Chapter 65: Chapter 65

Rowan moved first.

“Jess.”

The word came out sharper than she intended, but fear had already wrapped tightly around her chest.

Jess did not answer immediately.

She stood frozen near the hallway entrance with her attention locked on the dark television screen across the room. The reflection staring back at them smiled patiently, gold eyes bright against the black glass.

Corvin stepped forward instantly, positioning himself between the entity and both women without hesitation.

The apartment temperature dropped hard enough for Rowan to feel goosebumps rise along her arms.

“Well,” Malric said quietly, “that is significantly worse.”

“Can everyone stop saying things like that?” Rowan snapped.

Jess finally blinked and looked toward them. “You can all see her too, right?”

“Yes,” Corvin answered immediately.

Jess nodded once. “Okay. Great. Hate this.”

The woman in the reflection tilted her head slightly, studying Jess now with visible interest.

That felt somehow even more dangerous.

Malric noticed too.

Tension pulled sharply through his shoulders as he moved subtly closer toward Jess without fully stepping in front of her. Protective. Careful. Like he was trying not to make it obvious.

Jess noticed anyway.

Her eyes flicked briefly toward him before returning to the reflection.

The woman smiled wider.

“You carry his blood,” she said softly.

The voice echoed unnaturally through the apartment, sounding distant and close at the same time.

Jess frowned immediately. “That sentence feels medically concerning.”

The woman ignored her completely.

Her gaze shifted slowly between Jess and Rowan like she was evaluating something she had waited a very long time to find.

Corvin’s expression darkened further. “Leave.”

The woman finally looked directly at him.

For the first time, the smile faded slightly.

“How protective,” she murmured.

The air pressure in the apartment changed instantly.

Rowan felt the power move through the room before she fully understood what was happening. The lights flickered again while shadows stretched unnaturally across the walls behind the reflection.

Malric swore quietly under his breath.

“She’s pushing against the wards.”

Jess looked alarmed. “The thing that was supposedly keeping us safe?”

“Yes.”

“Cool. Fantastic system.”

Corvin did not take his eyes off the reflection. “She cannot fully cross.”

The woman smiled again.

“Not yet.”

Every instinct in Rowan’s body screamed at those two words.

Not yet.

The television screen crackled suddenly.

For half a second the reflection disappeared completely before flashing back distorted and wrong. Multiple versions of the woman flickered rapidly across the dark surface, movements jerking unnaturally between frames.

Jess physically recoiled. “Absolutely not.”

Rowan agreed immediately.

The woman’s attention settled fully onto Rowan again.

“You hear the city already,” she said softly. “It remembers you.”

Rowan’s stomach tightened painfully. “I don’t know what that means.”

“You will.”

Corvin moved slightly closer to Rowan. “You will not speak to her.”

The woman looked almost amused by that.

“You believe the bond protects her.”

“It does.”

Her gold eyes lifted calmly toward him.

“For now.”

The room shook violently.

A sharp cracking sound split through the apartment as one of the windowpanes fractured suddenly from corner to corner.

Jess jumped hard enough to curse under her breath. Rowan nearly did too.

Only Corvin and Malric stayed motionless.

Which honestly felt worse.

Malric’s gaze narrowed toward the reflection. “You’re drawing too much attention.”

“I know,” the woman replied calmly.

That answer hit the room strangely.

Like she wanted attention.

Corvin realized it at the same moment Malric did.

“She’s not trying to break through,” Malric said quietly.

Rowan looked between them. “Then what is she doing?”

Neither of them answered immediately.

Jess sighed heavily. “I swear supernatural people communicate like haunted fortune cookies.”

The woman laughed softly.

The sound echoed wrong through the apartment, low and layered like more than one voice had spoken at once.

Then her gaze shifted toward the windows overlooking Houston.

“The city is waking,” she said. “And others will feel it soon.”

Corvin’s voice lowered dangerously. “Who are you?”

For the first time, the woman looked directly at him with something colder than amusement.

“You knew me once.”

The tension in the room sharpened instantly.

Rowan looked toward Corvin just in time to see something unfamiliar cross his expression.

Recognition.

Not complete.

But enough.

The woman smiled faintly at his reaction.

“You buried old things too deeply, Corvin Blacke.”

Something in the way she said his name made Rowan’s stomach turn.

Corvin took one slow step forward. “You should have stayed gone.”

“Oh,” the woman said softly, “I tried.”

The lights flickered violently again.

For one horrifying second, the reflection changed completely.

Not a woman anymore.

Something enormous moved behind the glass instead. Wings. Shadows. Gold eyes opening far too wide inside the dark.

Then the image snapped back instantly.

Jess made a strained noise somewhere between panic and disbelief. “Nope. Absolutely not. I would like to unsubscribe from whatever this is.”

Even Malric looked unsettled now.

That terrified Rowan more than anything else had so far.

The woman’s gaze shifted toward Jess one last time.

“You were hidden well.”

Jess straightened slightly despite herself. “That somehow feels threatening.”

“It was meant to.”

Malric stepped fully beside Jess then, no longer pretending the movement meant nothing.

The woman noticed.

A slow knowing smile crossed her face before she looked back toward Rowan.

“And you,” she said quietly, “were never supposed to survive the bond.”

The words hit Rowan like ice water.

Beside her, Corvin went completely still.

The kind of stillness that came before violence.

The apartment lights shattered all at once.

Glass rained across the floor as the room dropped into darkness.

Rowan flinched instinctively toward Corvin.

The second she touched him, power surged violently through the bond. Dark energy snapped outward hard enough to shake the entire apartment.

A scream echoed through the room.

Not Rowan’s.

Not Jess’s.

The woman.

Then everything went silent.

Emergency lights flickered dimly overhead a second later, bathing the apartment in dark red shadows.

The television screen sat black and empty.

The presence was gone.

Nobody moved.

Nobody spoke.

Jess finally looked around the destroyed apartment slowly before exhaling.

“So,” she said carefully, “I feel like we skipped several emotionally important backstory chapters.”