Page 15

V anya

The interrogation chamber’s wards hum against my skin as I wait. Ancient magic wound through steel and stone, designed to contain the most dangerous creatures in existence. Today, they’re keeping secrets in rather than power out.

The door opens, and he steps inside—the man who’s haunted my dreams and shaped every choice I’ve made for as long as I can remember.

Hargen moves with that same controlled grace I remember, but there’s tension in his shoulders now.

Wariness in those dark eyes as they find mine behind the silver mask.

The guards retreat. Magnetic locks engage with mechanical finality.

“We’re alone,” I tell him quietly. “The surveillance system is disabled. No one can hear us.”

He studies me for a long moment, taking in the ornate mask that’s become my face to the world. When he speaks, his voice carries all the authority of a man who was born to give orders.

“Take it off.”

“What?”

“The mask. Take it. Off.” Each word is coldly enunciated.

My hands shake as I reach for the clasps, and the mask falls away. He goes very still, drinking in the sight of my face with an intensity that makes my breath catch.

“Hello, Hargen,” I whisper.

“Vanya.” He says my name like the word is foreign to him. “You’re alive.”

“I am.”

“The execution—”

“Was staged.” I set the mask on the steel table between us. “An operative called Cassia Nightvale and some allies pulled me out at the last moment. Made it look real.”

His jaw tightens. “Why?”

“They hated the unfairness of it all, I suppose.” I shrug. “The senseless loss of life over pointless obsession with clan purity.”

“No. I mean, why did you face execution? I thought we were in it together.”

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment before telling the truth I’d never shared with him. “Because the elders gave me a choice. Reveal who you were—expose the man who’d corrupted their pureblooded daughter—or face the flames.” I meet his eyes. “I chose the flames.”

“Why?” His voice breaks. He clears his throat. “We could have run—”

“Where?” I say it too sharply. “There was nowhere to go that they wouldn’t have found us. This way, you lived. You stayed free.”

“Free.” He laughs, bitter and broken. “You call what I’ve been living freedom?”

The pain in his voice cuts deep.

“Hargen—”

“Do you have any idea what losing you did to me?” He leans forward, hands flat on the table. “What it’s been like, thinking you were dead? Carrying that guilt? I thought it was my fault, Vanya.”

“I know.” My voice is hoarse. “I felt it. Through our bond. I felt everything.”

His eyes narrow. “You’ve been connected to me this entire time.”

“Yes.”

“Without my knowledge. Without my permission.”

“To keep you safe—”

“To spy on me.” Each word drops like a stone. “To monitor me while I grieved for a woman who wasn’t even dead.”

The accusation hits home because it’s true. All of it. “I’m sorry,” I say, because there’s nothing else I can do.

He stares at me for a moment. “And this?” He sweeps an arm around the room, then glances down at my mask. “Shadowhand?”

I swallow hard. “It was a way to stop running.” I pinch my lips together. “After years of hiding, Cassia found a way to get me inside.”

“Inside?” He snorts. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? You’re the Ivory League’s enforcer, Vanya.”

“But more,” I say, a pleading note in my voice. “I did more, Hargen. I’ve helped people. People like us.”

He rubs his eyes, clearly trying to process all this. “Jesus. This is a lot. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do,” I acknowledge.

“I can’t believe you never reached out. In all that time…”

I shake my head. “You have to understand. I had to protect—”

“Our daughter,” he cuts me off, voice going quiet. Dangerous. “The daughter you told me about in your message but kept secret for twenty years.”

My heart clenches. “I wanted to tell you—”

“When?” The question explodes from him. “When, Vanya? When she was born? When she took her first steps? When she asked about her father?”

“It wasn’t safe—”

“For who? For her? Or for you?” He begins pacing, caged energy seeking release. “You made every decision for all of us. Decided I couldn’t handle the truth. Decided she was better off without me. Decided you knew what was best.”

“I was trying to protect her!”

