“We’re going after her.”
The decision had already been made.
Faylan didn’t wait for agreement. She turned first, stepping out of the open street and into the narrow side alley just off the main road. The shift was immediate—the noise of passing cars dulled behind them, replaced by a quieter, heavier stillness. Old brick walls rose on either side, worn with age and shadowed by a flickering overhead light that buzzed faintly as it struggled to stay on.
It felt contained here.
Like the world had narrowed down to only what mattered.
Rowan followed her without hesitation, his presence close—too close, maybe—but not touching. It was deliberate. Careful. Like he knew one wrong move would make her pull away.
The stranger followed too.
Not invited.
Not questioned.
Just there, moving with a purpose that made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere.
Faylan stopped near the end of the alley and turned sharply, the abrupt movement forcing both of them to face her. Rowan nearly stepped into her space before catching himself. The other one—Kael—halted a few feet back, already watching her like he had expected this.
For the first time since everything happened, Faylan actually looked at them.
Not just a glance.
Not just recognition.
She studied them.
Rowan first.
His dark hair was slightly out of place, like he’d moved too fast one too many times tonight. His clothes were still clean, but there were subtle signs—creases, tension, the way he held himself like he was bracing for something. His eyes were on her, steady and searching, and now that she knew—
Now that she knew—
It was different.
Not normal.
Not ever.
Her chest tightened, something sharp pressing in behind her ribs.
She didn’t let it show.
Not right now.
Then—
Kael.
There was nothing subtle about him.
Up close, it was worse.
Dirt streaked across his jaw and neck. A shallow cut ran along his cheekbone, dried blood catching faintly in the dim light. His shirt was torn at the collar, one sleeve half-ripped like something had grabbed him hard enough to matter—and he hadn’t stopped to fix it.
His hands told the rest of the story.
Bruised knuckles.
Scraped skin.
Raw.
Like he’d fought something he couldn’t win—
and kept going anyway.
His eyes locked onto hers, sharp and focused, something restless still flickering at the edges.
Faylan felt it.
Not fear.
Recognition.
This was the one who had been there.
With Seina.
The one who saw it happen.
Good.
She needed him.
Hated that.
Needed it anyway.
“Start talking,” she said.
Her voice was steady, but there was no softness in it. No hesitation. Just urgency wrapped in control.
Rowan shifted beside her, tension pulling tight through his posture. “You don’t even know who he—”
“I don’t care who he is,” Faylan cut in.
She didn’t raise her voice, but the edge in it was enough to stop him.
Her gaze stayed on Kael.
“You said they took her,” she continued, more quietly now but no less firm. “So you’re going to tell me how.”
There was a brief pause.
Tense.
Measured.
Kael held her gaze for a second longer, like he was deciding something—then gave a slight nod.
Acceptance.
Not of her.
Of the situation.
“She was in the woods,” he said.
Simple.
Direct.
Faylan’s fingers curled at her sides, the image forming immediately whether she wanted it to or not.
“The one who came for you was already there.”
The air shifted.
Rowan went still again, but Faylan didn’t look at him.
“Waiting?” she asked.
Kael shook his head once.
“No,” he said. “Looking.”
That landed heavier.
Faylan’s chest tightened, her thoughts catching on the word in a way that made everything worse instead of clearer.
“She didn’t know,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“She didn’t,” Kael confirmed.
There was something in his voice now—low, controlled, but edged with something raw—that made her stomach drop. He hadn’t just heard about it.
He’d been there.
Close enough to see.
Not close enough to stop it.
Rowan stepped forward then, reclaiming space in a way that was subtle but deliberate.
“And you just let it happen?” he asked.
His tone was calm.
Too calm.
Kael’s attention snapped to him immediately, something in his posture tightening.
“I didn’t let anything happen,” he said, his voice dropping lower.
Rough.
Real.
Rowan didn’t back down.
“And yet she’s gone.”
Kael took a step forward.
Not aggressive.
But not passive either.
“And yet I’m here telling you how to get her back,” he said.
That was enough.
Faylan stepped between them before the tension could snap into something worse.
“Stop.”
The word wasn’t loud.
But it didn’t need to be.
It held.
They both stilled.
That alone told her enough.
