The street hadn’t quite settled after what happened.
It looked normal.
That was the problem.
Cars passed. Someone laughed across the way. A door shut somewhere behind them. The world had snapped back into place like nothing had ever gone wrong—as if she hadn’t just been pulled apart from the inside and put back together again.
Faylan stood there for a second longer than necessary, her breath still uneven, her fingers curled slightly at her sides like they didn’t fully trust the ground beneath her.
Rowan hadn’t stepped away.
He stood close—closer than usual—but not touching her, like he was holding himself back on purpose.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
Faylan blinked, her focus dragging back to him.
Right.
Rowan.
Safe.
Normal.
Except—
Not entirely.
Not anymore.
“You okay?” he asked.
She let out a small breath, pushing a hand back through her hair.
“Define okay,” she said.
Her voice came out lighter than she felt, but not quite steady.
Rowan’s gaze flicked over her—quick, thorough, taking in everything at once in a way that felt… too sharp for casual concern.
“I mean not being cornered by a stranger who knows things he shouldn’t,” he said. “That version of okay.”
Faylan huffed softly.
“Then no,” she said. “Not that one.”
Something in his expression shifted.
Subtle.
Gone almost as soon as it appeared.
“Did he hurt you?” Rowan asked.
“No,” she said quickly. “Not—no. Just… tried to do something weird with my brain.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Faylan noticed.
Of course she did.
“You showed up at a very convenient time,” she added, tilting her head slightly as she studied him. “Again.”
Rowan met her gaze.
Didn’t look away.
“I was looking for you,” he said.
Same answer as before.
Still not enough.
Faylan exhaled softly, her shoulders dropping just a fraction as the adrenaline started to ebb.
“…yeah,” she murmured. “You always do.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Too honest.
Too familiar.
Rowan stilled.
Just slightly.
Faylan looked away first this time, glancing down at the pavement as she let out a quiet breath.
“I mean—” she started, then stopped, pressing her lips together for a second before trying again. “We haven’t exactly… talked. Lately.”
That was an understatement.
Rowan didn’t interrupt.
Didn’t rush her.
Just waited.
Faylan shifted her weight, folding her arms loosely—not defensive, just… holding herself together.
“There’s a lot we didn’t say,” she admitted, quieter now. “And then everything got weird, and I got busy trying not to get kidnapped or whatever this is—”
Her words faltered slightly.
She exhaled.
“…I missed you,” she finished.
Simple.
Unpolished.
Real.
Rowan didn’t answer right away.
And that silence—
It didn’t feel empty.
It felt full.
Heavy in a way that made her chest tighten just a little.
His expression softened.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that she could see it.
“I know,” he said.
Faylan blinked.
That wasn’t what she expected.
“You—what?”
“I know,” he repeated, quieter now. “I missed you too.”
Something in her chest shifted.
Not painful.
Just—
A pull.
Familiar.
Comforting in a way the rest of her life currently was not.
Faylan looked at him again, really looked this time, and for a second everything else—the weirdness, the danger, the unanswered questions—faded just enough to make space for something softer.
“…we have a lot to talk about,” she said.
Rowan nodded once.
“Yeah,” he said. “We do.”
A beat passed.
Then another.
The quiet between them wasn’t uncomfortable.
It was almost—
Normal.
Almost.
Faylan let out a small breath, her shoulders easing slightly.
“Okay,” she said, glancing around. “Maybe not in the middle of the street where I was almost—whatever that was.”
Rowan’s mouth twitched faintly.
“Good plan.”
She nodded once, pushing herself to move—one step, then another, falling into place beside him like it hadn’t been weird to stand there too long.
Like things hadn’t changed.
Like they weren’t standing on the edge of something bigger than either of them fully understood.
They hadn’t made it three steps.
Before it hit.
Hard.
Faylan’s breath caught sharply in her chest as something ripped through her—sudden, violent, not pain exactly but close enough that her body reacted like it was.
She stumbled.
Her hand shot out, grabbing onto Rowan’s arm without thinking.
“Fay—?”
“I—wait—”
Her vision tunneled.
The street blurred.
Sound dropped out—
And something else flooded in.
Not hers.
Not her thoughts.
Not her fear.
But—
Fear.
Sharp.
Focused.
Controlled but breaking at the edges.
Pressure.
Darkness.
A hand—
Not touching her—
Touching someone else.
Seina.
Faylan’s grip tightened on Rowan’s arm.
Her pulse spiked—
But underneath it—
That other rhythm.
Not hers.
Connected.
Her breath came in short, uneven bursts as her head dipped, her free hand pressing hard against her chest like she could physically hold herself together.
“Sei—”
The name tore out of her.
Not intentional.
Not planned.
Instinct.
