Chapter 15 What Remains of Paradise
The hover-car pierces Eclipsera’s perpetual dusk, each heartbeat of silence stretched to a breaking point.
Dom’s fingers strangle the controls, tendons stark against skin.
The darkness in his eyes mirrors the city sprawling below—glorious, ruthless, fractured.
A graveyard of secrets waiting to be unearthed.
The silence isn’t absence but pressure, a living thing barbed and breathing. Each inhale tastes of betrayal and unspoken bargains, of a love rigged to snap shut, and of Kian’s smile when he announced it, smug with the satisfaction of a man who had planned this moment since before I was born.
Marriage.
They planned my fucking marriage.
I swallow the scream building in my throat. One sound or crack, and everything I’ve buried might claw its way free.
I press my temple to the window, letting the glass siphon heat from my skin.
Below, the Rift District yawns wide and unraveling, its metal railings crumbling to rust, charm-signs sputtering into static, neon gloss rotting at the edges.
Firelight flickers through shattered windows, casting slivers of humanity across broken walls.
On the corner, a drum circle beats from instruments played by workers still in their oil-stained uniforms, their dull, mass-produced rubies catching the streetlight as they dance as though the week hasn’t already bled them dry.
Movement catches my eye. Black uniforms, armor gleaming with spelled protection, as they smash a man into the alley wall.
His body convulses once before collapsing, blood streaking across stone, wet and glistening.
An enforcer rips a baton from his belt, violet magic sparking along its length, and drives it down.
I turn toward it, but Dom accelerates, the hover-car slicing through the gloom as screams vanish behind tinted glass.
Keep moving. Breathe. Pretend none of it touches you. Just another night in Eclipsera, and a reminder of what happens to people who step out of line.
Dom’s gaze remains fixed on the horizon, as if the answers we need might materialize in the space between stars. He offers no explanation or defense.
I fold my arms tightly over my chest. “When exactly were you planning to tell me?”
“Would it have changed anything if I had?” His jaw flexes, but his eyes stay glued to the road.
A laugh claws its way up my throat. “That’s your excuse?”
“What do you want, Aria?” His voice holds a dangerous edge. One that usually makes me want to kiss him or kill him. Right now, I’m leaning toward the latter. “That I didn’t warn you about something that was always going to happen? That I didn’t give you time to run?”
“You let me walk in there blind!” The words exploded out of me. “You sat there, silent as a grave, while your father carved up my future like . . .” My nails bite crescents into my palms. “Was any of this real? Or am I just another trophy in your family’s collection?”
That lands. Something dangerous flickers in his expression.
“Everything between us has been real. Don’t you dare question that.”
“Then explain the silence.” My voice wavers. “Explain why you said nothing while Kian—”
“If you think I have power, you’re wrong. I have allowances. Leash length. Privilege worn as a collar, soaked in someone else’s blood. But control? Ownership? I don’t hold any of it.” He looks at me then. “And neither do you.”
I flinch. Not at his words, but at the truth inside them.
For a breath, uninvited, Rowe’s face forms behind my eyes. He would’ve warned me. Offered choices instead of chains. I drown that thought in the dark where it belongs.
“I love you. But becoming a Blackwood . . .” Fear claws up my spine. “Your father would own every breath and heartbeat. There’d be no way out.”
“He already thinks he owns you.” Dom lets out a cold laugh. “Marriage just adds his signature to the deed.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it fucking does!” His ruby pulses with a sudden flare, jolting the hover-car’s enchantments into a stutter. Lights flicker, engine hum faltering. “But what terrifies me more is what he’ll do when you refuse.”
That threat hangs between us. I’ve seen what happens to those who deny Kian Blackwood. The lucky vanish, and the rest are left praying for a swifter end.
The hover-car descends, the engines vibrating with our silence and fury.
“My office,” Dom mutters, his fingers sweeping over the control panel with lethal calm. “Ward-bound. Even his shadows can’t cross it.”
I nod without looking at him. One glance, and something essential might break, and I’m not sure which of us would bleed more from the rupture.
The Den rises before me, a twisted memory I’ve spent two months trying to bury. My feet turn to lead at the threshold. Last time I stood here—drink in hand, pulse steady, the world still mine—Rowe’s voice shattered everything I thought I had.
