Chapter 6
ROWAN
Iwake up thinking about his mouth.
It's barely five in the morning, and he's already here.
His body at my back while I played. His hand around my throat. The heat of him behind me. The brush of his mouth near my ear. His voice so close I felt it before I really heard it.
The stupid thing is that I keep replaying it, turning the memory over and over like if I look at it long enough, it'll stop meaning so much.
It shouldn't. It was one conversation, one song, one stupid moment.
So why does it feel like something I've been missing?
Rain taps against the dorm windows as I slip out of bed. Damaris is out cold beside me with one arm over his face and his curls crushed flat on one side. I stand there for a second, stupidly grateful he's here, then pull on my clothes and slip into the empty corridor beyond.
I start walking. And because apparently my brain hates me, it circles right back to him.
What would it feel like if he actually kissed me?
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Good Light. This is exactly why I got up.
Not because of Ciaran. Definitely not because of Ciaran.
Because sometime around four-thirty, staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping, I remembered something Halvern mentioned during intake.
Most of Sero's historical archives were digitized decades ago, but access isn't public. Caervast maintained one of the largest academic collections on the planet, which hadn't meant much to me until now.
Now, after finding Black Chapel, finding Ciaran Virel, and spending half the night wondering whether any of it connects back to Sola, it feels worth checking.
Anything is better than lying awake thinking about him.
I've wanted men before. In dreams, mostly, in the dark where it was safe to. I just never let it be more than that.
What's new is him. A guy who barely knows me. A guy who could have anybody he wants. A guy who keeps looking at me like I'm something worth paying attention to.
Why me?
I don't have an answer.
But the more I think about it while crossing the sleeping campus, the less I can shake the feeling that the two things rattling around in my head might not be separate after all.
Ciaran Virel keeps turning up everywhere, and somehow every path I follow keeps ending with Sola. His family owns Black Chapel. They own half this city. People lower their voices when they talk about them, and the first real lead I've had in years pointed me straight at their front door.
It's probably a coincidence, but I don't believe that for a second.
By the time I reach the end of the corridor, I've already changed direction.
The library is quiet at this hour, and if I'm going to spend another morning thinking about Ciaran Virel, I might as well find out whether there's a reason he keeps colliding with the same mystery I've been chasing for three years.
Maybe I'm seeing connections that aren't really there. Or maybe the reason he keeps finding me has nothing to do with me at all, and everything to do with Sola.
The east wing is deserted, the corridor dim and too quiet as I move deeper into the building. The lamps throw weak gold light across the stone, leaving long stretches of shadow between them. By the time I reach the library, my shoulders are tight enough that I'm aware of every step.
The door is unlocked. Growing up on Düren taught me that empty places at odd hours usually mean trouble, and some instincts don't disappear just because you've moved to a nicer planet.
I hesitate at the threshold, then ease the door open and slip inside, letting it shut behind me.
The room is huge. Bigger than I expected, and somehow more beautiful for being empty.
Dark wood shelves rise in tall rows, climbing toward a high vaulted ceiling lost in shadow.
Long study tables stretch through the center of the hall, their lamps dark now, and above them the glass dome catches what little light the city still throws through the windows.
Somewhere deeper in the building, a door closes. The sound is soft, and it shouldn't matter, but it still sends a prickle up the back of my neck.
I shake the feeling off and head for the nearest catalog station. For a moment I just stand there, staring at the dark screen, before finally sitting down and touching it. The display blooms blue beneath my hand, illuminating the empty dark.
If I'm here, I might as well do what I've wanted to do since the day I arrived—find something. Anything.
I reach into my jacket and pull out the photograph, the edges worn soft from how many times I've handled it.
I found it weeks after Sola disappeared, buried in an old article thread.
Hours of searching her name, my name, every variation of our family name I could think of, until my eyes burned and my head hurt.
I printed it that same week, because threads get scrubbed and files disappear, but paper is mine to keep.
This was the first thing that felt like more than nothing.
The image is grainy and cropped from some larger event photo, reposted so many times it's lost half its detail, but I just know it's her.
Even blurred and half turned away, I recognize the line of her face, the pale fall of her hair pinned back from one side, and the hint of a smile that always looked like she was about to say something sharp.
She's standing at some kind of formal event, dressed too well for anywhere she should have been, with a crowd gathered around her and light catching the edge of glass somewhere out of frame.
And next to her, just behind her shoulder, stands a man in a dark suit, half turned toward her. His face is lost to the angle and the age of the image, but he stands close, near enough that nobody looking at the photograph would mistake him for a stranger.
She isn't twisted away from him or trying to escape the frame. She's standing beside him like she belongs there too, her shoulders bare above dark silk and that small, private smile on her face that I know too well.
All dark clothes and expensive light, a stretch of old stone behind them and the edge of a black sign cut off at the side of the image.