Rowan’s body went rigid beside her.
“What?” he said sharply.
Faylan shook her head once, her vision still blurred, still slipping between what was real and what she was feeling.
“She—”
Her voice broke.
Not from fear.
From certainty.
Her head snapped up, her gaze locking forward like she could see something that wasn’t actually there.
“They have her.”
The words came out quiet.
But absolute.
Rowan stilled completely.
“How do you—”
“I don’t know,” she cut in, breath uneven. “I just—she’s not—she’s not okay.”
Her grip on him tightened.
Not grounding anymore.
Clinging.
“I felt it,” she said.
That scared her more than anything else.
Rowan’s hand closed around her wrist, steadying her this time, his expression sharpening into something focused, something dangerous in a quieter way than before.
“Faylan,” he said, firm but low. “Look at me.”
She did.
Barely.
Her eyes flicked up to his, still unfocused at the edges.
“What did you feel?” he asked.
Faylan swallowed hard.
“…her,” she said.
A beat.
Then, softer—
“Something’s wrong.”
The words hung between them for half a second before the world moved again.
Rowan’s hand stayed locked around her wrist, steady and warm, but everything else about him changed. The softness that had been there a moment ago—thin and fragile and almost enough to make her forget how strange everything had become—vanished. His posture sharpened. His gaze shifted past her shoulder, then down the street, then back to her face like he was recalculating ten things at once and hated every answer.
Faylan was still breathing too fast.
Not from panic.
From certainty.
That was the worst part.
If she had been guessing, if this had felt vague or dreamlike or uncertain, maybe she could have argued with it. Maybe she could have told herself she was overtired, overwhelmed, one bad hour away from a complete emotional collapse. But this had not felt like imagination.
It had felt like a line pulled taut between two points.
Between her and Seina.
A connection strained so suddenly and so violently that Faylan had nearly folded under it.
Rowan’s fingers tightened once around her wrist, not painfully, just enough to bring her focus back to him.
“Tell me exactly what you felt,” he said.
His voice was low and controlled, but there was something underneath it now. Urgency. Something almost grim.
Faylan tried to steady her breathing and failed.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said, shaking her head once. “It wasn’t like seeing something, not exactly. It was just—” She pressed her free hand harder against her chest, like that might help her make sense of it. “Fear. Pressure. Like someone had their hands around her and I could feel it even though I wasn’t there.”
Rowan didn’t interrupt.
Didn’t tell her that made no sense.
Which, frankly, it didn’t.
And that alone made her stomach turn colder.
His eyes searched her face for another long second, and when he spoke again, his tone had changed just slightly.
“What did you say?”
Faylan blinked at him. “What?”
“A second ago,” Rowan said. “You said, ‘they have her.’”
The words echoed back at her.
They have her.
Faylan stared at him, her mouth parting slightly.
“I…” She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
Except she did.
Some part of her had known it the second it ripped through her. Not a person. Not an accident. Not Seina falling, not Seina hurt in some ordinary, awful way.
Taken.
Targeted.
The certainty of it slid down her spine like ice.
Rowan released her wrist slowly, but only so he could step closer and catch both of her upper arms instead, steadying her in a way that felt far too deliberate to be casual.
“Faylan,” he said, quieter now. “Stay with me.”
She let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh, except nothing about this was funny.
“I am with you.”
“No,” Rowan said, eyes fixed on hers. “You’re halfway somewhere else.”
That hit harder than it should have.
Because he was right.
A part of her still felt stretched thin, as if something inside her had not fully come back after reaching for Seina. The bond—whatever it was, whatever awful, ancient thing had woken up in her blood—still hummed under her skin in a faint, uneven ache. Not gone.
Just quieter now.
Waiting.
Faylan drew in a slow breath and forced herself upright, pulling one arm free so she could drag her hand through her hair.
“We need to go,” she said.
Rowan didn’t move.
“Go where?”
“To her.”
The answer came too quickly, too automatically, and she heard it as soon as she said it. Rowan heard it too. His expression tightened.
“You don’t know where she is.”
“Then I’ll figure it out.”
“That isn’t a plan.”
Faylan lifted her eyes to his, something sharper breaking through her panic now. “You think I care?”
The words came out harsher than she intended, but Rowan didn’t flinch. He just looked at her, steady and frustratingly unreadable, as if he could see every jagged edge she was trying and failing to hold together.
“I care,” he said.
Simple.
Immediate.
Not loud.
It should have softened her.
Instead it made her eyes sting.
So she looked away, jaw tightening, and took a step back from him before she did something humiliating like cry in the middle of the street.
The town around them kept moving. A delivery truck rolled past at the end of the block. Someone stepped out of a bakery with a paper bag tucked under one arm. The ordinary rhythm of Greythorne continued with such total indifference that it made Faylan want to scream.