Good.
They’d listen.
Or they’d learn.
She drew in a slow breath, steadying herself, and looked back at Kael.
“You said she fought,” Faylan said.
Kael nodded once.
“She did.”
Relief hit sharper than she expected.
It wasn’t soft.
It was grounding.
Faylan let out a quiet breath, her shoulders straightening slightly.
“Good,” she murmured. “She always does.”
For a second, something shifted between them—not trust, not understanding, but recognition.
Then it passed.
Rowan’s voice came again, quieter now but no less controlled.
“What exactly are we dealing with?”
Kael didn’t answer right away. His gaze flicked briefly to Faylan, then back to Rowan, measuring, calculating.
“They’re not random,” he said finally. “And they’re not working alone.”
Faylan’s stomach dropped.
Her mind flashed—stone, cold, that voice, that command.
Prepare her.
Her fingers curled again.
“…I know,” she said.
Both of them looked at her this time.
Faylan didn’t look away.
“I felt her,” she said, quieter now but more certain. “She’s somewhere… underground, maybe. Stone. Cold.”
Kael’s expression shifted slightly.
Not surprise.
Confirmation.
“That tracks,” he said.
Rowan’s gaze snapped to her, sharper now.
“What do you mean you felt her?”
Faylan didn’t answer.
Not because she didn’t want to.
Because she couldn’t.
Because if she tried to explain it, she might actually have to understand it—and she didn’t have time for that.
Not when Seina was out there.
Not when every second mattered.
Instead, she straightened, lifting her chin slightly as she made the decision again—this time out loud.
“We’re not waiting,” she said.
Her eyes locked onto Kael.
“You know more than we do.”
Then Rowan.
“You have whatever you’re not telling me.”
Back to both of them.
“Good.”
A brief pause.
Sharp.
Final.
“Then you can both use it to get me to her.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty.
It was charged.
Because that wasn’t a request.
And for the first time—
they both understood it.
No one argued after that.
Not because the tension was gone. If anything, it had thickened into something harder, more dangerous—something that followed them out of the alley and into the street like a second shadow. But the shape of the moment had changed. There was no room left for posturing, no space for pride, no luxury of circling the truth from a safe distance.
Seina was gone.
That fact sat at the center of everything now, heavy enough to bend all the rest of it around itself.
Rowan’s car was parked half a block away, tucked along the curb beneath a dead streetlamp and the bare branches of an old tree that clawed at the morning sky. The town around them looked painfully ordinary in the gray daylight. Storefront windows glimmered faintly with reflected cloud-light. Someone across the street flipped an OPEN sign in a bakery window. A woman in a red coat walked past carrying flowers and never once looked their way.
Faylan hated her for it a little.
Not really.
Just enough.
Because the world was still moving in neat, thoughtless lines while hers had cracked open twice in the same day and apparently had no intention of stopping there.
Rowan unlocked the car, and Faylan slid into the passenger seat before either of them could tell her otherwise. Kael hesitated for the briefest second at the curb, his jaw tightening as he looked at the car like he mistrusted the idea of being enclosed in anything made by humans.
“Get in,” Faylan said.
It wasn’t rude.
Just tired.
Kael held her gaze for a second, then yanked open the back door and got in without another word.
The entire car seemed smaller with him inside it. Not because he was especially broad—though he was—but because everything about him felt too large for contained spaces right now. Mud still marked the knees of his jeans. His torn shirt sat wrong across his shoulders, one collarbone half-exposed through the damage. There was dried blood at the edge of his sleeve and a long scrape near his throat that looked like it should have hurt far more than he seemed willing to acknowledge.
Faylan turned in her seat just enough to look back at him.
“You said you know where to go?”
Kael leaned forward slightly, forearms braced on his knees, eyes fixed not on her but on the window beyond her shoulder. “I know where they’d start.”
That was not comforting.
Faylan opened her mouth.
Rowan started the engine.
The sound cut through her thoughts cleanly, and for a second all she could do was sit there while the car pulled out into the street and Greythorne began sliding past in muted shades of brick and fog and wet pavement.
No one spoke for the first minute.
The silence should have felt empty.
Instead it felt overfull, loaded with everything that had not been said and everything that now had to be.
