Page 37 of The Madness Within

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 Iknew, 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 howrightshe 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 meneededher to see the pattern. To seeme.

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 heralmostbleed. 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 evenHellforgot his name.

Because Ember Carr was the key to everything.

And I never let go of my keys.

Chapter Fourteen

?? Witness

Ember

I’ve followed murderers before.

Interviewed families. Dug through sealed records. Even sat across from a few psychopaths still pretending to be misunderstood.

But I’ve never followed someone like Dorian Vale.

He won another case a few weeks ago, Trent Heller, age forty-three. Accused of strangling two teenage girls, then tossing their bodies in the river like trash. There was DNA. A confession. A fucking survivor.

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