Page 12

12

SERAPHINE

T he day’s been long, cruel. Another child dead. Another riot on the verge. Another piece of my soul ground down beneath boots and bureaucracy.

But I can’t stop moving.

Not when everything’s spiraling like this.

Not when Jackson looked at me like that—like I was half-hero, half-stranger.

“I believe you. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.”

I don’t know what to do with those words. What to be with them. I’ve been feared, revered, obeyed, hunted. But believed?

That one’s new. And it burns worse than the rest.

I find him by his car just after the sun dips below the rooftops. He’s running on fumes, red-eyed, wrecked.

“You need sleep,” I say. Not sarcastic. Not hard. Just... true.

He snorts. “You offering to read me a bedtime story?”

“I could knock you out if you need help.”

There’s a flicker of a smile. Barely.

“Go,” I say gently. “Sleep might give you clarity.”

He doesn’t argue. Just nods, brushes his fingers through his hair like he’s trying to scrub off the day, then climbs into the car.

Before he drives off, he says, “You know, you should take your own advice as well.”

And I’m alone again.

It never used to feel like this—heavy, wrong.

Now it does. And I know that I should take his advice, but after today, I won’t be able to. Not until I get closer to figuring out who is slaughtering my people and why.

I put in a call and leave a message hoping it’s enough for a call back.

The vampire queen calls me an hour later.

Her name is Ilyana Moreau, and she used to be my ally.

Before I broke her trust.

Before I walked away from the court and everything that came with it.

Her voice is honey-wrapped venom when she says, “Nightshade. I was wondering how long it would take you to crawl back.”

“I’m not crawling,” I snap. “I’m asking.”

“Worse.”

I don’t rise to it.

“Fae blood was spilled on sovereign soil,” she continues. “That’s not just a murder, Seraphine. That’s an act of war.”

“Which is why I need to know if your people are involved.”

Silence. Long. Calculated.

“My people may be monsters, darling, but we’re not stupid. ”

“Someone is trying to provoke a war.”

“Yes. And you already know who.”

I go quiet.

Because I do.

Black Sun.

They’re fanning the flames, igniting old blood feuds, setting the whole supernatural world up to implode—and the humans right alongside it, the mundanes just can’t see it yet.

Ilyana doesn’t need more prompting.

“They’ve reactivated cells that haven’t stirred in over a century,” she says. “One of them—Gideon’s Torch—is amassing weapons and blood rites. They’re not just planning strikes, Sera. They’re building an army.”

“Of what?”

“Of anyone willing to see the world burn in a different shape.”

I go still.

“Black Sun is resurrecting rituals, ” she continues. “Not just magic. Systems. Blood-based hierarchies. Sacrifices. They’re trying to pull us back to the old world. Before integration. Before peace.”

“Why?”

“Because they believe power should belong to the unafraid. And because your kind made a very dangerous mistake centuries ago when you locked them away instead of erasing them.”

She hangs up without saying goodbye.

Typical.

But her words won’t stop echoing.

You already know who.

And worse, your kind.

And to top it off, I know the only reason that I got even that amount of intel shows that she’s scared and that sets this whole thing into another perspective.

I pull up to Jackson’s building just after midnight.

Something’s wrong.

The street’s too quiet. No lights on in his apartment. His car’s gone, sure—but there’s no scent of coffee, no trace of freshly worn leather, no thrum of tired-but-breathing magic I’ve learned to feel when he’s near.

I reach out with my shadows.

Nothing.

That shouldn’t be possible.

Unless there’s a void.

My chest tightens.

I head to his unit. Pick the lock like it owes me money. Push inside with my hand already curled around a ward-trigger.

But the place is empty. No sign of him. No sign of a struggle. Just... absence.

A chill spider walks up my spine.

And then I see it.

One faint rune burned into the floor beneath the carpet, under the couch leg. Barely there. Carved with a knife not made by human hands.

Brood done but Black Sun rune. A tracker.

Fuck.

I grab my phone, hit the speed dial.

No answer. Second time. Third.

“Come on, you stubborn son of a bitch,” I whisper. “Pick up.”

Nothing.

No voicemail. Just silence.

My hands shake as I pull the burner from my boot and text a contact—underground net, favors owed.

One message:

Is Typhon’s Brood active tonight? Any cells moving off-grid?

The reply comes too fast:

Confirmed movement. Kidnapping suspected.

And another:

Target human. PEACE-adjacent. No ID yet.

I’m moving before I realize it. Out the door and back into the night. Heart pounding. Magic rising.

Because Jackson didn’t make it home and someone is going to fucking pay.