The neon dragon that once crowned the entrance writhes, broken and wounded, its light catching on new additions that transform The Den’s ancient bones.
Steel reinforcements cage the stone walls, sharp-edged and sterile.
Security wards glow with unfamiliar patterns, designed more for containment than enticement.
Raze and Kane flank the doors, sentinels carved from shadow.
Once, Raze would’ve swept me into a bruising hug.
Now he won’t even meet my eyes. His coat strains across broad shoulders set in stone, the fresh scars on his knuckles a testament to whatever violence has reshaped this place in my absence.
“Raze?” My voice barely escapes my throat.
He flinches.
Kane fumbles the spell-lock, his fingers trembling slightly as he activates the wards. Neither looks at me. The men who once treated me as blood now act as if I’m a ghost they’re forbidden to acknowledge.
I start toward Raze, but Dom’s hand curls around my wrist. The message is clear: whatever brotherhood once existed here has been burned away, replaced by something colder and crueler.
The last thing I see before the doors seal behind us are Raze’s shoulders collapsing with the release of a breath he’s likely been holding since he saw me. As if my presence alone summons something worth fearing.
The main floor stretches out before us in a familiar architecture, but the velvet-draped lounges where couples once tangled in spelled shadows have vanished.
So has the golden haze of pleasure-magic and expensive perfume.
Even the air feels wrong, thick with the metallic tang of blood and fear instead of sweet smoke and desire.
The crowd that parts for us isn’t the usual mix of trust fund brats and ambitious socialites.
These are harder faces, with scarred knuckles and hollow eyes.
At a corner table, a man in a torn jacket counts blood-streaked lumes.
Two women with fighter’s frames pass something between them, a vial glinting with the sheen of bottled darkness.
The Den has shed its glamour and become a marketplace for violence.
My gaze catches on a dark smear staining the marble floor, exactly where I collapsed that night, and the memory surges before I can stop it.
Dom’s hands on me, his magic wrapping us in a fevered haze while The Den pulsed around us, every breath a reckless, exultant surrender until Rowe’s voice shattered it all.
I can’t breathe. My lungs seize. The present buckles as the past rips through the seams, leaving me suspended between then and now, unsure if I’m standing or breaking all over again.
Dom’s fingers find my pulse, and the pressure helps anchor me to now. I flinch instinctively, the contact hitting a nerve before I register it’s him. My body braces for pain, then surrenders to the steadiness. He doesn’t speak or offer comfort, only holds me still until my breathing steadies.
The glass shattering startles me. A server’s trembling hands have betrayed her, sending whiskey spreading across the floor. She kneels to gather the shards, but stops cold as Dom’s shadow overtakes her.
“I’m sorry, I’m so—” Her words choke off as Dom crouches beside her. The room stiffens into silence. His hand moves with deliberate slowness as he lifts a jagged shard of glass, turning it slowly beneath the lights.
“Leave it.” The softness in his voice is a warning, not comfort. The girl scrambles backward, palms torn open, red dripping down pale wrists.
I recognize her. Melody. She used to dance on the center platform, her spelled ink casting constellations into the surrounding air. Now, those same tattoos are dull and lifeless. Like everything else here, she’s been stripped of her shine.
I turn toward the bar, searching for something—someone—to tether myself to.
Raven stands behind it, little more than a silhouette.
Her opal-dusted eyes have gone flat, her movements robotic as she pours drink after drink.
The crystal bottles that once danced through the air at her command remain firmly grounded.
When she spots me, something flashes across her face—recognition, fear, warning—before she jerks her gaze away.
Overhead, the lights stutter and dim, casting fractured shadows across walls clawed raw by recent violence. Impact marks crater the stone. Broken furniture has been cleared away, but dark stains remain where blood seeped into the grout.
I hear the whispers next.
“That’s where he put Marcus through the wall.”
“Did you see the VIP section after someone said her name?”
My chest tightens once more. Dom’s fingers find the back of my neck, thumb steady against my pulse. His other hand braces across my lower back. I hadn’t realized I was swaying.
A crash from the upper floor makes me flinch.
Two men grapple near the balcony rail, their blood rubies flaring violent crimson as magic crackles between them.
The larger one—shoulders thick beneath torn leather—spits accusations through clenched teeth.
“You fucking cheat! That fight was rigged. I want my lumes!”