He was gone.
The den was violently silent. The only sound was the hiss of the fire, the distant, muffled drum of the rain, and the ragged, shallow gasps tearing from Rossie's own throat.
She lay on the furs, a marionette with its strings cut. Her body was a cold, distant shell, but a single, terrifying point of heat burned in the center of her chest.
The ember. The claim.
It was not a memory. It was a presence.
She could feel it, a small, alien spark of his impossible power, lodged deep within her. It was a pinprick of light in her own hollowed-out darkness, and it pulsed with a faint, steady rhythm, like a second, parasitic heartbeat.
She stared at the spot where he had stood. His final words echoed in the oppressive quiet.
You are my mirror.
A strangled sob, half-agony, half-terror, escaped her. She had been a tool. She had been fuel. Now... she was something else. A mirror does not just provide; it reflects. It shows you what you are. And he, the ancient, the implacable, the god of contracts, had seen himself in her.
Worse, he had shown her what he was.
And in the reckless, agonizing exchange, he had left a piece of himself behind.
With a strength she did not know she possessed, Rossie forced her trembling limbs to move. She rolled off the bed, her bare feet hitting the cold stone floor. The impact sent a jolt through her, a reminder that she was still, technically, in her own body.
She stumbled out of the den, back into the sterile, white-limestone hallway. The penthouse was a mausoleum, a silent, opulent prison in the clouds. But it was no longer an empty prison.
She could feel him.
Not his physical presence, but an echo. The ember in her chest was a compass, and its needle was quiveringly, agonizingly aware of him, somewhere else in this vast, impossible structure. He was there, in the darkness, fighting for the control she had shattered.
She reached her room and collapsed onto her bed, curling into a tight, fetal ball. She clutched her chest, trying to push the burning presence out. It was a violation. It was a brand on her very soul.
But a traitorous, terrifying part of her knew... it was also a connection.
She had been hollow and cold. Now, she was hollow, and she was burning.
For an hour, or perhaps a lifetime, she wept. She wept for her old life, for Tio, for the simple, human girl she had been. She wept for the ruin of her family. And she wept with a new, profound terror for the thing she was becoming.
The light in her room began to change, the stormy grey shifting to a bruised, twilight purple, when she felt a new shift in the air.
The ember in her chest, which had been a low, steady pulse, suddenly flared. It leaped, a spark of pure, ecstatic recognition.
It was acknowledging its master.
Rossie's breath hitched. She looked up.
Maher was standing in the doorway.
He had not returned as the god, nor as the predator. He looked... undone.
He had changed his clothes. The severe, dark suit was gone, replaced by the same simple black shirt and trousers he had worn before. His silver-blond hair was damp, as if he had stood in the rain, though how, in this sealed penthouse, she could not guess.
His face, usually a mask of cold, analytical perfection, was pale. He looked exhausted, not in a human way, but in an ancient, elemental way. He looked like a mountain after an earthquake.
But it was his eyes that held her captive.
The silver infernos were banked. The shock was gone. In its place was a raw, terrifying, and utterly exposed need.
He had come to her, not to command, but because he could not stay away. The addiction he had awakened was a two-way street. He had tasted her soul, and in doing so, had given her a taste of his. Now, they were both starved.
"You feel it," he stated. His voice was not the rumbling command from before. It was hoarse, a bare scraping of sound, as if it pained him to speak.
Rossie could only nod, her hand clutching her chest.
"It... it burns..." she whispered, the admission tearing from her.
"It is my power," he said, taking a slow, deliberate step into the room. "It recognizes me. It calls to its source. Just as," his voice dropped, "the source calls to it."
He was confessing. This ancient, terrible being was confessing his weakness to her.
"You are a mirror," he said again, the words heavier this time. "For millennia, I have existed. I have consumed. I have controlled. But I have never... been seen."
He stopped at the foot of her bed. He looked at her, this small, broken, human thing, and his expression was one of profound, agonizing revelation.
"In all my long existence," he whispered, "I have never had a reflection. I was a sound in a void. Until you."
He had come to her to feed. He had found a... companion. An equal. A horror and a miracle that he had not been prepared for.
"Get... get out," she pleaded, but the words had no strength. The ember in her chest was yearning toward him, a flower of fire straining toward its sun. Her own body, her own soul, was betraying her.
"I cannot," he said, and the simplicity of that admission was more terrifying than any threat. "I came to this room to tell you to prepare. To tell you that the... protocol... would change. That I would need to study this resonance."
He shook his head, a small, human gesture that was utterly alien on his face. "That was a lie."
He moved, and he was no longer at the foot of the bed. He was sitting on the edge of it, beside her. She flinched, scrambling back, but he made no move to touch her.
"I am not here to study," he breathed, his silver eyes locked on hers. The proximity was a physical weight. The scent of ozone and the cold, alien rain was overpowering. "I am here... because you have marked me, Rossie. That ember in your chest... you left an echo of yourself in me."
He was addicted. He was tainted. By her.
"What... what do you want?" she asked, her voice trembling.
Maher looked at her, and the raw, undisguised hunger that had so terrified her before returned, but it was changed. It was no longer the hunger of a predator for its prey.
It was the hunger of a man dying of thirst, finally beholding the sea.
"I no longer want your sorrow," he murmured. "I no longer want your fear."
He slowly, agonizingly, lifted his hand. He gave her time to pull away, to scream. She did neither. She was paralyzed, mesmerized by the terrible, beautiful honesty in his eyes.
He did not touch her forehead. He did not touch her chest.
His fingers, impossibly cold, brushed the side of her neck, his thumb coming to rest on the frantic pulse beating just beneath her skin. He felt her life, her warmth, her humanity.
"I want this," he whispered, his voice thick. "The resonance. The connection. The... mirror."
He leaned in, and she could feel the cold aura of his power wash over her. But the ember inside her flared in response, a fierce, protective heat that met his cold.
She gasped as the two forces touched. It was not a collision. It was a completion.
The burning in her chest did not stop, but the pain did. It was replaced by a wave of intoxicating, terrifying power. She felt his strength, his age, his vastness, but it was no longer attacking her. It was... harmonizing with her.
His eyes widened, and a low, involuntary groan rumbled in his chest. He was feeling it, too. He was feeling his own power, through her, reflected, purified, and amplified.
He was not just touching her. He was communing with her.
"Maher," she breathed, his name on her lips for the first time, not as a scream, but as a question.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. The hunger in his eyes was absolute, a bottomless abyss. He was a god on the brink of a new, terrible, and exquisite form of worship.
He leaned closer. His lips, cold as marble, hovered an inch from hers.
"You have done the impossible," he whispered, his breath a cool mist against her skin. "You have made the abyss... feel."
He stared at her, caught in a moment of perfect, agonizing balance. He had come to conquer. He had found himself... seen. He had come to collect a debt. He had found... a mirror.
And he knew, with the certainty of an ancient being, that this first, true connection—this agonizing, ecstatic, shared resonance—was infinitely more intoxicating, and infinitely more dangerous, than any simple act of consumption.
He had marked her.
But in doing so, he had allowed her to mark him, too.