Page 27

AVA

T he tension in our dorm apartment was suffocating. Ciaran paced the living room like a restless predator, his agitation palpable. His boots scuffed against the floorboards, back and forth, back and forth, until I thought I might scream just to make it stop.

I didn’t blame him—not really.

We had twenty-four hours to decipher the High Lord’s riddle, twenty-four hours to prove he was worthy of initiation.

Twenty-four hours or our chance to infiltrate the Sochai was gone.

And we were running out of time.

“What do they want from me?” Ciaran growled, his voice cracking under the weight of his frustration. “What kind of sick test is this?”

I clenched my hands into fists, my nails digging into my palms as I tried to steady myself.

“What did the riddle say again?” I asked, trying to sound calm, as if my own heart wasn’t hammering in my chest .

He stopped pacing, his eyes locking on mine like a lifeline. Then, with a deep breath, he recited it.

“Chase the raven with the Gardener’s gift, across the dark moors to where the winter sun stands still.”

The words sent a chill skittering down my spine. They were cryptic, almost poetic, but the meaning eluded me.

“Twenty-four hours,” Ty muttered from the couch, his voice low and measured. “If we don’t figure this out, they’ll—”

He cut himself off, shaking his head, but I knew what he meant.

The Sochai didn’t forgive failure.

“They’ll kill me,” Ciaran finished bluntly, his fists clenching at his sides. “Or worse.”

The thought of what “worse” might mean sent nausea roiling through my stomach, but I pushed it down.

“It’s another test,” I said, trying to inject some steadiness into my voice. “They want to see if you’re really one of them—if your father groomed you well enough to understand their twisted codes.”

“Then let’s start where our father left off,” Ty said, standing with a quiet determination that contrasted sharply with Ciaran’s fraying edges.

He returned with the chest of journals and notes we’d salvaged from the professor’s secret lab, dumping them onto the table.

I stared at the messy pile, dread curling in my chest. Those journals held horrors, memories I’d tried desperately to lock away.

Ciaran must have seen the hesitation in my eyes as I reached for the closest journal because he caught my hand .

“You don’t have to read them. Ty and I can handle it. But,” he added softly, the edge in his voice gone for the moment, “it’s your choice.”

For a moment, his vulnerability softened the edges of my fear. A flicker of something new in his tone made my chest tighten—was he changing, for me?

I offered him a small, reassuring smile. “I can do it. I can help.”

His grip on my hand tightened briefly before he let go, a small gesture of trust that made my chest ache.

I perched on the edge of the couch, a thick journal in my lap, while Ty sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping methodically through another.

Across from us, Ciaran paced, a journal in his hand, though it was clear he wasn’t reading a single word.

Ciaran’s agitation radiated off him like heat. His fist clenched and unclenched around the fragile binding, his knuckles whitening as his jaw tightened.

Every few seconds, he’d exhale sharply, mutter a curse under his breath, and toss a glance our way, as if expecting us to have figured it all out already.

“Anything?” he snapped, breaking the silence.

“Not yet.” Ty didn’t even look up, his tone maddeningly calm as he skimmed through page after page.

Ciaran growled, slamming his book shut. “We’re wasting time. What if it’s simpler than all this? ‘Chase the raven’—maybe it means we just need to kill a raven or something.”

Ty finally looked up, his expression as dry as his tone. “That’s too literal and it’s not how riddles work, Ciaran.”

The tension crackled between them, sharp and dangerous .

Ciaran’s shoulders tensed, his fists tightening as if he was one step away from throwing the journal. “You don’t know that. You’re not the only one with ideas here.”

“And you’re not the only one who cares,” Ty shot back, his voice still quiet but carrying an edge.

“Stop.” My voice cut through the rising heat. “We don’t have time for this. Just… focus, okay? Every second we waste arguing is a second closer to them winning.”

Ciaran grumbled something under his breath but sat down, flipping the journal open again, though his hands shook as he turned the pages.

I returned to the journal in my lap.

The professor’s handwriting was neat, precise, almost clinical, which somehow made the words more horrifying. He wrote about his experiments with an almost childlike excitement, detailing the effects of his latest creations like a proud artist discussing his masterpiece.

At the edge of my consciousness, Ty began muttering in Irish. But one word made my ears prick. “…grianstad…”

Its meaning buzzed in my mind like static.

“What did you just say?” I asked, my focus shifting to him.

Ty blinked, his gaze sharpening as he looked at me. “Grianstad. It means ‘sun stands still’ in Irish.”

