Page 11

V anya

The corridor outside Interrogation Chamber Seven stretches before me like a gauntlet. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting stark white against polished concrete that reflects my shadow in fractured pieces. Each footfall lands sharply despite the soundproofing, setting my teeth on edge.

Twenty paces to the door.

Nineteen.

Eighteen.

My spine straightens, chin rising to the angle I’ve perfected over decades of deception. A wave of nervous energy threatens to buckle my knees. I force it down, compress it into the dark space where I’ve buried everything that once made me human.

The ornate silver mask rests against my skin, its familiar weight both armor and anchor. For years, I’ve hidden behind this mask, using its anonymity to hide in plain sight.

Seventeen paces. Sixteen.

He’s in there.

The bond stretches taut between us, that invisible thread I’ve maintained for two decades.

Through it, I feel him—the steady drum of his pulse, the controlled tension in his shoulders, the way he sits perfectly still like he always did when thinking through impossible problems. Some habits never change.

Some men never break, no matter how thoroughly you destroy their world.

Fifteen paces.

The last time I was with him, he was sleeping on the cot we shared while dawn bled through the blinds we’d drawn to shut out reality.

Peace had softened the harsh lines around his eyes, erased the careful persona he wore for everyone else.

His dark hair had fallen across his forehead in the way that made him look younger, almost boyish, despite the weight behind those brown eyes.

Just Hargen. Not the handler. Not the Syndicate puppet.

Mine.

I’d traced every detail into memory like I was mapping territory I’d never see again.

The scar along his jaw from a training mishap in his first decade of service.

The way his chest rose and fell in the deep rhythm of true rest—something he’d told me he rarely found.

The calluses on his palms, rough against my skin when he’d reached for me in sleep.

The way he’d whispered my name in the darkness, like he was tasting the sound.

That final morning, I’d known I was memorizing moments that would have to last forever.

“Promise me you’ll live,” I’d breathed against the hollow of his throat. “Promise me you’ll find a way to be happy, even if I can’t be part of it.”

He’d argued with me then, refused to accept that things might not work out. But eventually, he’d given in. His arms had tightened around me. His voice had broken on the words. “I promise. But only if you promise me the same.”

Liar. We’d both been such accomplished liars, even to ourselves.

Fourteen paces. Thirteen.

I’d kept my word, technically. Survived the chemical flames that were meant to consume every trace of Vanya Arrowvane. Spent months in Cassia’s hidden safe houses while my body changed to grow the baby within it. Learned to become someone else entirely. Learned to become a mother.

I’d lived. But happy? Happiness had died with my old identity, somewhere between my first execution order and the hundredth time I’d looked our daughter in the eye and lied about her father’s fate.

Twelve paces. Eleven.

The reports I’d stolen over the years read like clinical assessments of a functioning machine. Hargen Cole: Asset Handler. No romantic entanglements. No close personal attachments. Psychological evaluation: Stable. Reliable. Emotionally detached.

Perfect.

He’d carved away every piece of himself that could be used as leverage, turned his heart into stone and his soul into steel. Exactly what survival demanded. Exactly what I’d begged him not to do in those last desperate hours before my staged execution.

It had been agony to sense him deliberately numbing himself, feeling each wall he built between his heart and the world.

Through our bond, I’d experienced every moment he chose duty over connection, every time he walked away from something that might have brought him joy.

But it had also kept him breathing when lesser men would have broken or burned.

“Whatever happens,” he’d said, “remember that you’re mine. That I’m yours. That nothing they do to us can change that.”

I keep walking. Taking steadying breaths. Composing myself.

Ten paces. Nine.

What will he see when this door opens? The woman who’d trailed her fingers through his hair while planning our impossible future? The lover who’d whispered promises about a life we’d never have? The girl who’d laughed at his terrible jokes and stolen his shirts because they smelled like him?

Or will he recognize the monster I’ve had to become—the one who debates purification protocols over morning coffee, who signs orders for families to be banished from our clan structure, who wears the face of everything that’s wrong with the Syndicate?

Eight paces.

I keep walking.

He’ll hate you.

The voice in my head speaks in my grandmother’s crisp tones, all aristocratic disappointment and cold logic.

He’ll hate what you’ve chosen to become. The compromises you’ve made. The blood on your hands.

Seven paces.

But beneath the self-loathing, hope moves in my chest. He came. Against every protocol, every survival instinct he must be feeling, he’d received my message and walked voluntarily into the heart of enemy territory. Risked everything on the word of someone he believed dead.

For Ember. For the daughter he’s never met.

But maybe for me too.

Six paces. Five.

The mask remains firmly in place, silver features settled over my own as I check the laces behind my head. The transformation is complete. Whatever remains of Vanya Arrowvane disappears behind expressionless metal, leaving only what I’ve become. The untouchable. The feared.

My heart pounds against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. In all the years I’ve worn this mask, faced down the most dangerous people in our world, I’ve never felt this exposed. This terrified.

Because this isn’t just any interrogation. This is Hargen—the man who taught me that love could be gentle, that strength didn’t require cruelty, that someone could see all my sharp edges and choose to hold me, anyway.

Four paces.

Through our bond, I sense his turmoil, tension coiled tight as a spring. Alertness that comes from walking into a trap with eyes wide open. The disciplined calm of a man who’s survived by controlling every variable he can and accepting those he can’t.

But underneath it all, I feel something else. Something that makes my breath catch.

Longing. Deep and desperate and carefully buried, but still there after all these years. Still burning like an ember in the ashes of everything we lost.

He knows he’s balanced on a knife’s edge between salvation and destruction. He has no idea who holds the blade.

Three paces.

What if revealing yourself shatters him?

The thought makes my steps falter.

What if the years of believing you dead have armored him against hope?

What if learning the truth—about who I’ve become, what I’ve done in Ember’s name—breaks something in him that can never be repaired?

I can feel his emotions: steady, controlled, grimly determined. He’s prepared for interrogation, for mind games, for torture. He’s not prepared for facing the woman who haunts his dreams.

The woman who never stopped loving him, even when it would have been easier to let go.

Two paces.

But Vex’s purification protocols are tightening around us like a hangman’s noose. Our daughter has been hidden all her life, but Vex is thorough. Methodical. He’ll find her.

Unless I stop him.

Unless we stop him.

One pace.

My palm hovers over the biometric scanner, the final threshold between decades of deception and whatever comes next. Once I touch that surface, there’s no retreat into comfortable lies. No more pretending that Vanya Arrowvane burned to ash years ago. No more hiding behind my terrible reputation.

Just truth. Messy, dangerous, potentially catastrophic truth.

The scanner reads my DNA with a soft buzz. Magnetic locks disengage with mechanical finality. The door slides open, revealing the stark chamber beyond.

And there he is.

My heart stops. Starts again. Stops.

Twenty-one years of separation collapse into nothing. All of the grief and guilt and desperate hope crystallize into this moment, this impossible reality where the man I loved and lost sits three feet away, breathing and beautiful and more dangerous than ever.

And here I stand, about to face him. As the Shadowhand.