“By lying to her? By denying her a father? By keeping us apart?” He spins to face me, eyes blazing. “What kind of protection is that?”

A knot forms in my throat. “The kind that kept her alive.”

“And now?”

“Now…” I force myself to meet his gaze. “Now I can’t protect her anymore.”

Something in my tone makes him go still. “What do you mean?”

“The elder of the Vex clan is implementing new protocols. Hunting for hybrid dragons within Syndicate operations. He’s obsessed with it. And the rest of the Ivory League has approved his plans.”

“You think he’ll find her.”

“Yes,” I say. “He’s planning on working his way through all of our youngest clan members, and although I’ve kept her hidden, I know he’ll find her, eventually. When he does, he’ll execute her. I have no doubt of it.”

“And your Shadowhand role won’t help?”

I shake my head. “Not anymore. He suspects someone in the organization has been working against the League.” I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold. “I think he’s targeting me.”

“So you reached out. After all these years of silence, you finally contacted me because you need something.”

The accusation stings. “Ember needs you now. Your Aurora contacts, your resources—she needs what I can’t give her anymore.”

“Which is?”

“A way out.” My voice breaks on the words. “A chance at freedom. At a life where she doesn’t have to hide what she is.”

He stares at me for a long moment, processing everything I’ve told him. When he speaks again, his voice is deadly quiet.

“You should have trusted me.”

“Hargen—”

“From the beginning, you should have trusted me enough to let me choose. To let me help decide what was best for our family.”

Our family.

God, those words make my heart break.

“I couldn’t risk—”

“You couldn’t risk losing control.” He moves closer, each step deliberate. “You couldn’t risk letting someone else make decisions about your life. About our daughter’s life.”

“That’s not—”

“Isn’t it?” He’s close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating from his skin. “You’ve spent all this time playing puppet master. Pulling strings. Making choices for everyone else while hiding behind masks and lies.”

“I did what I had to do!”

“You did what was easiest for you!” His control finally snaps. “You chose the path that let you feel in charge, even if it meant destroying everything else!”

The words hit like a slap. Because underneath the anger, underneath the pain, there’s truth. Terrible, inescapable truth.

“I was scared,” I whisper. “I was so scared—”

“We could have been scared together.” His voice drops to something raw. Broken. “We could have figured it out together.”

The guilt I’ve carried for decades finally overwhelms my defenses. “I know. God, Hargen, I know. I’ve made mistakes—terrible mistakes—but I was trying to keep you both safe.”

“Both?” He tilts his head. “Is that what you believed when you chose execution while carrying our child?”

The accusation makes my breath catch. “I had no idea I was pregnant until after, Hargen, I swear it.”

“Jesus.” He rubs his eyes. “And then you became the Shadowhand.”

“Only later. When Cassia showed me how it would help me stop hiding. To the rest of the Syndicate, Vanya Arrowvane was dead. For five years, I didn’t ‘fit’ anywhere. Not in my clan. Not outside the Syndicate. Being the Shadowhand gave me a place to belong again.”

“Among people who would kill you if they knew who you were.”

“They wouldn’t find out. The position is strictly anonymous, and Cassia manipulated my clan records to make sure that my credentials would never be questioned. It was the best possible way to keep Ember safe.”

“By sacrificing yourself? By becoming someone you hate?”

“By doing whatever it took.” The confession tears from my throat. “Even if it meant losing myself. Even if it meant you could never forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” He reaches out, fingers brushing my cheek. “Vanya, I never stopped loving you.”

The touch undoes me completely. All the walls I’ve built, all the careful structure I’ve maintained—it crumbles under the weight of his words.

“I never stopped loving you either,” I whisper. “Not for a single day.”

He cups my face in his hands, thumbs tracing the paths of tears I didn’t realize I was crying. “Then why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me the truth?”