“But it also means solstice,” I said, the word unlocking a memory. My heart gave a small leap as a connection began to form. “Wait. During orientation, didn’t Lisa say something about the winter solstice?”

Ty nodded. “Yeah, she wouldn’t stop talking about Darkmoor’s history. I remember her saying something about a building on campus aligned with the winter solstice. ”

A lightbulb flickered on in my brain.

“Darkmoor is actually a really cool old place.” Lisa’s voice carried as she followed Ty down the hall. “We even have a legit passagetomb on the grounds aligned with the winter solstice or winter grianstad , if you’re up on your Irish.”

I stood up so quickly that my chair clattered to the floor behind me. I began frantically searching through the mess of papers we’d accumulated at the end of the dining room table. I found what I was looking for at the very bottom. Forgotten from weeks and weeks ago, the Darkmoor new student orientation welcome packet that Lisa had brought for Ciaran and Ty at the very start of term.

I slammed it on the table between them, opened to a page.

Among other pictures of various interesting or historical spots around campus was a photo of an ancient stone passagetomb, a grassy mound rising up out of the forest, the stone entrance partially hidden by thick vines of morning glory.

Any other spot like this, on any other college campus would be ripe for late-night hookups, Adderall drug deals, and beer bottle smashing. But no one went there. I don’t remember ever being told it was off-limits. But we all seemed to know to stay away.

I pointed to the passagetomb, the very one I’d run past when they had chased me through Darkmoor forest.

“The passagetomb,” I said, my voice rising with excitement.

Ty’s eyes lit up, and for a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift .

“Right,” he said. “ Across the dark moors to where the winter sun stands still —it has to mean the Darkmoor passagetomb.”

I turned to Ciaran, the first spark of hope igniting in my chest. “That’s it. That’s the place.”

Ciaran let out a frustrated breath, raking a hand through his hair. “Great. So we’ve got a location. Now what? I’m supposed to chase a raven to the tomb? What the hell does that even mean?”

The mood shifted instantly, the fragile hope I’d felt slipping through my fingers. My stomach twisted, but I clenched my jaw and forced myself to stay steady.

“Okay,” I said gently, keeping my voice calm despite the icy dread crawling up my spine. “That’s progress. We’ve deciphered one part.”

Ciaran let out a bitter laugh, sharp and jagged as broken glass. “Yeah, one part down. Fifty fucked-up million to go.”

“We just have to keep going.”

I sat back down and forced myself to focus on the text in front of me, my fingers trembling as I smoothed over the delicate journal paper.

My stomach twisted as I read about the professor’s first trials—on his wife .

Mona.

Ty and Ciaran’s mother.

He wrote about her suffering with cold detachment, as if she were no more than a lab rat, a tool for his genius. Like she wasn’t the mother of his children. Like she wasn’t even fucking human.

My vision blurred with fury. How dare he?

I slammed the journal shut, bile rising in my throat .

The sound echoed in the loft, making Ty and Ciaran glance up.

I stared at the closed cover, willing the nausea away. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t let this break me.

Ciaran’s gaze softened, and for a moment, he looked like he might reach for me.

But I shook my head and reopened the journal, forcing myself to keep reading, to keep going, even as my hands shook.

Ciaran’s voice cut through my haze.

“The Gardener,” he muttered, his voice low, almost like he was speaking to himself. His brow furrowed as he tapped the journal in his lap, then his eyes widened with sudden realization. “Oh my God. Of course.”

I straightened, my heart thudding as I focused on him. “You figured it out? The Gardener?”

He nodded, his jaw tightening. “Yeah. The Gardener was the Sochai code name for… our father .”

The words hung in the air, suffocating and vile. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the journal, the paper crumpling under his fingers.

With a frustrated shove, he hurled the journal across the table, the pages splaying open as it landed.

He was already on his feet, pacing like a caged animal, his hands flexing at his sides.

I exhaled slowly, refusing to let his agitation shake me as I kept reading.

The pages blurred when I reached a section describing his introduction to the inner circle of the Sochai. He wrote with twisted reverence about their “gift,” a “blessing” that had reignited his work .

My heart stuttered when I realized what he meant. The “gift” wasn’t a thing—it was a person.

I swallowed hard, my grip tightening on the edges of the journal. “He… he called me his ‘gift.’”

Ty’s head snapped up and Ciaran stopped pacing, both of them looking at me in horror.

“The Gardener’s ‘gift,’” I said, “…is me .”

