Ashes to Ashes

Heat from the mural scorched my skin, but it was the date that froze my blood. Wet paint. *Today.* The Vane family wasn't just a legacy of greed; it was a living script, and we were still performing the mid-act.

"Move, Aria!" Dante’s voice cracked through the roar of the fire.

He was dragging his ruined leg toward me, his face glistening with soot and sweat. I lunged forward, hooking my shoulder under his arm. He was dead weight, his flannel shirt soaked in a dark, widening heat. Every step was a negotiation with the collapsing ceiling.

Above us, the monastery screamed. Ancient timber groaned as the orange gas Julian had released turned the air into a pressurized furnace.

Julian’s laughter echoed from somewhere high above, a ghost in the ventilation shafts. A muffled *pop-pop* of his silenced pistol sent chips of stone flying near our feet. He wasn't trying to kill us yet. He was herding us.

"The cliffs," Dante wheezed, his grip on my hand tightening until his knuckles were white. "The service tunnel... behind the altar."

We staggered through the sanctuary, the tapestries of faceless saints curling into black ash. I didn't have the Blade. I didn't have the telekinetic hum that had nearly hollowed me out in the city. I was just a woman with a bleeding man, trapped in a burning house of cards.

We reached the high altar, the air so thin I could taste the char in my marrow. Behind the heavy velvet drapes, a narrow stone throat opened into the mountain. We tumbled in just as a section of the roof pancaked into the pews behind us.

The tunnel was a lightless crawl, the walls vibrating with Julian’s hunt. We could hear his boots—*click, thud, click, thud*—on the stone above. He was tracking the blood.

We emerged onto a narrow ledge overhanging the Blackwood River. The mist was thick, a white shroud that hid the three-hundred-foot drop.

Julian was already there.

He stood at the tunnel’s exit, silhouetted by the inferno behind him. He looked young, vibrant, and utterly devoid of a soul. He didn't raise his gun. He leaned against the rock wall, watching us with a bored, clinical interest.

"The Cursed One and her pet soldier," Julian said, his voice carrying effortlessly over the river’s roar. "My father was obsessed with the weapon. My mother was obsessed with the money. But Marcus... Marcus is obsessed with the timeline."

"Where is he?" I rasped, my hands instinctively shielding my stomach.

"He’s waiting for the payout, Aria. The policy required your physical cessation. You gave it to him in that pool. The funds are already moving. You’re just the loose threads now."

He stepped toward us, the fire at his back making him look like an ink blot on the world. I looked at the drop behind me. I looked at Dante, whose eyes were starting to glaze over from blood loss.

I had no powers. No weapon. No inheritance left to buy our way out. All I had was the one thing the Vanes always underestimated.

"Dante," I whispered, my lips brushing his ear. "Do you trust me?"

He looked at me, a flicker of the man I loved returning through the pain. He didn't ask how. He just nodded once.

I gripped the back of his tactical vest, my feet finding the very edge of the slick shale.

Julian’s grin widened. He raised the pistol, the suppressor a black finger of silence.

"You really are a Vane, Aria. You’d rather break everything than let someone else hold the pieces."

He didn't pull the trigger. He didn't have to.

I felt the air change, a sudden, sharp displacement of wind from the river gorge. A shadow moved in the mist below us—massive, sleek, and familiar.

A black helicopter, identical to the one that had taken Elena from the ice, rose silently from the fog. The side door was open.

Standing in the bay, a headset over his ears and a tranquilizer rifle in his hands, was the man from the mural.

Marcus Thorne didn't look at Julian. He looked directly at me, his face an unreadable mask of legalities and lies. He raised a hand, making a circling motion to the pilot.

"The boat is waiting, Aria!" Marcus’s voice boomed through the helicopter's external speakers. "Jump now, or let Julian finish the ledger!"