02:24.
The collar wasn’t silver anymore.
It was dust.
Black, fine dust on my fingers, on the carpet, in the air. Like the Vance crest had never existed.
My phone was screaming.
Not ringing. Screaming. A silent alarm that vibrated so hard it hurt my palm.
ALERT: SUB-LEVEL ARCHIVE BREACH
AUTHORIZATION: UNKNOWN
LOCATION: VAULT 3 - KADE PRIVATE COLLECTION
And down the hall, boots. Six pairs. Maybe more. Coming up the elevator bank.
Alistair was coming.
And Elspeth had just burned Vance magic with a look.
02:25.
“Terrified” is a human word.
I don’t do terrified.
But my hands were shaking.
I grabbed Elspeth’s wrist. Not to hurt her. To check. To see if she was bleeding. If the ash was burning her.
Her skin was fine. Warm. Her pulse was still fast, but steady now.
“What did you do?” I demanded.
Elspeth blinked. “I... I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.” I let go of her and wiped my hand on my pants. The ash came off, but my fingers felt numb. “That was Vance blood-magic. That collar was forged in my great-grandmother’s forge. It’s supposed to be unbreakable. You just turned it to dust.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said. Her voice was small, but her back was straight. “It hurt. When I touched it. Like it was trying to get inside me. So I—” She made a fist. “I pushed back.”
“With what?”
“I don’t know!”
The shout echoed. She immediately looked at the door. At the approaching footsteps.
Lowered her voice. “With anger. With music. It’s the same feeling I get when I play. Like something in me is... alive.”
“Music,” I repeated. The word tasted like ash.
The warehouse. The violin. The way my dead heart had thudded when she was near.
No.
That was impossible.
Vampires don’t have powers like this. Not like this. Werewolves have strength. Warlocks have spells. Vampires have speed, compulsion, blood.
We don’t burn artifacts.
We don’t have wills that break curses.
Unless...
“Julian,” I said.
Elspeth flinched. “What?”
“My brother. He was... different. He felt things. He wrote music. My mother called it weakness. She made me—” I stopped.
_She made me put the knife in him._
For sentiment. For weakness. For exactly this.
And now I was harboring it.
In my hotel.
In my arms.
“You’re a Vance,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be able to do this.”
“I’m a Vance,” Elspeth said. “But I’m also Julian’s daughter.”
The room tilted.
“No,” I said. “No. Julian didn’t have children. He was 19 when—”
“When you killed him?” She said it without malice. Just fact.
I didn’t answer.
The footsteps stopped outside the door.
Alistair’s voice, muffled: “Open it.”
The handle turned. Locked.
“Damian,” Elspeth whispered. “What do we do?”
I looked at her. At the red mark on her neck where the collar had been. At the ash on my hands. At the phone still blaring.
ARCHIVE BREACH IN PROGRESS.
Vault 3.
Where I kept his journals.
The ones my mother ordered burned. The ones I couldn’t burn.
The ones that talked about music. About feeling. About a different way to be Kade.
If Alistair got those, he’d know. He’d know Julian had a daughter. He’d know I’d lied for 16 years.
My cynicism rose like a wall. Cold. Practical.
This was the problem with hope. It ruined everything.
I sacrificed my brother to build this. This neutrality. This empire. This lie that kept the monsters from eating each other.
And now one girl with a violin and too much fire was going to burn it down.
“Damian,” Elspeth said again.
I made a choice.
“Listen to me,” I said. Fast. “When they come in, you say nothing. You look scared. You let me talk. You let me lie.”
“Okay.”
“And if I tell you to run, you run. Don’t argue. Don’t look back.”
“Where to?”
“The warehouse. The cellar. There’s a door there that isn’t on any map.”
The door exploded inward.
Wood splinters and plaster.
Alistair walked through it like he owned the air.
Six men behind him. Guns out. Silver in the chambers.
His eyes went straight to Elspeth. To her bare neck. To the ash on the floor.
Then to me.