Ciaran’s brows furrowed deeply, his fists clenching at his sides. “What the fuck are you talking about, Ava?”

Ty’s voice was calm but sharp, the edge of unease betraying his usual composure.

“She’s right,” he said, his fingers running over the line in the journal he was holding. “Our father called her his gift. It’s in here. Multiple times. Fuck, why didn’t I make the connection before?”

Ciaran looked like he’d been struck. His face contorted with fury, a storm brewing in his eyes.

“That sick bastard…” His voice cracked, and he slammed his fist into the wall, the sound reverberating through the loft.

I couldn’t look at either of them. My hands shook as I closed the journal in front of me, but it wasn’t enough to block out the words burned into my mind.

My foster father’s gift . His muse. His fucking property .

“I’m part of it,” I said again, more firmly this time, though my voice wavered under the weight of the truth. I forced myself to meet Ciaran’s gaze, his anger bleeding into a flicker of anguish that tore at my chest. “This riddle—this initiation—I’m part of it somehow.”

“It’s not happening.” Ciaran cut me off, his voice a growl. He crossed the room in two strides and stood over me, his shadow falling across the journal I’d shut. “I’m not letting them use you for whatever twisted game they’ve planned.”

Ty exhaled sharply, dragging a hand down his face. “This changes things. If Ava’s part of the initiation—”

“It’s not up to you,” I said, my voice firmer than I felt, meeting his glare head-on. “If this is the only way to bring them down, then we do it.”

Ciaran’s eyes burned into mine, his hands flexing at his sides like he was trying to keep from shaking me. “I’m not risking you.”

Ty’s voice broke through the charged silence. “We don’t have a choice, Ciaran. This isn’t just about you or me or Ava—it’s about taking down the Sochai, all of them.”

Ciaran whirled on him, his fury redirected. “You don’t get to decide that, brother . You’re not the one they want to use.”

“And neither are you,” Ty shot back. “But if we want to win this, we need to play their game.”

Their voices rose, but I tuned them out, my focus narrowing to the words in the journal still clutched in my hand. The Gardener’s gift . The weight of what it meant settled over me, heavy and suffocating.

Whatever this riddle led to, whatever the initiation demanded—I was at the center of it.

That left the last section undeciphered.

Chasing the raven.

The journals were dense with madness, but as I turned another yellowed page, a single word struck me like a slap. Chasing.

My breath hitched, and my fingers froze mid-turn. The professor had used that term repeatedly, always in connection with… with me. My throat tightened as I scanned the page, the realization crawling over me like a thousand spiders.

He hadn’t meant chasing in the traditional sense. It was his twisted code for administering a potion.

My stomach churned as the memories crept closer, clawing at the edges of my mind—nights where my body wasn’t my own, where the world slipped into a haze, where waking up meant discovering another bruise, another betrayal.

I slammed the journal shut, the sound breaking through the suffocating silence in the loft.

“What is it?” Ciaran asked sharply, his agitation immediately redirected to me.

“It’s…” My voice cracked, and I swallowed hard, gripping the edges of the journal until my knuckles whitened. “The word ‘chasing’—it means administering a potion.”

I glanced between Ciaran and Ty, my eyes burning. “That’s what the professor called it. Chasing. ”

Ty’s jaw tightened, but he nodded, as if it all made too much sense.

Ciaran, however, looked like he might explode, his fists curling at his sides.

“Administering what?” Ty asked, his tone careful, measured.

“The Raven,” I whispered, the words feeling foreign and jagged on my tongue. “I’ve read it before—”

In his “recipe” book.

The recipes he’d derived by experimenting on their mother.

My stomach roiled at the thought. That book had been the pinnacle of his depravity. None of us had dared touch it since we pulled it from the secret lab.

But now… now I had to.

My hands trembled as I reached for it, partially buried under the pile of journals.

I hesitated again before flipping it open, each creak of the binding feeling like an accusation.

The pages smelled faintly of mildew and chemicals, an eerie testament to its contents.

My breath quickened as I leafed through the entries, each coded potion more sinister than the last.

And then, finally, there it was— The Raven.

My hands shook as I read the ingredients, the twisted scrawls detailing its effects.

“The riddle,” I said, my vision blurring, my voice cracking. “The initiation. It’s clear now…”

Ciaran’s voice cut through the fog. “What? What does it mean?”

I forced myself to speak despite the tightness in my throat.

“Ciaran has to bring me to the passagetomb tonight— unconscious .”