Faylan stared out the passenger window, jaw tight, fingers curled in her lap so hard her knuckles ached. The pull in her chest had quieted again, but not disappeared. It lingered there in a dull, vibrating thread—faint and stretched, like distance had not severed it, only thinned it.
Seina.
Still there.
Still somewhere.
Faylan held onto that harder than she held onto anything else.
Beside her, Rowan drove with both hands on the wheel, posture too controlled to be natural. He always drove like he had somewhere to be. Today he drove like he was trying not to break something.
The profile of him in daylight should have looked familiar—dark hair, pale skin, sharp mouth, that old necklace resting against his throat where it always did.
Always.
Faylan’s eyes caught on it.
The stone was deep red, almost black in certain light, set in dark metal and worn smooth at the edges like it had been touched too often, too long. She’d seen him reach for it a hundred times without thinking. Seen him fiddle with it when he lied, when he was nervous, when he was trying not to say something.
Now it looked different too.
Not because it had changed.
Because she had.
“What is that?” she asked quietly.
Rowan’s hands tightened once on the wheel. “What?”
“That.” Faylan gestured toward his throat. “The necklace.”
His gaze flicked to her briefly, then back to the road. “You’ve seen it before.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m asking now.”
Kael looked up from the back seat.
Faylan felt it more than saw it.
Watching.
Listening.
Rowan was quiet for a beat too long. Then he said, “It’s a blood gem.”
Faylan turned toward him fully. “A what.”
“A blood gem,” Rowan repeated, his voice carefully neutral in the way it got when he was trying not to startle her. “It makes daylight… manageable.”
She frowned. “Manageable.”
Rowan let out the smallest breath through his nose, not quite a laugh. “For vampires.”
The word still landed strangely.
Not because she doubted it anymore. She was done doubting impossible things.
It was the casualness of it that got her.
For vampires.
As if that were a category her life had always been one polite explanation away from.
Faylan looked from the stone at his throat to the pale daylight spreading across the windshield. “So what, without that, you burst into flames?”
Kael made a low sound from the back that might have been amusement if he were anyone else.
Rowan’s mouth twitched faintly. “Not instantly.”
“That,” Faylan said flatly, “is not better.”
He glanced at her again, and there was something in his eyes now—something careful and almost apologetic and trying far too hard to be lighter than the moment allowed.
“Sunlight burns,” he said. “Badly. Not ash-on-contact, not usually. More like…” He paused, searching for something she’d understand. “Like standing in acid heat. Skin blisters. Eyes go light-sensitive. Strength drops. Too long and it gets worse.”
Faylan stared at him.
He kept driving.
Casually.
Like he had not just said the words acid heat as if they belonged in normal conversation.
Her gaze dropped again to the stone.
“And that fixes it?”
“Dampens it,” Rowan corrected. “Not fixes.”
He lifted one shoulder slightly. “It takes the worst of it off. Higher bloodlines control most of them. They’re expensive. Ritual-made. Rare.”
Kael’s voice came from the back, blunt and cold. “Convenient, isn’t it.”
Faylan didn’t turn, but she felt Rowan’s posture sharpen a fraction.
“Yes,” Rowan said.
The single word carried more than it should have.
Faylan watched the dark stone at his throat catch a flicker of light as the car passed beneath a break in the clouds. For half a second she imagined what he would look like in full daylight without it—skin blistering, veins darkening beneath the surface, eyes turning red against his will.
It should have horrified her.
Instead, it made him feel more real.
Which somehow made everything worse.
She looked away.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Cool. Great. Love that this is normal now.”
Rowan gave her the faintest side glance. “I was trying to ease you into it.”
Faylan let out a tired, incredulous breath. “You think this is easing?”
His mouth twitched again, a little more this time, like he knew he deserved that.
“That depends,” he said. “On your standard for catastrophic emotional mornings.”
And annoyingly—
annoyingly—
it almost worked.
The corner of her mouth twitched before she could stop it.
Only a little.
Only for a second.
But Rowan saw it.
Of course he did.
Something softened in his expression so quickly it almost hurt to look at.
He was trying.
That was the problem.
