The lighthouse was a hollow, calcified tooth of stone standing against the violent surge of the Atlantic. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of wet wood, ancient iron, and the pervasive, stinging rot of the sea. There was no electricity, no digital heartbeat, no Static. Only the rhythmic, haunting sweep of the rain against the glass and the low, guttering flame of a single kerosene lamp that Evelyn had found in the cellar.
Evelyn sat on the edge of a moth-eaten mattress, her back to the door. She was still shivering, the cold of the harbor water having settled deep into her joints. She had stripped off the salt-caked cashmere sweater—Silas's sweater—and now sat wrapped in a coarse, dry wool blanket that scratched her skin like a thousand tiny needles.
In her hand, the silver Mercury drive was no longer violet. It glowed with a deep, pulsating crimson, casting long, bloody shadows against the peeling wallpaper of the room. It looked like a heart. A digital, bleeding heart.
"The daughter of the Architect," Evelyn whispered, her voice a hollow rasp that was swallowed by the sound of the waves. She looked at her own hands in the red light, searching for a trace of Victor Thorne in the curve of her fingers, in the rhythm of her pulse. "I'm not a ghost, Silas. I'm a blueprint. I'm the legacy of the man who turned my mother into code and your father into a murderer."
Silas was across the room, leaning against the doorframe. He had found a dry shirt in a locker, but he hadn't buttoned it. The scars on his chest were stark in the crimson glow, a map of survival that was now being redrawn by the fire in his eyes. He didn't look like a man who had just lost his empire. He looked like a predator who had finally found the only thing worth hunting.
"You are whatever I say you are," Silas hissed, his voice a low, vibrating baritone that made the air in the small room feel suddenly scarce. He moved toward her, his limp heavy but determined, the sound of his footsteps a rhythmic countdown on the wooden floor.
He stopped when his knees brushed the edge of the mattress. He reached out, his hand—large, warm, and scarred—sliding under the wool blanket to find her shoulder. The heat of his palm was a shock against her freezing skin.
"Victor Thorne didn't build you, Evelyn," Silas murmured, his thumb tracing the line of her collarbone with a possessive, agonizing slow motion. "He provided the ink. But you... you wrote the code. You are the one who threw the world into darkness just to keep us alive. If you have his blood, then I'll be the one to burn it out of you."
Evelyn looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and wild in the red light. "How can you look at me? After everything my father did to your family? After the way Julian used me to control Arthur? We're not a tragedy, Silas. We're a mistake."
"Then let's be the most beautiful mistake New York has ever seen," Silas growled.
He didn't pull back. He leaned in, his body pinning her against the wall of the lighthouse, his weight a grounding, terrifying force. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his breath hot and demanding against her skin. The tension between them, which had been a war of secrets for twenty-eight chapters, finally exploded into something raw and unadulterated.
It wasn't a kiss of love. It was a kiss of claim. It was the desperate, visceral hunger of two people who had died to the world and had nothing left but the friction of their own bodies to prove they were still breathing.
Silas's hands were everywhere—tangling in her damp hair, tracing the curve of her waist, searching for the heat that the Atlantic had tried to steal. Every touch was an interrogation. Every moan was a surrender. In the crimson light of the Mercury drive, the "Disgraced Heiress" and the "Crippled Monster" were gone. There was only the wildfire and the storm, merging in the dark.
"Chapter twenty-nine, section one," Evelyn gasped against his lips, her hands clutching his scarred shoulders, her fingernails digging into his skin. "When the world is ash, the only thing that matters is the heat."
Silas let out a low, guttural sound and pulled her closer, his lips finding the pulse in her neck. "The Mercury isn't a rewrite for the city, Evelyn. It's a rewrite for us. We're going to find him. We're going to find Victor. And we're going to show him that his masterpiece has a mind of its own."
He pulled the crimson drive from her hand and set it on the floor. The red light filled the room, painting them in the color of a new dawn.
"Tomorrow, we start the haunting," Silas whispered, his forehead resting against hers, their breathing synchronized in the dark. "But tonight... tonight you belong to the monster."
Evelyn didn't answer with words. She pulled him down onto the mattress, her arms wrapping around him with a strength she didn't know she possessed. The lighthouse stood silent against the sea, a beacon for two ghosts who had finally found their home in the dark.
As the sun began to break over the horizon, the crimson light of the Mercury drive finally faded into a steady, brilliant white.
Evelyn woke up in the circle of Silas's arms. The lighthouse was cold, but the heat between them remained. She reached for the drive, her fingers brushing the silver casing.
A new message had appeared on the small, internal screen of the device.
Recipient: Evelyn. Message: The Architect is at the Pier 54. He's waiting for the daughter. But he doesn't know the Mercury has a third stage.
Evelyn looked at the message, then at the sleeping man beside her. She felt a strange, cold clarity settling into her bones. The "Red Mercury" wasn't just a program. It was a sacrifice.
"Chapter twenty-nine, section two," she whispered to the empty room. "The cost of freedom is the blood you're willing to spill."
She stood up, her body aching but her mind a sharp, lethal blade. She looked at Silas one last time, a look of profound, secret love in her eyes, before she turned toward the door.
The haunting was moving to its final stage. And Victor Thorne was about to learn that you should never invite a ghost into your house if you're not prepared to be the next one to die.