The front door didn't just open; it ceased to exist. One moment it was solid wood and glass, the next it was a cloud of splinters and jagged shards that blasted into the shop, propelled by a force that was both silent and absolute. The shockwave hit me like a physical blow, sending a cascade of tiny clock hands and shattered gears skittering across the floor. The air, thick with the smell of ghoul and my own coppery fear, was suddenly charged with the clean, cold scent of a winter storm.
My attacker, the ghoul, froze mid-lunge. Its milky eyes widened, not in fear, but in pure, unadulterated shock. It slowly turned its head toward the gaping hole where my door used to be. I followed its gaze, my breath hitched in my bruised throat.
A figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the hazy, neon-bled light of Cinderfall City. He was a cutout of perfect darkness, a void in the shape of a man. He didn't step through the wreckage; he simply was there, as if the world had reformed itself around his presence. He was tall, dressed in a tailored black coat that seemed to drink the light, not a single drop of the city's perpetual rain marring the impossibly expensive fabric.
He took one step into the room, and the temperature dropped ten degrees. The surviving clocks on the walls, which had been ticking a chaotic symphony of panic, fell silent, their pendulums freezing mid-swing. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.
It was him.
Seven years had passed. Seven years of me running, hiding, fighting. Seven years of me convincing myself that the man I had loved was just a memory, a ghost I had successfully exorcised. I was wrong. A ghost doesn't have this kind of presence. A ghost doesn't command the very air you breathe.
Rhyian Dravos looked exactly the same. The same severe, high cheekbones that looked as if they were carved from marble. The same dark hair, swept back from a brow that spoke of ancient authority. And the same eyes. Gods, the eyes. They were the color of silver in the moonlight, startlingly bright and just as cold, and they were fixed on the ghoul that still had its hand raised to strike me.
"You were given a simple task, Korvak," Rhyian said. His voice hadn't changed. It was the same low, resonant baritone that had once whispered poetry in my ear and promised me forever. Now, it was stripped of all warmth, a blade of polished ice. "Retrieve the asset. You were not given leave to destroy my property."
The ghoul, Korvak, ripped the stiletto from its own shoulder with a grunt of pain and dropped to one knee, bowing its head in a gesture of pathetic submission. My stiletto. He called me property. A fresh wave of fury washed over me, so potent it almost made me forget the danger.
"Sovereign," the ghoul rasped, its voice trembling. "The female... she was resistant. She eliminated Malak." It gestured with its head toward the motionless corpse sprawled across my ruined watch display.
Rhyian's silver eyes flickered from the dead ghoul to me. For a split second, they swept over my torn shirt, the bruises already forming on my neck, the defensive way I held my body. I saw a flicker of something in their depths—not surprise, not concern, but a cold, analytical assessment. It was the same look he'd given a failing stock on a financial report.
Then his eyes moved past me.
They locked onto the half-open door to the apartment, the door I had been trying to shield with my own body. The door from behind which he could so clearly hear the sound I was just now registering: the tiny, terrified, hiccupping sobs of a little boy trying desperately to obey his mother and stay quiet.
Everything stopped.
The calculated coldness in Rhyian's expression shattered. The mask of the Sovereign, the CEO, the ancient predator, fell away, and for one staggering, heart-stopping moment, he was just a man staring at a ghost. His stillness became absolute. His face, a canvas of pale, controlled emotion, was suddenly awash with a look of such profound, catastrophic shock that it was more violent than any explosion.
He saw the truth. Or rather, he heard it. The existence of my son wasn't a report from a scout anymore. It was real. It was here.
"You..." he breathed, the word a bare whisper, all his focus on that small, dark doorway.
Korvak, the ghoul, sensed the shift. It saw its master's distraction as an opportunity to redeem itself. "I will retrieve the boy now, Sovereign!" it snarled, lurching to its feet and lunging past a stunned Rhyian, straight for Rowan's room.
It was a fatal miscalculation.
Rhyian moved. He didn't run. He didn't stride. He simply ceased to be by the door and appeared in the ghoul's path. It was a movement so fast my human eyes couldn't track it, a blur of black wool and sudden violence. He caught the ghoul by the throat with one hand, his grip effortless.
"You dare," he hissed, his voice no longer a blade but an avalanche. The raw, ancient power that radiated from him was suffocating, a pressure that made my bones ache. "You dare to lay a hand on him?"
Korvak clawed at the hand around its throat, its milky eyes wide with terror now. It made a choked, gurgling sound as Rhyian lifted it clear off the ground.
"You were sent to ensure his safety," Rhyian continued, his voice a low, terrifying snarl. "And you threatened his mother. You terrified him. Your incompetence is a liability I can no longer afford."
There was no ceremony. No grand gesture. Rhyian simply tightened his grip. A sickening crack echoed in the silent shop, louder than any clock's chime. The ghoul's body went limp. Rhyian held it for a moment longer before dropping it to the floor like a bag of trash. It landed in a heap next to its companion, its head lolling at an impossible angle.
Silence descended once more, thick and heavy.
He stood there, framed by the two dead ghouls he had sent, the wreckage of my shop, of my life, around him. He didn't look at the bodies. He didn't look at me. His silver eyes were still fixed on the doorway to my son's room.
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, he turned his head and looked at me. The shock was gone, replaced by an unnerving mix of emotions I couldn't decipher: rage, regret, and something that looked terrifyingly like possession.
"Carys," he said, and my name on his lips was a brand.
I flinched, scrambling back until my shoulders hit the wall. I wouldn't let him near my son. I would die first.
"Stay away from him," I spat, my voice hoarse. "Stay away from us."
He ignored me completely. He took a slow step forward, then another, his gaze never leaving the back room. He was walking toward the greatest secret of my life, the one person he had no right to.
The father was walking toward his son.