Page 55 of The Scars of War
The longer I’m alone, the louder it gets. That humming tension under my skin. The echo of something I haven’t let myself name. It’s calling. And whatever it is, it isn’t Riven.
I pause at the end of a long corridor. The windows here are narrow, fogged with age, the outside light thin and gray. Dust dances in the air in slow spirals. There’s a closed door at the end, familiar. The vault. And I’m not alone. I feel him before I see him. The drop in pressure. The stillness. The silence within the silence. I turn, and he’s already there.
Vale.
Standing behind me, a few paces away, dressed in black like mourning is a habit he never breaks. No sound. No warning. Just arrival. Death doesn’t knock. It appears.
He says nothing. Neither do I, not at first.
He looks the same as always, ageless and sharp, the kind of beautiful that doesn’t belong to anything human. There’s something colder in him now. Somethinglocked. Like whatever lines were left between us burned up in the night, and he didn’t bother redrawing them.
I swallow once, slowly. “You following me now?”
His head tilts slightly. Not a no. Not a yes. “You left a trail,” he says. “Even the dead could find you.”
I lean against the wall, arms crossed, gaze fixed on him. “You said the veil was thinning.”
“It is.”
“And you said it wasn’t because of me.”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. “I lied.”
Of course he did. I look away before the anger can rise. It’s not worth it. Not with him. Not with this. “How long have you known?”
There’s a beat of stillness that’s not hesitation. It’s calculation. How much information to give me. How much to keep. “Since your first scream.”
I go still. Not the scream in the bar. Not what happened with Riven. He means the other one. The one I never talk about. The one that split my throat open the night everything I loved burned away and I fell to my knees, letting something ancient tear out of me.
The one that shook the windows and silenced every dog on the block. That stopped hearts. “You were there?” I ask, voice hoarse.
“I heard you,” he says. “Across the veil.”
My stomach turns. “You said it woke something.”
He nods once. “It didn’t just crack the veil, Lux. It tore it. Screams like that don’t come from grief. They come from blood.”
“What are you saying?”
He steps forward, slowly. Carefully. “I’m saying it wasn’t power. It wasn’t chance. It wasn’t a bond awakening early.”
I meet his eyes. “Then what the hell was it?”
Vale doesn’t smile. Doesn’t soften. “You’re a banshee.”
My breath leaves me all at once. The word feels too big. Too old. “That’s not possible.”
“It is. You are.”
“No one in my family…”
“Then they didn’t tell you. Or they didn’t know. The blood can sleep for generations. But it woke in you. Violently.”
I shake my head, but I already know he’s right. Because I remember the scream. I remember how it didn’t feel like mine. I remember the echo that came back from a place I didn’t understand.
“You’re not just some broken girl who attracted the Horsemen,” he says, voice low. “You were born to walk the edge of death.”
My knees feel unsteady. I reach for the wall behind me. “You’re telling me I was always going to be this?”
