The brass key felt unnervingly cold in Rhys’s palm, a small, heavy anchor in the churning wake of Evans’s departure. Gwyllgi nudged his hand with a wet snout, sensing the shift in his mood, a mournful whine rumbling deep in his chest. Rhys looked down at the Glas-Hound, then back at the notes crumpled on the scarred tabletop. The roar of the tavern thinned around him, drowned by Dai’s long-ignored warnings ringing in his memory.
He pushed away from the table, the chair scraping loudly across the flagstones. It was time. If Morwenna was afraid, truly afraid, then the truth was far uglier than he’d imagined. He had to trust Evans, trust the faint, desperate plea in Morwenna’s uncharacteristic fear. He had to find out what Dai knew.
The Aberddu Constabulary’s evidence locker was a place Rhys had avoided for years. The air hung thick with the scent of aged paper, rust, and the lingering, metallic tang of past investigations. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sickly yellow glow on rows of metal shelving. Each shelf was a tombstone for a forgotten crime, marking a life broken down to catalog tags. Rhys found Locker 73, Dai Maddox’s old domain, tucked away in a dimly lit corner. The brass key slid into the lock with a soft click, the sound strangely loud in the oppressive quiet.
The metal door creaked open, revealing an old disorder. Dai, for all his meticulous note-taking, had been a hoarder of oddities. A worn, tweed cap hung on a hook, a forgotten packet of sticky, lemon bonbons sat on a shelf next to a collection of geological samples. Rhys ran a hand over a dusty map of Aberddu, its lines crisscrossing the river, leading to dead ends and forgotten docks. He picked up an old, leather-bound journal, its pages filled with Dai’s precise, looping script, not about cases, but observations of local birdlife. A small, sad smile touched Rhys’s lips. Dai had always been more at home in the wild than in the city’s grey confines.
He searched methodically, his gaze sweeping over the shelves. No hidden panels, no false bottoms in the drawers. This wasn’t Dai’s style. Dai had been subtle, his secrets hidden in plain sight. Rhys knelt, running a hand along the underside of Dai’s old, wooden case that had held his field equipment. His fingers brushed against a barely perceptible seam, a small, spring-loaded latch hidden by years of grime. He pressed, and a narrow compartment sprang open with a soft thud.
Inside, nestled on a bed of faded velvet, lay two items. One was a small reel-to-reel tape, its plastic casing scuffed but intact. The other was a single, smooth river stone, dark and weighty, its contours softened by countless tides. Rhys picked up the stone, its cool mass a stark contrast to the buzzing silence of the room. It fit perfectly in his palm, a silent, ancient witness.
He located a portable reel-to-reel player on a higher shelf, a relic from an older era. With fumbling movements, he threaded the tape. Static hissed across the aisle, filling the quiet. Then, Dai’s voice, younger, sharper, but laced with a familiar weariness, emerged.
“—source claims you know something regarding the… unusual properties of the Mire. Specifically, its effect on… lingering souls.”
A nervous cough, then a woman’s hushed, trembling voice, thick with local cadence. “Aye, Detective. The old stories. Morwenna, she… she believed them. Obsessed, she was. Since the accident, when Mam died. Said she had to protect the family. Preserve its essence, she called it.”
Rhys’s attention sharpened. Morwenna. Preserve her family’s essence. The phrase chilled him.
“What exactly did she believe?” Dai asked, his tone gentle, encouraging.
“The Tidal Rites, sir. Not for bringing back the dead, no. For binding them. For keeping the bloodline strong. Morwenna, she wanted to make sure the Llewellyn ghost, the strongest, the one tied deepest to the Mire, never truly left.” The speaker’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She spoke to Rhystyd. Even back then. He knew the old ways. The dark ways.”
A prickle of ice ran along Rhys’s collar. Rhystyd and Morwenna, colluding years ago, long before Ffion died.
“Binding,” Dai pressed. “How does it work?”
“It requires a… a willing vessel, in a way. A ghost that’s… disoriented, maybe. And a conduit. Something of theirs. Something they cherished. To anchor them. To draw them in, like a moth to a flame, but it’s a trap, see. Feeds on them. Takes their memory, their true self, little by little, until it’s just… a shadow for the living to use.”
The pieces snapped together. A disoriented presence, a conduit. Ffion. The salt-crusted locket Morwenna had pressed upon her by the riverbanks, urging her away—not out of mercy, but to plant her directly in Rhystyd's path so the rite could begin.
“Morwenna said she had to secure the bloodline’s *continuity*,” the recorded voice continued, thin and ragged. “She craved Ffion’s essence. Her strength. She hated her, yes, but she… required her. Ffion was the purest link to the old ways, the true heir to Tŷ Haearn’s power. Morwenna couldn’t let that go. Not to just… disappear. Not when it could be *used*.”
The tape clicked, reaching its end, the static returning in a rush, filling the sudden void. Rhys stood frozen, the river stone a dead weight in his hand. The truth, ugly and insidious, unfurled itself in his mind. Morwenna hadn’t killed Ffion. She wouldn’t have. She required Ffion’s shade intact, unmoored. She’d set the trap, baiting her sister to the bank with the trinket, knowing Rhystyd waited in the reeds to finish the strike and initiate the binding. A sacrifice, not of hate, but of twisted ambition. A preservation of legacy, bought with her sister’s life and eternal torment.
Rhys lifted the river stone, its dark surface mirroring his hollow cheeks, the stubble along his jaw, and the stark exhaustion carved into his skin. And then, subtly, shifting within the stone’s depths, a familiar luminescence, a spectral shimmer. Ffion. Her face, translucent and sorrowful, swam into view. Her eyes, filled with an ancient, unbearable grief, met his. She was weeping, silent tears tracing pathways on her ethereal cheeks, the realization of her sister’s ultimate deception finally dawning in her spectral vision, reflected in the unyielding stone.