“How is everything still normal?” she asked, not really to him, not really to anyone.
Rowan’s voice came beside her a second later.
“It isn’t.”
She turned back toward him, ready to say something sharp and exhausted and probably unfair.
She never got the chance.
Because movement caught at the edge of the street.
Fast.
Uneven.
Coming straight toward them.
Rowan shifted instantly, his body angling in front of hers before her mind had fully registered why. Faylan’s pulse kicked hard as she looked past his shoulder and saw a man breaking through the thinning fog at the end of the block.
No—
Not just a man.
Someone half-wild with urgency, moving like his body was running on fury long after it should have collapsed.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and hurt in ways that were obvious even from a distance. Dirt streaked across his clothes. There was blood on him—some dried, some not. His shirt looked torn at the collar and down one sleeve, like it had barely survived whatever came before this. His hair was disordered, his face set hard, and the closer he got, the more something about him felt wrong in a way Faylan had started to recognize.
Not feral like the thing in the alley.
Not cold like the man who had stood by the black car.
But not ordinary either.
His eyes found her immediately.
Not Rowan.
Her.
And whatever he saw there made his entire expression change.
Recognition.
Rowan’s voice dropped, dangerous and quiet. “Who are you?”
The stranger didn’t answer right away. He was breathing hard, but not like someone out of shape—more like someone forcing a body already pushed too far to keep moving anyway. He slowed only when he was close enough that Faylan could see the raw scrape along one side of his neck and the bruising shadowed under his jaw.
His gaze never left her.
Then he said, with brutal certainty,
“You’re the other one.”
Faylan went cold.
Rowan stepped more fully in front of her. “Back up.”
The stranger ignored him completely.
“Your sister’s gone,” he said.
The words landed like a blow.
Faylan’s breath left her in a sharp, stunned rush. For one terrible second, the world seemed to tilt under her feet again, that awful resonance in her chest spiking hard enough to make her hand fly back to her ribs.
Gone.
Not hurt.
Not missing.
Gone.
Rowan’s posture tightened another degree, his voice flattening. “Start explaining.”
Finally, the stranger looked at him.
And whatever passed between them in that first glance was immediate and hostile and old in a way Faylan could not begin to understand.
“I don’t have time for you,” the stranger said.
That should have sounded dismissive.
Instead it sounded like a promise of future violence.
Faylan stepped sideways before Rowan could block her completely again.
“Wait.” Her voice came out thinner than she wanted, but steady enough. “You know where Seina is?”
The stranger’s focus snapped back to her. His face didn’t soften, but something in it sharpened with purpose.
“They took her,” he said. “Because of you.”
That hit even harder than gone had.
Because of you.
The words went through her cleanly, finding every crack already forming inside her and widening them.
Rowan moved like he was going to say something—to argue, maybe, or deny it, or shove the stranger back into whatever darkness he had come out of—but Faylan didn’t hear him. Not fully.
All she could hear now was the echo of the pressure she’d felt, the fear that hadn’t been hers, the name of her sister beating under her own pulse.
Seina.
And standing in the middle of that unraveling street, with Rowan on one side and a bloodied stranger on the other, Faylan knew with a terrible, absolute certainty that whatever had begun between her and Seina was no longer hidden.
Someone had found both of them.
The words didn’t settle.
They didn’t soften or make sense or give her anything she could hold onto. They just… stayed there, sharp and unresolved, echoing through her chest alongside that lingering pull that hadn’t fully gone quiet.
Faylan stood very still.
Between them.
Between everything.
“Start from the beginning,” she said.
Her voice wasn’t raised.
It wasn’t shaking.
It was controlled in a way that surprised even her.
Rowan shifted beside her, like he was about to interrupt—but stopped when she didn’t look at him.
The stranger—Kael, though she didn’t know his name yet—watched her for a second longer, then gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
“She was in the woods,” he said. “They were already there.”
Faylan’s stomach tightened.
“The same one who came for you.”
That snapped her attention fully back to him.
“You saw him?” she asked.
Kael’s jaw tightened slightly.
“I felt him,” he corrected. “Then I saw him take her.”
Take.
Not hurt.
Not attack.
Take.
The word lodged somewhere deep and painful.
Faylan shook her head once, like that might dislodge it.
“No—no, Seina wouldn’t just—she wouldn’t let—”
“She didn’t,” Kael cut in, sharper now. “She fought it.”
That stopped her.
Her breath caught.
“…fought what?” she asked, quieter.
Kael’s gaze flicked to Rowan.
Just for a second.
But it was enough.
Something in the air shifted.
Subtle.
Tense.
Measured.
Then back to her.
“Compulsion,” he said. “Control. Same thing he tried on you.”
