Page 12

H argen

The steel door swings open, and I look up expecting another faceless interrogator in expensive clothes with a dead stare.

Instead, the world stops.

Ice-blue eyes fix on me from behind an ornately embossed silver mask. The metal covers most of her face, but I’d know those eyes anywhere. Eyes that have invaded my dreams.

It’s her.

Vanya.

Oh, my fucking God.

She’s the Shadowhand.

The mask hides her features, but I can see enough—the curve of her cheekbones, the way she tilts her head slightly in thought. Her silver-blonde hair is pulled back severely. She’s dressed in a tailored black jacket and trousers, making her look leaner than I remember. Not a hint of softness.

But it’s her. Despite the mask, despite the years, despite everything that should make recognition impossible.

For a moment, I’m mute. Can’t do anything but stare while every truth I thought I knew crumbles.

It’s true. She’s alive.

The woman I mourned. The woman whose execution I watched through tears and rage. The woman who’s haunted every quiet moment for two decades. She’s standing three feet away, wearing the face of the Syndicate’s most feared interrogator.

My hands shake against the surface of the desk, curling them into fists as I struggle not to surge toward her. Every instinct screams to touch her, to confirm she’s real, to close the impossible distance between us. But the surveillance cameras mounted in every corner keep me frozen in place.

She’s alive. She’s alive and she’s—

The Shadowhand.

The pieces click together with nauseating clarity. The mysterious Ivory League member who advocates for extreme purification while somehow sabotaging the worst operations. The figure Viktor sent me to identify and turn. The most dangerous double agent in magical society.

My supposedly dead lover is the biggest intelligence prize in the hidden war between Aurora and the Syndicate.

“The Shadowhand, I presume.” The words come out steady despite the earthquake happening inside my chest. Training kicks in, the professional mask sliding into place. “Your reputation precedes you.”

She takes her seat across from me with movements that speak of lethal grace. She sets down the tablet she’s been holding, and I catch the tremor in her fingers before she hides her hands beneath the surface of the desk.

She’s shaking. The most feared woman in the Syndicate is shaking.

Who could blame her? I am too.

“Mr. Cole.” Her voice carries absolute authority, but underneath the cold tone, I hear something more. “You’ve caused quite a stir with your voluntary surrender. Aurora Collective agents don’t typically hand themselves over to Syndicate custody.”

Look at me. The thought burns behind my ribs. Really look at me and tell me you feel nothing.

“I’m not an Aurora agent.” I meet her gaze directly, searching for any flicker of recognition. Any sign that beneath the Shadowhand’s mask, Vanya still exists.

For just a moment—a heartbeat, a breath—something moves behind those ice-blue eyes. Something that recognizes the man who held her on cold nights when we’d found hope in each other’s arms. Who learned to read her silences better than most people read words.

Then her professional mask slams back into place.

“Indeed?” She leans back, projecting casual authority while I fight not to remember how she looked in my bed, hair spread across the pillow like spun moonlight. “Then what exactly are you, Mr. Cole? Because your file makes for interesting reading.”

The tablet comes alive under her touch; I suspect it’s displaying years of my life reduced to cold data points. Service records that don’t mention the nights I lay awake thinking about her. Psychological evaluations that never captured the way her death hollowed me out.

Handler assignments that started after she died because I needed something—anything—to fill the void she left behind.

It’s how I ended up taking on the assignment that led me to work with Lila for so long. A distraction from the pain.

“I’m a fool who allowed himself to be manipulated by someone he trusted.” The bitterness in my voice is real enough. Not the story Vex expects, but truth wrapped in deception. “Someone who convinced me that betraying everything I believed in was justified by love.”

The word hits the air between us like a bomb. Her fingers still against the tablet’s surface, and for a microsecond, her carefully controlled expression cracks.

Love.

I watch the word wound her, watch her struggle to maintain the Shadowhand’s cold authority while the woman I knew bleeds beneath the surface.

“The Rossewyn witch.” Her voice stays flat, clinical, but I hear the effort it costs her. “Your handler assignment for twenty years. A role that created significant… proximity. Tell me, Handler Cole, is this something you usually seek out?”

Proximity.

Such a sterile word for what we had. For stolen moments that felt like forever and nights when the world narrowed to just the two of us.

“Proximity.” I laugh bitterly. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“You developed feelings for your asset.” She tilts her head.

“I developed feelings for a woman who played me like a master musician.” Each word costs me, but I force them out.

The surveillance equipment needs to hear a handler compromised by magical influence, not a lover reunited with the woman whose death destroyed him.

“Who used magical influence so subtle I never recognized it was happening. Who turned my protective instincts into weapons against my own organization.”

