fast to catch. A shadowed figure lurking behind everything, identity hidden, slipping away the closer I push.
Wendell’s expression is smug and predatory, his lips moving but no sound reaching me.
I’m moving, my real body drifting away from the bed, following Wendell as he turns and walks with infuriating confidence.
Unstoppable. Unbothered.
“Stop,” I whisper.
“Elena?”
I wave a hand blindly, clinging onto the thread as it frays. The dizziness sharpens. My pulse spikes.
Don’t force it, Zoe warns from memory. It won’t help, you’ll only weaken yourself.
But I can’t lose it. Not now. I shove harder, ignoring the stabbing ache behind my eyes.
My hand brushes the desk.
Black letters whirl in my mind, wild and scattered, until one word breaks free and hangs alone: Menace.
My fingers slide upward, hitting something cool, jagged. Stone. I trace the grooves and… the visions detonate behind my eyes:
A kneeling silhouette in the snow, faceless but important.
A chessboard without the king.
My crown, half-buried in frozen earth.
A scream. A scream so raw it feels like my heart has stopped trying to beat.
A violent force erupts inside my mind, slamming outward.
My body lifts from the ground.
The world around me fractures.
A sharp crack splinters through the silence, like ice giving way beneath unseen weight.
Snow swirls around me, a bitter gust slices through me, filling my lungs with air so cold it burns. The scent of iron lingers beneath the frost, dulled beneath a dusting of snow. My fingers ache with the urge to reach for what lies beneath, but they refuse to move.
Then—
I scream, mine and the one from the vision merging, and then strong arms catch me, locking beneath my arms, pulling me back against a familiar chest.
“Elena!”
My eyes snap open. The visions disappear, but the heavy dread lingers, like smoke. Alexei’s arms cage around me, keeping me upright.
“What happened?” he demands.
I drag in a breath, then another. “Nothing. It didn’t work.”
I’m glad he cannot see my face. My cheeks burn, my muscles still trembling from the sinister shards still ringing in me.
I hate lying to him. I don’t keep things from Alexei anymore. But the visions showed nothing concrete, nothing more than what we already fear because of Wendell’s escape. I always see true visions. So why not now? Why only fragments? Why that single word?
I need Zoe. I need answers before I burden him, before I risk panicking everyone over nothing. Until then… these fragments stay with me.
Alexei spins me around to face him, his eyes ablaze with concern. “You screamed and nearly collapsed. That’s not nothing.”
He’s right. Which means he won’t drop this, not unless he gets something from me.
I push the hair from my face and force a reassuring smile. “I was… confirming what we already know. That Wendell is involved in this somehow. He wants revenge for us putting him here.”
“Wendell put himself here,” Alexei mutters. The silence stretches between us as he searches my face. “That’s it? Nothing else? You’re sure?”
I bite my lower lip. The lie tastes bitter. “Yes, that’s it.”
But in the depths of my mind, the word whispers again, menace, silky, slithering, and cold enough to chill my bones.