It wasn't enough on its own.
After I found the picture, I spent weeks chasing every scrap I could find.
Old event photos. Local arts coverage. Public archives.
Anything tied to Sero that might match what little I could see.
I never found the original image, but I found enough to convince myself the photo might have been taken at Black Chapel.
Enough to make me walk in there on my first night and pretend I wasn't searching for her.
Enough to believe Sola might really have been on Sero.
With a sigh, I set the photograph beside the terminal and start searching.
The first thing I type in is Black Chapel, and this time, searching from inside Sero instead of from Düren, I get a lot more than scraps and dead ends.
Local articles. City event coverage. Donor announcements.
Enough to tell me the place is real, old, and tied to amounts of money far beyond anything I grew up around.
The deeper I go, the uglier it starts to feel. There are glossy write-ups about private performances and donor evenings, mentions of restoration grants and cultural trusts, and then the same name starts appearing over and over again.
The Virel Foundation. Virel Cultural Holdings. Virel Restoration Committee. Private patron circles.
I keep scrolling. Donor events. Academy patron lists. Historical archives.
Caervast. Black Chapel.
I stare at the screen, my stomach tightening as the pieces begin sliding together.
It isn't that the Virels own Black Chapel. It's that they seem to have their hands in everything. Every trail I follow somehow leads back to the same family.
The Virels. Ciaran Virel.
Good Light, so Damaris wasn't exaggerating.
And I walked straight into their territory on my first night because I thought I might find my sister there. How stupid am I?
My pulse is already knocking too hard against the band when another image loads onto the screen, taken the same night as the photograph I've been carrying but from a different angle.
This time, I can see more. Enough to make the scholarship stop feeling like luck.
Black Chapel. The Virels. Caervast. And now Halvern.
Maybe none of it means anything, and maybe I'm forcing connections where there aren't any.
But looking at Halvern standing beside Sola, I can't shake the feeling that I've stepped into something that was already moving long before I got here.
For the first time since arriving on Sero, I find myself wondering whether I found this scholarship or whether it found me.
The frightening thing about traps is that they rarely look like traps when you walk into them.
I zoom in further and catch something reflected in the glass behind them. A narrow black sign hangs above a doorway at the edge of the frame, the lettering half lost to glare and distance.
I lean closer, squinting at the blurred lettering, trying to make out the name.
A sharp click cuts through the quiet behind me, and I jerk so hard my knee slams into the underside of the desk. I save the image to my slate before I can think twice.
I haven't heard anyone come in, but I know it instantly.
I'm no longer alone.
Every hair on my arms lifts. I tighten my grip on the photograph and glance wildly across the desk, already searching for something I can use if I have to. My eyes catch on the metal terminal stand just as movement flashes in the darkness beyond the doorway.
A tall shape slips past the doorway, gone almost before I can catch it. When I turn hard in the chair, the corridor outside already looks empty, the library door still standing open.
I think I imagined it, until the sound catches up with me and cold understanding slams into place. Somebody just took a picture of me, the sharp click resolving, too late, into a shutter.
"Hello?"
No one answers. But then a footstep sounds somewhere beyond the doorway, soft and already moving away, and whatever's left of my common sense snaps clean in half.
My hand flies to the band, thumb pressing hard as the warning pulse bites against my wrist and my heart starts climbing too fast to obey me. "Is someone there?"
But all I get back is silence.
Then, from somewhere deeper in the building, footsteps echo on the stairs, and my breath catches as the tightness in my chest turns sharper, the dangerous skip in my pulse sharp enough to make the edges of the room flare white for a second.
Please. Not now. Not like this.
I think I hear something behind me and spin so hard my hip clips the corner of a table. Nothing behind me but shadow, and I almost convince myself I imagined the whole thing.
Then I'm moving, and I don't stop until I'm back at the dorm entrance, breathing too hard, my pulse racing beneath my skin like it's trying to tear loose.
My screen buzzes in my pocket, and I freeze when I see a message waiting from an unknown number.
For a second, I just stare at it, my heart pounding hard enough that my fingers barely work when I drag the screen open.
you should be more careful after dark
Fear crawls cold and ugly down my spine, my thumb hovering over the screen for a second before I lock it again.
I don't know who sent it, only that somebody was in that library, watching me long enough to take a picture and wanting me to know they did.
I shove the multi-slate back into my pocket, fumble my way inside, and slide the door closed behind me. Then I brace both hands against the desk and force myself to breathe.
In. Hold. Out.
Again.
The band pulses steadily against my wrist while I count the breaths and wait for the tight panic in my chest to loosen.
By the time I'm back in bed, the bitter taste still sits heavy in my mouth, but my pulse has finally eased enough to stop feeling dangerous.
I'm wide awake. And I've stopped believing in luck.