Chapter 40 Is Our Sky Still Up There
Kane pulls me into the shadows between buildings, his grip gentler than I deserve. But all I see is blood smeared across sterile stone, children frozen in the moment before annihilation, their mother’s final cry rupturing air saturated with death.
My legs give out, and the wall meets me with unrelenting stone, scraping through the thin barrier of my jeans and jacket. Filth and runoff seep into my skin, but the sensation barely registers.
“Hey. Hey, look at me.” Kane’s voice reaches through the static, low and urgent.
He’s crouched in front of me now, hands hovering near my shoulders, hesitant to touch.
Like contact might undo what little of me is left.
“We need to move. There’s got to be another checkpoint, or we find a maintenance line. Sewers, or . . .”
The words wash over me, meaningless. My mind remains anchored to what I saw.
“Aria.” Kane’s voice breaks. “Please, stay with me.”
“How long?” The question tears from my throat. When he doesn’t answer, something calcifies behind my ribs. “Kane. When does the glamour break?”
He goes still, and for the first time genuine fear flickers behind his eyes as his hands tighten at his sides, joints straining with each breath—one, then another, then a third, as though he’s trying to rewrite a sentence that can only end in execution.
“Thirty minutes,” he says. “Maybe less.” The confession drags something out of him. “Shit. I’m sorry. That’s not what you need to—”
“It’s fine.” The laugh that leaves me is hollow, someone else’s voice speaking through my mouth as I drift untethered, the children’s faces blurring into older ghosts—my parents’ lab, the fire that consumed them, the silence that followed.
Kane starts pacing. Precise steps, too controlled for panic. Four paces left. Pause. Three to the right. He moves as someone counting time by heartbeats.
“Listen to me. We’re not done. There’s still a chance to figure something out. We could split up, or—”
“To what end?” The words spill out. “So I can watch more people die? Let whatever’s inside me tear everyone apart?
” My fingers press against the filthy ground, seeking something solid to anchor me to reality.
Ice crystals form where my skin touches stone, spreading in delicate patterns.
Even now, that ancient power bleeds through my control.
“Maybe I should’ve let him do it,” I whisper. “Allowed Astrafel to burn it all. At least then I would’ve died by choice, not like some gutter rat.” I gesture toward the glamour I wear, this illusion of survival. This skin that doesn’t belong to me.
“I’m not letting you die in an alley because—”
“Because what? You couldn’t save me?” I cut in, voice splintering. “No one can stop it. I can’t be saved. I was never built for salvation. I was engineered, designed, used.”
We sit in the stillness, time leaking away, thick and rotting, slipping between our fingers while the shadows draw tighter on every side.
The purr of an approaching vehicle ripples through our manufactured calm, and I keep my head bowed, unmoving, as the inevitability of capture settles over me with the weight of a funeral shroud. Whether we face it or flee, the end is written in blood and bone.
“Aria.” Kane’s voice turns sharp again, carved by urgency. “We need to move.”
“What does it matter?” The question falls from my lips. “Let it end on our terms, in the only moment we still control.”
I glance up as a sleek black car approaches the checkpoint, obsidian and chrome, polished to an obscene gleam, its elegance a mockery of our desperation. Each curve and shadow speaks of wealth, of power, of everything we’ve fled.
“Trust Kian to send such a pristine harbinger.” Something between a laugh and a sob claws its way from my throat. “At least we’ll die with flair. He always did prefer his carnage choreographed.”
The car halts at the barrier. Low voices carry across the sterile stretch of stone cloaked in authority. I bow my head, pressing my forehead to knees that won’t stop trembling.
“Is that—” Kane’s breath catches, something like impossible hope threading through his voice. “Holy shit. Is that Rowe?”
The name rips through me and I lift my head too fast, the world tilting as vertigo seizes me by the spine.
But I see him. Emerging from the car is a man who has haunted my most private moments.
Who has carved himself so deep beneath my skin that no amount of forgetting, no act of looking away, could erase the echo he left behind.
The last time I saw Rowe, he was on his knees fighting to reach me.
Now he stands like an avenging god, power rolling off him in waves.
His broad frame fills the space between checkpoint barriers, leather jacket catching the harsh light.
Even from here, I can see the sharp line of his jaw; the way his presence makes the enforcers shift uneasily.
My body reacts before I can stop it and I lurch forward, some desperate part of me reaching for the only thing that’s ever felt remotely like safety. Kane’s hand clamps around my arm, but I wrench free before he pulls me back.
“Aria, don’t—”
“Rowe!”
“For fuck’s sake!” Kane swears, his voice crashing behind me as he gives chase. “Get back here!”
The enforcers pivot in unison, heads turning with mechanical efficiency. One of them lets out a dry laugh that grates through his helmet. “How charming. Our lost fugitives return. Come to have your papers corrected, or shall we extend the same courtesy we showed your predecessors?”
The containment spell crashes over us, every molecule of air sharpening into crystalline razors that press inward until breathing becomes a conscious, failing effort.
My lungs seize as bones creak under an invisible weight and pain blooms—not as a strike, but as relentless compression, a suffocation that begins in the marrow and crawls outward.
Kane is beside me, his body drawn tight with strain, fury radiating off him in waves. But what unravels me isn’t his pain, but the power rising beneath my skin.
Astrafel answers the call as if he’s been waiting for it. His presence expands within me, not with violence, but with inevitability, pressing against the walls of my consciousness until I can barely distinguish where I end and he begins.
“Rowe, please.” The words come out strangled, but they’re all I have left. I meet his eyes, searching for recognition. His gaze flicks across me and keeps going.
“Do I know you?” Four words, precise as a blade between ribs.