Trying to make her laugh. Trying to give her something familiar to stand on while the ground shifted under everything else. Trying to be Rowan while no longer allowed to be only Rowan.
Faylan looked down at her hands.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” she said quietly.
For the first time in minutes, the car went truly silent.
No sarcasm.
No tension from the back seat.
Just the low hum of tires over wet road and the dull sound of the heater pushing warm air through the vents.
Rowan’s voice came softer when it finally came.
“You don’t have to decide right now.”
That should have comforted her.
It did, a little.
Which was deeply unfair.
She turned to look at him again, really look, and the question slipped out before she could decide whether she wanted the answer.
“How old are you?”
This time Rowan did laugh—soft, brief, startled at the shape of the question in the middle of everything else.
Kael, from the back, made a dry sound and looked out the window.
Rowan drummed his fingers once against the wheel. “That’s where you want to start?”
“I don’t know.” Faylan stared at him. “It feels relevant.”
“It probably is.”
“Well?”
He was quiet for one beat too long.
Then, almost carefully, he said, “A little over a hundred.”
The world inside the car seemed to tilt.
Not violently.
Just enough.
Faylan blinked.
“A hundred.”
“A little over.”
She turned fully in her seat this time, staring at him like maybe if she looked long enough the answer would rearrange itself into something survivable.
It didn’t.
Her childhood flashed through her mind in fragments—Rowan on the Hart porch, Rowan in the shop, Rowan younger, wasn’t he younger? laughing in summer light, sprawled across her couch, stealing fries, teasing Seina, teasing her—
A little over a hundred.
The thought didn’t fit anywhere.
It slipped against memory in a way that made something subtle and cold stir in the back of her mind.
Not a conclusion.
Just discomfort.
Like a seam she hadn’t noticed before had suddenly started to split.
Rowan glanced at her and, because he apparently had a death wish, said, “In my defense, I’ve had really good skincare.”
Faylan stared at him.
Then let out one short, disbelieving breath that was half a laugh and half despair.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“I’ve been told.”
It shouldn’t have helped.
But it did—just enough to loosen the thing in her chest from betrayal into something she could carry for another mile.
Not forgiveness.
Not even close.
Just room.
The road changed beneath them as they left the center of town. Buildings thinned out into stretches of older houses and then sparse fields edged with dark tree lines. Greythorne always looked oldest at its edges, as if the town had been built outward from something older and less human in its center instead of the other way around.
Faylan noticed that now too.
Everything had layers she hadn’t seen.
“Where are we going?” she asked at last, looking ahead.
Kael answered this time.
“There are old routes Houses use when they move someone fast and quiet,” he said. “Stone roads beneath newer ones. Service paths. Old church property. Places humans stopped noticing generations ago.”
His voice had a strange effect in the car. Rowan’s made space warmer even when she was angry with him. Kael’s made everything narrower, more exact. Like he only spoke when the words had a purpose.
Faylan looked back at him over the seat.
“You know all that because…?”
Kael met her gaze.
Because he was tired and injured and furious, there was no polish on his face to hide behind. The truth of him sat too close to the surface.
“Because we’ve fought them before,” he said.
We.
The word lingered.
Not human.
Not vampire.
Something else.
Faylan filed it away.
Later.
Questions for later.
Everything was for later except Seina.
Her hand drifted toward her chest without thinking, fingertips pressing lightly against the place where that thread still hummed faintly under her ribs.
The pull had not vanished.
If anything, it had become more directional—subtle, but there. Like a thread wound around her sternum and drawn taut toward somewhere ahead, somewhere old and cold and wrong.
Faylan went quiet.
Rowan noticed immediately. “What is it?”
She closed her eyes for just a second.
Listened.
Felt.
Not a voice.
Not a vision.
Stone. Pressure. Movement.
Then—
distance.
Her eyes snapped open.
“They’re moving her.”
The words came out flat and certain.
Kael leaned forward hard enough that the seat creaked beneath him. Rowan’s hands tightened on the wheel.
Faylan looked from one to the other, pulse suddenly loud in her throat.
“She’s getting closer,” she said. “Not fast, but—” Her fingers pressed harder into her chest. “Not staying still.”
That changed something immediately.
