Page 15

??Her Name Was Ember

Dorian

Cassian’s voice still echoed in my skull long after he left. He hadn’t said much. He never did when the truth was heavy enough to drown a man.

“She’s called Ember Carr.”

That was all it took.

The name tasted like iron and ruin in my mouth.

Carr.

The name of the woman Kreed murdered. The academic. The heretic. The expert in Pre-Abyssal Lore. It seemed she had a death wish, and found exactly what she was looking for.

Dr. Kira Carr.

Gutted in her own home. Throat slit from ear to ear, sigils carved into her flesh with precision only madness or prophecy could deliver.

I leaned back in the leather chair of my office, one hand curled tight around a glass of something I couldn’t taste. The ice was melting fast, and so was I.

He’d missed.

Kreed had missed.

The night in the alley… I trailed him, watched through the veil of shadows as he perched on the rooftop, finger on the trigger like a goddamn cartoon villain.

I’d watched the bullet explode through the air. Watched the man crumple at her feet. Watched her scream, blood in her hair, death in her eyes.

I hadn’t recognized her then.

But now?

Now I knew.

Ember Carr wasn’t just collateral. She was the fucking center of the web. The daughter of the dead. The spark they failed to snuff out. The girl I watched without knowing.

I gripped the edge of the desk until wood splintered in my palm.

A laugh slipped from my throat. Broken. Shaky. Unhinged. I didn’t deserve to find her again. But I would. Because now that I knew , I couldn’t un-know.

Ember Carr.

She’d been there all along.

Skimming the surface. Collecting clues like bones. Running that stupid podcast like it wasn’t a confession waiting to happen. “Dead Wrong.”

She had no fucking clue how right she was.

A shadow moved at my back, loyal and silent. My magic hummed like teeth grinding in sleep.

“She’s marked,” I whispered to it. “She just doesn’t know by whom.”

The scale. I’d left it. For her? For them? I didn’t know anymore. Maybe it was all just a test. Maybe I wanted to be found. Maybe part of me needed her to see the pattern. To see me .

I stood too fast, knocking the glass to the floor. It shattered.

Fitting.

I pressed two fingers to my temple. Felt the chaos coiling there like a serpent chewing its own tail.

“I let her walk away,” I murmured. “I watched her almost bleed. And I didn’t stop it.”

But I would now.

She wasn’t just a witness anymore.

She was prophecy incarnate. She was the thread between justice and collapse. She was mine.

And Kreed? That bastard thought he still had a claim?

Let him try. Let him crawl back from the pit he belonged in. Because this time, if he touched her, I wouldn’t just kill him.

I’d strip his soul from his bones and pour it into a jar of salt. I’d feed it to the Veil. I’d make sure even Hell forgot his name.

Because Ember Carr was the key to everything.

And I never let go of my keys.