Page 58 of Panther in the Shadows
My panther surges to the surface, snarling recognition and fury in equal measure.
It can't be. She's dead. She died seven years ago, threw herself off the cliffs near Málaga after the scandal destroyed her family. I heard about it months later, already exiled, already building a new life from the ashes of the old one. Dead. Gone. A ghost that stopped haunting me once I left Spain behind.
Except ghosts don't raise the dead. Ghosts don't perform necromancy powerful enough to bring back a drowned girl and weaponize her against the living. Ghosts don't stand on Stormhaven’s docks speaking about things that should be buried.
"Rafe." Moira's voice is gentle but firm. "Is she who you think she is?"
The room feels too small suddenly, the walls pressing in, the air too thick. My panther wants out, wants to run, wants to hunt down this impossible thing wearing a dead woman's face. But I force the shift back, force my breathing to steady, force myself to meet Moira's eyes.
"There's something I need to show you—a lockbox I brought from Spain."
"Show me." Not a question. A demand wrapped in the kind of steel I've come to recognize in her. The sea witch who hides her power, who bends tides and calls storms but pretends to be nothing more than an innkeeper. The woman who's gotten under my skin in ways I don't want to examine.
I don't argue. Can't argue. If this is who I think it is, Moira has every right to know. This thing, regardless of who it is, raised her sister from the dead. Brought Elspeth back wrong, twisted her into a weapon of revenge aimed directly at both of us.
I lead her up the narrow stairs to the warehouse floor. My workers have finished for the night, the space quiet except for the creak of old wood and the distant sound of waves. The back room that serves as my office is dark, familiar. Safe in ways nothing else in my life has been for five years.
The lockbox sits exactly where I left it five years ago, hidden behind a false panel in the wall, covered in dust and cobwebs. Small. Unassuming. The kind of thing you'd overlook unless you knew to look for it. My hands shake as I pull it free, as I work the combination lock that only my fingers remember.
"What's in it?" Moira asks softly.
"My past." The lock clicks open. "The parts I couldn't burn."
Letters. Documents. Exile papers signed by my clan's elder council. A silver medallion that once marked me as heir to the Vega territories before I killed my brother and lost everything. And underneath it all, wrapped in oil cloth to protect it from time and salt air, a photograph.
I lift it carefully. The image is faded now, the colors muted by years and bitterness, but the woman in the frame is still achingly beautiful. Hair cascading over bare shoulders. Olive skin luminous in the Mediterranean sun. She's smiling at thecamera, at whoever took the photo, and even frozen in time she radiates the kind of confidence that makes men stupid.
Catalina.
My betrothed. My brother's seducer. My destroyer.
"Is this her?" I hand the photograph to Moira, watch her study it with the intensity she brings to everything. "The woman you saw. The one who raised Elspeth."
Moira's face goes pale. Her fingers tighten on the edges of the photograph, and I hear the paper crinkle under the pressure. When she looks up at me, her eyes hold something dark and certain.
"That's her." Her voice is barely a whisper. "Or what she was before. The hair's different now. The skin. But the face... the bone structure... the way she holds herself..." She touches the woman's face in the photo, tracing the line of her jaw. "This is the thing that stole my sister. That twisted Elspeth into a weapon. Who is she?"
"Catalina Mendez." The name scrapes out of my throat like broken glass. My hands shake as I set the photo on the desk. Can't look at it anymore. "My arranged fiancée. I was twenty-five. She was twenty-three. Our families had been negotiating the match since we were children."
"Political marriage," Moira says quietly.
"It was supposed to unite two old and revered panther clans, strengthen old alliances." The words come easier now, like lancing a wound. "All the garbage that goes into shifter marriages when power matters more than people."
I've never told anyone the full story. Not Declan, not the brotherhood, not even in the confessionals I used to make drunk and alone in my first year of exile. But Moira's sister is being raised from the dead because of my past. She deserves the truth.
"Catalina was beautiful. Ambitious. From a less powerful panther clan." Meeting her eyes takes effort. "She wanted powerbut knew she'd never have any real control married to me. I was the elder heir, a shadow walker. She couldn't manipulate me. So she did what ambitious shifters do when they can't take power directly. She seduced the weaker brother."
"Diego." Moira says his name like she's tasting it, testing it for significance.
"My younger brother." The memories surge faster now, sharper. Diego's face when I caught them together. Catalina's laugh when I demanded she end it. "He lacked character, but made up for it in ego. Strong, but easily fooled. Easily manipulated. Catalina saw that and used it."
Moira's hand finds mine. Anchoring. "What did she make him do?"
"Fall in love with her. Believe she chose him over me, that they could rule the territories together once our father died." My throat tightens. "It was supposed to be a formal challenge. Witnessed. Controlled. First blood or submission."
The words stick. I have to force them out.
"But Diego went for a kill strike. Silver blade, aimed for my heart. We fought. There was blood." My throat tightens. "In the end, I broke his neck. Self-defense, but it doesn't matter what it was when your brother is dead at your feet."