The atmosphere in the car tightened. Rowan accelerated without being told. Kael swore under his breath, low and furious, and leaned back again only because there was nowhere else for that energy to go.
Outside, the road curved toward the darker outskirts where old stone walls cut across the land and the trees gathered thicker.
Inside, whatever brief illusion of breathing room Rowan had managed to create was gone.
They were no longer talking their way toward the truth.
They were racing it.
The car surged forward as Rowan pressed harder on the gas, the quiet outskirts of town slipping past in long stretches of gray road and skeletal trees. The sky above had dulled into a pale, clouded white, the kind of light that flattened everything it touched and made distance harder to judge.
Faylan could feel it now.
Not just the faint thread she’d noticed before—
but something sharper.
More immediate.
It pulled low in her chest, just beneath her ribs, tightening with every mile like something was drawing her forward whether she wanted it or not.
“They’re not far,” she said, her voice quieter now, more focused. “Closer than before.”
Rowan didn’t look at her this time.
He didn’t need to.
He believed her.
“How close?” he asked.
Faylan shook her head slightly, eyes unfocused as she tried to follow the sensation without losing herself in it.
“I don’t know exactly,” she admitted. “It’s not… clear. It’s like—” She exhaled, frustrated. “Like trying to follow something underwater.”
Kael leaned forward from the back seat again, tension coiled tight through his body.
“Then don’t try to see it,” he said. “Follow it.”
Faylan glanced back at him.
His eyes were locked on her now, intense, grounded in a way that cut through the noise in her head.
“Stop thinking about it,” he continued. “Just tell us when it shifts.”
Rowan’s grip tightened slightly on the wheel, but he didn’t argue.
Faylan hesitated for half a second—
then nodded.
“…okay.”
She let her eyes fall shut again, this time not forcing the feeling into something logical. Not trying to name it. Not trying to understand it.
Just—
listening.
The pull steadied.
Not stronger.
Clearer.
Forward.
Always forward.
Her breathing slowed, matching the rhythm of it, her hand drifting back to her chest without thinking as she leaned slightly toward the direction it tugged.
“Keep going,” she murmured.
The road narrowed as they moved farther out, the edges of Greythorne dissolving into older land—uneven terrain, patches of overgrown brush, low stone walls half-buried beneath moss and time. The asphalt here was cracked, less maintained, like fewer people had reason to come this way.
Or fewer people were meant to.
Faylan’s brow furrowed.
“…wait.”
Rowan slowed immediately.
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer right away.
The pull shifted.
Not forward anymore.
To the right.
Sharper.
Closer.
Her eyes opened.
“There,” she said, pointing toward a narrow break in the trees—a side road, barely visible unless you were looking for it.
Rowan turned without hesitation, the tires crunching over gravel as they left the main road. Branches scraped faintly against the sides of the car as they pushed deeper into the overgrowth, the light dimming as the trees thickened overhead.
Kael sat forward again.
Silent now.
Focused.
Everything about him had narrowed into one thing:
Get to her.
Faylan felt it too.
That urgency.
That tightening thread pulling tighter with every second.
“She’s close,” she said again, quieter this time. “Really close.”
The road curved sharply ahead, visibility cutting off just beyond the bend.
Rowan didn’t slow enough.
Not yet.
The air inside the car had shifted again—no longer tense with conflict, but with anticipation. Something just on the edge of happening.
Faylan’s pulse picked up.
Her fingers pressed harder against her chest.
Something—
wrong.
Not the pull.
Something else.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“Rowan—”
He saw it at the same time she felt it.
The figure.
Standing in the middle of the road just beyond the curve.
Rowan slammed the brakes.
The car lurched violently, tires skidding against loose gravel as momentum fought against the sudden stop. Faylan’s body jolted forward, her hand shooting out instinctively to brace against the dashboard as the world snapped into stillness.
Silence hit hard after the motion.
Too fast.
Too abrupt.
Faylan’s breath caught in her throat.
For a second, she didn’t move.
Didn’t think.
Then—
she looked up.
At first, all she saw were legs.
Standing just in front of the car.
Close enough that if Rowan hadn’t stopped when he did—
She swallowed, her gaze slowly lifting, her chest tightening as something cold slid into place beneath the urgency, beneath the pull, beneath everything—