Page 38

38

JACKSON

W e don’t sleep anymore. Not really.

It’s been three days since Lio’s murder, and the warehouse base we’ve holed up in is thick with smoke, magic residue, and grief no one wants to talk about. We rotate shifts, plan strikes, reinforce wards—but the silence between missions is the loudest damn thing in the room.

Seraphine hasn’t spoken much. She walks like a loaded weapon—tight movements, jaw clenched, shadows clinging to her like a second skin. If she’s not careful, she’s going to burn straight through her soul.

And me?

I’ve got tunnel vision.

Lio was a kid. A good one. One of the few people in this broken-ass war who still believed there was something worth saving.

They took that.

So now I’m going to take everything back.

Dez calls us in just after dusk.

Her face is pale under the flickering rune-lights, eyes darker than I’ve seen them since this shitshow started. She’s hunched over her scry-board like it’s bleeding secrets, hands shaking slightly as she plugs a flash crystal into the makeshift projector.

“You found it?” I ask, stepping up behind her.

She doesn’t answer—just hits play.

The footage is grainy, probably from a street cam or a black-market eye-clip Lio set up. But the angle is clear, and the figures are unmistakable.

Six cult members in full Black Sun regalia. They’re standing in a circle beneath the old metro line, glyphs burned into the concrete around them. Chanting.

Then one of them steps forward. Unmasked.

And my blood runs cold.

“...That’s not possible,” Kirin says, voice hollow.

But it is.

Because I know that face.

We all do.

Seraphine’s voice cuts through the silence like a blade. “Halbrook.”

I stare at the screen. “No. No fucking way.”

Harold Halbrook—Director of PEACE Portland Division. The man who vouched for Seraphine when the Council wanted her clipped. The guy who sent me to keep her in line. The same man whose office we have been standing in until Sera was taken.

And right now, he’s leading a goddamn cult meeting like it’s Sunday church. The same people who killed Lio. Who took Sera. Who wants to unleash Thranos.

It gets worse.

The footage zooms in—some kind of auto-spell—right as Halbrook lifts his head. The light from the ritual hits his skin... and it shifts.

Pale gray.

Faint markings along his cheekbones.

Eyes like moonstone. Cold. Unnatural.

“Dark elf,” Seraphine breathes. “That fucker has been wearing lenses and makeup.”

Rafe hisses through his teeth. “But they were all?—”

“Extinct,” Dez finishes. “Or hiding in the deep webs of the Realm.”

“They weren’t hiding,” I say. “They were waiting.”

No one speaks.

The screen flickers off.

I turn to the others, barely holding it together. “He’s been in our goddamn house this whole time.”

“He’s running the house,” Seraphine says bitterly.

“And he killed Lio,” I growl.

“No.” She grabs my arm. “He ordered it. Someone else did the slicing. That means we can still make him bleed.”

Her eyes are burning. So is mine.

But mine’s colder.

Focused.

An hour later, we’ve got the bare bones of a plan laid out on the table. It’s suicide. No other way to cut it. Halbrook’s personal compound is buried beneath the old library in Sector Ten—now ground zero for the worst of the fighting. His warding sigils are top-tier. We’re talking ancient elven-tech combined with modern hybrid witchcraft. It’s a fortress with a murder boner.

Still.

I’m going.

“I’ll breach it alone,” I say, double-checking my belt. “Draw attention. You all hit the second entrance once I trigger the fallback glyph.”

“No fucking way,” Rafe growls.

“Jackson,” Seraphine says, warning laced into my name. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not.” I glance at her. “I’m just mad.”

“You think that makes you invincible?”

“No. But it makes me fast.”

She storms after me into the hall, yanking me around by my jacket. “I just got you back. You really gonna throw that away now?”

“I’m not throwing it away. I’m trying to give us a shot at stopping him before he does this to everyone. ”

Her eyes glisten—but she doesn’t cry. She never does. Instead, she steps closer, voice low.

“If you die, I’ll raise you just to kill you again.”

I chuckle, throat tight. “Kinky.”

She leans in, kisses me like she’s trying to brand her name on my soul. “You better come back.”

I whisper against her lips. “I’m not coming back without his fucking head.”

And then I walk away before I can change my mind.