“Because I was afraid you’d try to save me. And in trying to save me, you’d get yourself killed.” My hands cover his, holding them against my skin. “I couldn’t live with that.”

“So instead, you chose to live with this.”

“Yes.”

We stare at each other across the wreckage of our choices.

“Our daughter,” he says quietly. “Tell me about her.”

“Her name is Ember. She’s beautiful. Strong. Stubborn as hell.” A smile tugs at my lips despite the tears. “She has your eyes but my temper. And she’s powerful, Hargen. More powerful than I imagined possible.”

“And she’s in danger.”

“She’s in danger.”

“From Vex.”

“From all of them. The moment they discover what she is, they’ll kill her. Vex will make an example of her. Of me.” I meet his eyes. “Unless we get her out first.”

“We?”

The question hangs between us, loaded with possibility. With hope I don’t dare name.

“If you’ll help me,” I whisper. “If you can forgive me enough to help save our daughter.”

His answer comes without hesitation. “Yes.”

The simple word breaks something open inside my chest. Relief and gratitude so fierce it steals my breath.

“Thank you,” I breathe.

“My God. Do you honestly believe my answer would be anything else?”

“Hargen… I….” The space between us shrinks. His eyes drop to my mouth, and suddenly I’m hyperaware of every point of contact between us. The heat of his hands. The way his breath catches when I unconsciously wet my lips.

“Vanya.” My name comes out rough. Hungry.

“I’ve missed you,” I whisper. “God, I’ve missed you so much.”

That’s all it takes.

His mouth crashes against mine with such desperate hunger that I nearly lose my footing, my body instinctively yielding to his as though our time apart had been nothing but a momentary separation.

His hands tangle in my hair, fingers threading through the platinum strands I’ve kept so severely controlled, while mine clutch at his shoulders.

He tastes exactly as I remember—like wood.

smoke and mountain air, like the wild freedom I abandoned for duty and survival.

Like home. Like the man who claimed my heart when I was a younger woman with dreams of something beyond bloodline politics.

The man I never truly stopped loving, even as I built walls of lies between us.

His lips are firm against mine, moving with urgency as his mouth claims everything I’ve denied him for so long.

I part my lips for him, and he groans—a sound that vibrates through my chest and awakens something fierce in my core.

His teeth graze my lower lip, a gentle bite that sends heat racing down my spine, and I respond by pressing closer, my mouth opening wider to deepen our connection.

The kiss transforms into something primal and consuming that makes my dragon stir beneath my skin.

His tongue sweeps against mine, tasting, exploring, reclaiming territory that was always his.

I can feel the tremor in his hands where they frame my face, the way his breathing stutters when I nip at his upper lip before soothing it with my tongue.

Two decades of separation evaporate as we pour everything we can’t possibly articulate into this raw, frantic connection.

His mouth travels to the corner of mine, pressing fervent kisses along my jaw as I tilt my head back to give him access.

When his lips find that sensitive spot just below my ear, I exhale a shaky breath that mingles with his name.

He returns to my mouth with renewed hunger, and this time when our lips meet, there’s nothing gentle about it—just pure need and years of suppressed longing.

My carefully constructed identity—the cold, calculating Shadowhand—dissolves beneath his touch, leaving only Vanya, the woman who sacrificed everything but never stopped yearning for this very moment.

A sharp buzzing sound has my heart halting.

Shit!

We break apart, breathing hard as we struggle to regain composure. My lips are swollen from our kiss, slightly parted as I draw ragged breaths.

“Elder Arrowvane?” A voice through the door. “Inspector Nightvale requires a status update.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

My hands shake as I reach for my mask, transforming back into the Shadowhand. But Hargen’s fingers catch mine, stopping me.

“This conversation isn’t over,” he says quietly.

“No,” I agree, voice steadier than I feel. “It’s not.”

The buzz comes again, more insistent.

I slide the mask into place, become the monster I’ve pretended to be for so long. But underneath the silver, my lips still burn from his kiss.