“What,” he said, very quietly, “did you do to her.”
I stepped in front of Elspeth.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “Your collar malfunctioned.”
Alistair’s eyes narrowed. “Malfunctioned.”
“Yes.” I gestured to the vanity. To the empty space. “Defective Vance craftsmanship. You should really check your suppliers.”
One of Alistair’s men laughed. Nervous.
Alistair didn’t.
He walked in. Slow. He crouched. Picked up a pinch of the black ash. Rubbed it between his fingers.
It stained him.
“This isn’t malfunction,” he said. “This is destruction.”
He stood. Looked at Elspeth over my shoulder.
“Did you do this?”
Elspeth said nothing.
Smart girl.
I answered for her. “I told you. Defective.”
Alistair moved.
Fast.
He had me by the throat before I could blink. Not pureblood speed. Just human rage.
But I let him.
Because if I fought back, the war started here.
“Do you think I’m stupid, Kade?” he hissed. “Do you think I don’t know what she is?”
“What she is,” I choked out, “is your daughter.”
“She’s not mine.”
The words hit me harder than his hand.
“What?”
“She’s Julian’s,” Alistair spat. “My sister married some human musician 17 years ago. Had this thing. I took her in to keep up appearances. To keep the bloodline pure.”
He threw me back. I hit the wall.
“But she’s not Vance,” he said. “Not really. She’s got his weakness. His music. His sentiment.”
He looked at Elspeth. Really looked.
“And now she’s got his power too.”
Elspeth didn’t flinch.
“Take her,” Alistair said to his men. “We’re leaving.”
Two men moved toward her.
I moved faster.
I was between them and her in a second.
“Touch her and this hotel burns,” I said.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a fact.
If they took her now, I had nothing left to lose.
Alistair studied me.
“You’re going to start a war over a girl?”
“I’m going to finish one,” I said.
The standoff lasted three seconds.
Then my phone buzzed again.
Not the alarm.
A text. From my head of security.
_“CEO. We have a problem in Vault 3. Someone’s inside. Using your codes.”_
My blood went cold.
Someone was in the archive.
Someone was reading Julian’s journals.
Right now.
Alistair saw it on my face.
He smiled. “What’s wrong, Damian? Something more important than my daughter?”
I didn’t answer.
Because I couldn’t.
Because if those journals got out, the Council would know Julian didn’t die for weakness.
They’d know I lied.
They’d know I’d been hiding a Vance-Kade hybrid with anti-magic blood for 16 years.
And everything I’d built would be dust. Just like the collar.
“Fine,” I said. “Take her.”
Elspeth’s head snapped to me.
“What?”
“I said take her,” I said. Louder. Colder. “She’s yours. She was always yours.”
I wouldn’t look at her.
If I looked at her, I’d break.
The men grabbed her arms. She didn’t fight.
But her eyes found mine.
And in them was the same question from the warehouse: _“Will you choose empire or choose girl?”_
I chose empire.
For now.
Alistair walked past me. Paused.
“You did the right thing,” he said. “For once.”
Then they were gone.
Taking her.
Taking the only thing that had made my heart beat in a century.
02:31.
The room was empty.
The ash was still on the floor.
My phone was still blaring.
SUB-LEVEL ARCHIVE BREACH
VAULT 3 - KADE PRIVATE COLLECTION
DOOR OPEN
I ran.
Not to stop Alistair.
To the freight elevator.
Down 47 floors.
Because if someone was in Vault 3, reading about Julian, reading about music, reading about the girl I just gave away—
Then I needed to get there first.
The doors opened onto sub-level 5.
Dark. Cold.
And at the end of the hall, the vault door was open.
Light spilling out.
And a figure standing inside.
Back to me.
Reading.
As Damian holds the silver collar, the metal suddenly begins to corrode and turn to black ash right between his fingers, reacting to Elspeth's silent, furious glare.
And now, a silent alarm blares across Damian’s phone: someone has breached the hotel’s subterranean archive room where his brother’s forbidden journals are kept.