Sleep offered no sanctuary.
Lena lay on her sterile cot in the Order’s barracks, the regulated hum of the compound’s ventilation system a poor substitute for the silence of the night.
It was the poetry that kept her awake, a single line echoing in the hollows of her mind, replaying with the maddening persistence of a phantom limb.
…he whispered a line of poetry she somehow knew the ending to…
The memory of the encounter was a shard of glass under her skin. He had saved her.
A vampire, one of the soulless Ancients, had thrown himself between her and the feral ones. He had taken a wound meant for her, his dark blood a shocking stain against the grimy alley wall.
Then, the words.
“And in the stillness of the night…” his voice had been a low rasp, laced with pain and something else she couldn’t name.
And the response had risen in her, unbidden, unwanted, a ghost on her own tongue.
My soul will find its way to you.
She hadn’t spoken it aloud, but she had felt it. The cadence, the rhyme, the deep, aching certainty of it.
It was a truth her body knew and her mind rejected.
Her report to Voronin had been a masterwork of omission. She’d detailed the feral attack, the unexpected numbers, her tactical retreat.
She’d painted a picture of a hunter wisely choosing to live and fight another day. There was no mention of Rhysand, no mention of his intervention, and certainly no mention of the poetry.
The lie sat like a stone in her gut. For the first time, the Order’s rigid black-and-white clarity felt like a cage, its rules a set of blinders she was suddenly desperate to remove.
Confusion was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Doubt was a poison. Yet here she was, drowning in both.
She rose from the cot, her movements silent and practiced. The compulsion was too strong to ignore.
This wasn’t a hunt sanctioned by the Order. This wasn’t about a kill. It was about an answer.
She had to find him, not as a target in her crosshairs, but as the keeper of a secret that was inexplicably, terrifyingly, tied to her.
Lena slipped out of the barracks, a shadow in the Order’s dimly lit corridors. She bypassed the armory, taking only her standard sidearm and a single silver blade—enough for defense, not an assault.
This was on her terms.
Finding him was easier than it should have been. It was as if he had left a trail woven from her own fractured intuition.
She ignored tactical data and threat assessments, focusing instead on the strange magnetism she’d felt during their encounters. He was drawn to places of fading grandeur, of forgotten history.
Places that held echoes.
A swift, clandestine search of the local archives, cross-referencing noble families from the 16th century with properties that had fallen to ruin, gave her a name: Château de la Lune Brisée.
The Broken Moon Château.
It had belonged to the d’Aubigny family, whose line had ended abruptly, their last daughter, Isabeau, lost to history.
The name sent a shiver down her spine. Isabeau.
The drive out of Paris was a flight from her own life. With every kilometer that separated her from the Order’s headquarters, a knot in her chest loosened, only to be replaced by the cold thrill of terror and anticipation.
The château was a skeleton picked clean by time. It stood on a gentle rise, skeletal stone walls clawing at a sky bruised with the colors of twilight.
Moonlight spilled through the collapsed roof of what must have been the great hall, illuminating a floor of checkered marble tiles cracked and overrun with weeds. It was a place of profound sorrow, a tomb for a life she couldn’t imagine.
And he was there.
He stood in the center of the ruined ballroom, his back to her, looking up at the missing roof as if he could still see the vaulted ceiling and crystal chandeliers. He wore no armor, just simple, dark clothing that made him a part of the shadows.
He didn’t turn as she approached, her boots crunching softly on fallen debris.
“I knew you would find your way here,” he said. His voice was calm, a low melody that resonated in the hollow space.
Lena stopped a dozen paces away, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
“I’m not here to talk.” The lie was weak, even to her own ears.
“Aren’t you?” He finally turned, and the melancholy in his gaze was so immense it felt like a physical weight.
“Every question you refuse to ask is screaming in your mind, hunter.” He took a step toward her, his movements fluid and silent.
“This was her home. Isabeau’s.”
“It’s a ruin,” she said, her voice tight. “A pile of rocks.”
“It was once the most beautiful place in all of France,” he countered gently, his eyes never leaving hers.
“The air smelled of beeswax and woodsmoke, and in summer, the jasmine that grew up these walls would fill every room.” He gestured to the empty space around them.
“This was the ballroom. There were tapestries on the walls, depicting hunts and heroic legends. Your father’s pride.”
Lena’s breath hitched. “My father was a corporal in the Russian army. He died when I was six.” The words were automatic, a catechism she had repeated her whole life.
Rhysand’s expression was one of infinite patience, of a sadness so old it was part of his very bones.
“He was, Lena. But before that, he was a French lord who adored his only daughter.”
He began to move, a slow, deliberate circle around the center of the room, his eyes distant as if watching ghosts.
“We danced here. On your eighteenth birthday. There was a storm that night, I remember. The rain lashed against the windows, but in here, there were a thousand candles. The musicians played a waltz, a simple, sweet melody on the lute and viol.”
He was painting a picture, and to her horror, the colors were beginning to bleed into her own mind. She could almost hear the faint strains of music, a fragile tune fighting against the whisper of the wind through the ruins.
“You were furious with me,” he continued, a faint smile touching his lips. “I had arrived unannounced. A scandal. But you agreed to one dance.”
“Stop it,” she warned, her voice trembling. “Whatever game you’re playing—”
“It’s no game.” His voice was raw.
He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the flecks of silver in his dark eyes.
“You wore a gown of midnight blue silk. It was your favorite color. You said it was like wearing the night sky.”
He raised a hand, not to touch her, but as if tracing a memory in the air between them. “It had tiny seed pearls sewn into the bodice, like stars. And when you moved…”
He trailed off, and Lena felt a sudden, inexplicable phantom sensation. It started in her hands.
A coolness. A weight. The unmistakable, impossible feeling of heavy, smooth fabric bunched in her fists.
Silk.
Her gasp was sharp, a tear in the silence. She looked down at her hands, which were clenched into tight fists at her sides.
They were empty.
She was wearing tactical gloves, worn leather and reinforced knuckles. But the feeling… it was utterly real.
The whisper-soft texture of silk, the weight of it, the way it would move if she let it fall.
Her head snapped up, her eyes wide with terror. “What did you do?” she breathed, stumbling back a step.
The world tilted, the stone ruins seeming to twist around her.
“I did nothing,” Rhysand said softly, his voice laced with an aching tenderness that cut her deeper than any blade. “I am just reminding you of what the Order made you forget.”
The sensation intensified.
She could feel the phantom gown against her skin, the snug fit of the bodice, the rustle of the skirts around her ankles. She could smell it—a faint scent of lavender and old thread.
A memory that wasn’t hers was invading her body, overwriting her reality. It was a violation more profound than any physical attack.
Panic, cold and absolute, seized her. Her training, her discipline, her entire identity was a fortress, and its walls were crumbling to dust.
She was Lena Petrova, hunter of the Order of Luminos. She was discipline and steel. She was not a girl in a silk gown dancing in a forgotten century.
“Stay away from me,” she choked out, the words barely audible.
She turned and fled.
She didn’t run like a hunter making a tactical retreat.
She ran like a frightened animal, scrambling over fallen stones, heedless of the noise she was making.
The phantom dress seemed to tangle around her legs, a ghostly shroud trying to drag her back into the past. Her breath came in ragged sobs, a sound of pure terror.
She didn’t stop until she reached her vehicle, fumbling with the keys, her hands shaking so badly she could barely fit one into the ignition.
As she sped away, leaving the skeletal château shrinking in her rearview mirror, she could still feel the ghost of midnight silk on her fingertips, a terrifying, undeniable truth her soul had just remembered.