The enforcers laugh again, louder this time, as if the performance is peaking. “Oh, how tragic. Begging the wrong man for mercy. Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll make it quick.”
The pressure builds until my ribs splinter with ache, Kane’s breath stuttering beside me as the edges of my vision darken and Astrafel pushes harder. He wants out. He doesn’t ask but demands. My magic, my body, my will—none of it is mine while he coils there, waiting to be unleashed.
Let me finish it, the voice in my mind says, heavy and inhuman. I can deliver what they deserve.
I glance at Kane, seeing the pain etched across his features. At Rowe, standing so close yet impossibly far. If I lose control now, they’ll both burn in the inferno. Everyone will die.
I hold the power inside, barely, knowing I am seconds from failure.
“Do you think our sky’s still up there after the Solstice Festival?
” My voice is splintered, barely audible through the pressure threatening to collapse my chest, but I force the words out anyway.
Not because I believe they’ll save me, but because they’re the only fragment of truth I have left to offer.
The change in Rowe is immediate, power radiating from him in measured waves as he steps forward, and in that moment, I remember why the Darkmoor name carries the weight of a blade against the throat.
He is no longer the boy who coaxed broken-winged creatures back to flight, but legacy made flesh.
Generations of command bred into bone and blood, authority etched into every breath, the embodiment of control over life and death.
“Stand down.” His voice carries the weight of an executioner’s verdict. “Release them. Now.”
One enforcer shifts, head tilting slightly. “Sir, protocol dictates—”
“Did I stutter?” Rowe’s voice drops into a darker register, and the atmosphere responds.
The air thickens as if bracing for a storm, heat coiling at the edge of release.
“Or would you prefer I contact my father directly? I’m sure Alexander would be fascinated to hear why his son’s orders were overruled by glorified border guards. ”
The containment spell shatters and I collapse forward, still shaking from the lingering echoes of power that doesn’t belong to me. It’s okay, I try to think toward the storm inside me. We’re safe now. You can stop.
Rowe’s hand closes around my arm, his grip carefully controlled but brooking no argument. His skin burns through the fabric of my sleeve, not with temperature but with intent.
“Get in the car.” His eyes fix on Kane, glaring daggers. “Both of you.”
He practically shoves me into the front seat while Kane slides into the back. The engine rumbles to life beneath us, the sound too elegant for the violence it’s following.
His hands grip the wheel like he’s strangling fate itself, and each breath he takes seems measured and deliberate.
Beneath his carefully maintained expression lies what others might miss: the fear threaded into his rage, the barely perceptible tremor in his jaw, the quiet unraveling of someone who just witnessed what was never meant for his eyes.
We clear the checkpoint, leaving behind the enforcers who still stand frozen in the wake of Rowe’s display of power. I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts me off with a single sharp gesture.
“Not one word. Not until we’re clear.” The muscles in his forearms stand rigid beneath rolled sleeves, tension visible in every line of his body.
“Rowe—”
“I mean it, Aria.”
Silence stretches between us. Rowe keeps checking the mirrors, his foot heavy on the accelerator as we leave Eclipsera behind. His gaze flicks to Kane in the rearview, darkness gathering in his expression as his hands tighten on the wheel again.
Just then, the glamour breaks, magic falling away to reveal our true faces.
Rowe glances at me, then does a double-take at the backseat as Kane’s identity registers, surprise briefly overtaking his anger.
The car swerves slightly before his hands clench tighter on the wheel, knuckles bleaching white against black leather.
“You better have one hell of an explanation for this, Aria.” His voice holds none of the warmth I remember. “Because what you just pulled back there wasn’t reckless, it was suicidal.”
I sag into the seat, my limbs giving under the weight of exhaustion. Through heavy eyes, I study him—the strained breaths, the flickers of expression he fails to suppress. He’s vibrating with fury, but beneath that is something else, an undercurrent that makes me ache.
His hand lifts from the wheel, hesitates midair, then closes into a fist and drops to his thigh. When he finally speaks again, his voice carries a quiet edge of devastation.
“Do you have any idea—” He cuts himself off, his jaw locking as his teeth grind together. “If I hadn’t been there, hadn’t heard what you said . . .” His hands clench tighter, pulse visible at his temple. “I almost watched you die without even knowing it was you.”
In the backseat, Kane shifts. The movement is subtle, but it draws Rowe’s attention.
“Look, Rowe—”
“Don’t.” The word lands with absolute finality. “Whatever you’re involved in, whatever part you played, we’ll discuss it when I’m not actively restraining myself from throwing you out of this vehicle.”
Silence descends again, heavy with unspoken accusations and explanations. Rowe’s driving grows more aggressive, each turn taken with precise fury.
“You should probably prepare yourself,” I say quietly. “There’s a lot.”
He exhales once, but it’s no release. “You mean besides nearly getting executed? Aria, this is . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he swallows hard. “Just tell me you’re not hurt.”
I turn toward him, taking in the shadows carved beneath his eyes, the taut set of his shoulders, the way his anger masks something far more fragile. This is Rowe stripped of his usual gentle calm, and with his heart exposed and bleeding.
“I’m okay,” I whisper, though we both know it’s a lie. “Or I will be. Once I explain everything.”
“Everything,” he repeats, the word heavy with promise and threat. “Starting with why you’re running from checkpoint guards with Kane Richards, and ending with why you look like you’ve seen hell itself.”
I close my eyes, letting my head rest against the cool window. “That’s the thing about hell, Rowe,” I murmur. “Sometimes it wears a familiar face. Sometimes it lives in your blood.”
The car accelerates slightly, as if Rowe can outrun the weight of my words. But we both know better. Some truths follow, regardless of how fast you run. Regardless of how far you flee. And the truth I carry? It’s about to change everything.