I lock eyes with her, knowing that she understands. We both know that I’m not talking about Lila now. Lila, who never forced me to do anything.

But the listening devices want to hear about manipulation and betrayal. So that’s what I’ll give them.

Her face remains perfectly composed, but I know her tells. The slight tension around her eyes. The way her breathing has shifted to shallow, controlled breaths. She’s fighting not to react, fighting to maintain her cover while every word I speak cuts deep.

“And yet you helped her escape.” She leans forward slightly, and I catch a hint of her scent. Still the same after all these years—winter air and dangerous secrets. “Aided an Aurora operation against Syndicate interests.”

“I was compromised.” The admission comes out rough because it’s easier to say than the truth.

That I’d do it again tomorrow if it meant keeping someone I cared about safe.

“She was inside my head for months, maybe years. Making me believe things that weren’t true.

Feel things that weren’t real. You know how that feels, surely? ”

Something flickers across her expression—pain so sharp that I have a sudden surge of guilt. Because what I’m saying is exactly what she’d fear most. That what we had wasn’t real. That the love we risked everything for was all just a game.

“And you only realized this after the fact?” she asks coolly. “That the witch was manipulating you.”

“I realized it when the distance between us broke her hold.” I switch back to the story I’ve been telling. “When I could think clearly enough to understand what had been done to me.”

“Physical distance weakened the magical influence? Made you realize you had to come back?”

“Physical distance and…” I pause, letting my eyes meet hers fully for the first time. Letting her see something in them that the cameras won’t catch but she will. “And other factors.”

The encrypted message. The one that brought me here:

They’re going to kill our daughter.

For just a heartbeat, her mask slips again. I see recognition flare in her eyes, followed immediately by anxiety. She knows I got her message. Knows that I’m here because of what it revealed.

Our daughter.

The words echo in the space between us, unspoken but deafening. We have a child.

“Your intelligence regarding Aurora operations,” she continues, her voice steady despite how our worlds are rocking. “Director Vex mentioned you had valuable information about their leadership structure.”

We shift into the rhythm of interrogation—questions and answers that satisfy the listening devices while we navigate the most dangerous conversation of our lives.

Once more, I provide intelligence that Viktor carefully selected, information that serves Aurora’s purposes while appearing to serve the Syndicate’s.

But underneath the professional exchange, something else is happening. A recognition that transcends words. A reunion that’s been years in the making.

She asks about Viktor Parlance’s operational methods. I describe Aurora’s recruitment strategies. She inquires about remaining Rossewyn bloodline members. I paint a picture of scattered families struggling to survive.

All of it careful truth wrapped in convenient lies.

But my eyes never leave her face. And hers never leave mine.

God, she’s beautiful. More now than before. The years have hardened the lines around her eyes, made them colder, but underneath I still see glimpses of the woman who used to laugh with her whole heart.

And suddenly, it’s as if the years fall away. All the pain and heartache evaporate as I stare into the eyes of the woman I loved and lost, breathing and beautiful and more dangerous than ever.

The questions continue for what feels like hours. Professional. Thorough. Exactly what the surveillance equipment expects from the Shadowhand interrogating a high-value defector.

Finally, she glances at her watch. “We’ll continue this session tomorrow, Mr. Cole. I have enough to begin my initial assessment.”

She stands, gathering her tablet with movements that project absolute control. But as she reaches the door, she pauses.

“One final observation.” Her voice drops, and she angles herself so the cameras can’t see her lips clearly. “When faced with an impossible choice, Handler Cole, do you still believe in a third option?”

I suck in a sharp breath. The night before her supposed execution, I’d whispered to her. “When faced with an impossible choice, there’s always a third option. Always a way out.”

She couldn’t have remembered that phrase unless she was truly my Vanya. The woman I loved then still exists behind that cold mask.

“Always,” I whisper back, letting the single word confirm everything she needs to know. “Even when it seems impossible.”

Her eyes close for just a moment, and when they open again, they’re bright with unshed tears that she blinks away before anyone watching could notice.

“Tomorrow, then.” She activates the door controls, her professional mask sliding perfectly back into place. “Pleasant dreams, Handler Cole.”

The door closes behind her with cold finality, leaving me alone with the magnitude of what just happened.

Vanya Arrowvane is alive. She’s been alive all this time, facing the most overwhelming odds. And somehow, impossibly, she’s been winning.

The woman I thought I’d lost forever is the key to everything Viktor sent me here to discover. The mother of a daughter I never knew existed. Beating the Syndicate at their own game.

And now we have to figure out how to save our child without being destroyed in the process.