Faylan’s chest tightened.
That pull—
that pressure—
the way her thoughts had slipped for just a second—
Her fingers curled slightly.
“…she felt that,” she murmured.
“I know,” Kael said.
And the way he said it—
like he’d been there—
like he’d watched it happen—
made something twist painfully in her chest.
Rowan stepped forward.
Not aggressive.
But firm.
Enough to reclaim space.
“Who are you?” he asked again, quieter now—but far more dangerous.
Kael didn’t even look at him.
“She’s connected to you,” he said to Faylan instead. “That’s how they found her.”
Faylan’s stomach dropped.
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t have to,” Kael said. “You exist. That’s enough.”
That should have felt impossible.
It didn’t.
Because something inside her already knew it was true.
Rowan’s voice cut in, sharper now.
“That doesn’t explain how you know any of this.”
Finally—
Kael looked at him.
Really looked.
And whatever he saw there—
Whatever he recognized—
Shifted something in his expression from controlled urgency to something colder.
More deliberate.
“You want an explanation?” Kael said.
His gaze didn’t leave Rowan.
“Fine.”
A beat.
Then, flat—
“It’s one of your kind.”
The words dropped like a blade.
Faylan frowned slightly at first, her gaze flicking between them, trying to catch up.
“…what does that mean?”
But the moment stretched.
And Rowan didn’t answer.
Not immediately.
And that—
that was wrong.
Something inside her shifted, slow and cold, like a realization rising before she was ready to name it.
Her eyes moved back to him.
Studying.
Not just looking anymore.
Seeing.
“…Rowan?”
Kael’s voice came again, quieter now.
Deliberate.
“For someone who’s been around this long,” he said, “you’re doing a terrible job pretending.”
Faylan’s breath caught.
“Pretending what?”
Silence.
Rowan’s jaw tightened.
Just slightly.
His gaze flicked to Kael—sharp, warning—
Then back to her.
Too late.
The damage was already there.
Faylan took a small step back.
Not dramatic.
Not panicked.
Just—
space.
“…pretending what,” she repeated.
Her voice was quieter now.
But heavier.
Kael didn’t look at her.
Didn’t soften it.
Didn’t try to ease the blow.
“You really don’t know,” he said.
It wasn’t mocking.
That somehow made it worse.
Faylan’s gaze snapped back to Rowan.
And for the first time—
she really looked.
At the way he stood.
At how still he’d gone.
At how his eyes weren’t panicked.
Weren’t confused.
Weren’t surprised.
Just—
watching her.
Waiting.
Carefully.
Her pulse stuttered.
“…Rowan,” she said.
A question.
A warning.
A plea.
All at once.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t step forward.
Didn’t reach for her.
And that—
that hurt more than anything Kael had said.
Because if it wasn’t true—
he would’ve denied it.
Immediately.
Faylan’s throat tightened.
“…say something.”
Rowan exhaled slowly.
Not defensive.
Not aggressive.
Just—
resigned.
“I was going to tell you,” he said.
That was the worst possible answer.
Faylan let out a soft, disbelieving breath, her head shaking once as the weight of it finally hit.
Not all at once—
But enough.
“You—” she stopped, her voice catching before she could steady it. “You’re serious?”
Her chest tightened, something sharp and emotional cutting through the shock now.
All those moments—
How he showed up.
How he moved.
How he always knew.
It rearranged itself in her mind all at once, pieces clicking into place in a way that made her stomach turn.
“You’re like him,” she said again, but this time it wasn’t just confusion—
It hurt.
There was disbelief in it.
And something quieter.
Something almost like betrayal.
Rowan’s expression tightened immediately.
“No.”
Firm.
Immediate.
But not enough.
Faylan took another step back, her arms folding loosely—not defensive, but like she needed something between them now.
“You didn’t think I should know?” she asked.
The question wasn’t loud.
But it landed harder than anything else she’d said.
Rowan didn’t answer right away.
And Kael—
watched.
Silent.
Assessing.
Taking everything in.
Faylan let out a breath that felt too thin.
“…of course you didn’t,” she said quietly.
Then—
something in her expression shifted.
Not softer.
Sharper.
Focused.
Seina.
That pull in her chest flared faintly again, like a reminder.
Like a warning.
Faylan straightened.
Her gaze moved between them once—
Rowan.
Kael.
Truth.
Lies.
None of it mattered right now.
Not compared to this.
“We don’t have time for this,” she said.
And this time—
there was no hesitation.
No uncertainty.
Just decision.
“You said they took her,” she continued, her eyes locking onto Kael. “Then we’re going after her.”
No question.
No asking.
Just—
fact.
And for the first time since he arrived—
Kael looked at her like she had finally said the right thing.