Chapter 77 Dante
The air down here tasted wrong.
Old metal. Damp concrete. Stagnant time.
An abandoned underground station—one of the ones scrubbed from city maps decades ago when transit lines were rerouted and forgotten. Neutral territory’s favorite kind of hiding place: ignored, inconvenient, assumed empty.
Except it wasn’t.
I could feel it the moment we stepped off the cracked platform.
Seraphine’s trail had led us here—not blazing, not obvious, but persistent. Like embers buried under soot. And layered over it, thinner but unmistakable, was Renee’s signature. Shadow that didn’t quite behave like shadow should. Too deliberate. Too curated.
“She was here,” I said quietly.
Lucian nodded beside me, water humming low beneath his skin, reacting to something unseen. “Recently.”
Amara paced ahead, flashlight cutting sharp lines through the darkness. “This place gives me the creeps,” she muttered. “Which, for the record, says a lot.”
We split up without discussion.
That was how long we’d been doing this.
Searching meant destruction.
We tore through everything.
Old ticket booths were ripped open, their drawers dumped and scattered. Rusted lockers were yanked from the walls. Cabinets split, hinges screaming in protest. I tore up sections of warped flooring with bare hands, fire reinforcing muscle, searching for hollow spaces, false compartments, anything.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
“Dammit,” I growled, slamming a fist into a concrete pillar hard enough to spiderweb cracks through it.
Lucian crouched nearby, scanning a half-flooded maintenance room. “She wouldn’t leave evidence,” he said. “Not after what she pulled. This place was a stop, not a nest.”
“A staging point,” Amara added from down the corridor. “Like a pit stop from hell.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, frustration crawling under my skin. “Then where did she take them?”
Lucian stood, wiping grime from his palms. “She needed cover. Somewhere no king would immediately claim jurisdiction.”
“Neutral territory is that,” I snapped. “But this—” I gestured to the empty rooms “—this is too exposed. Too easy.”
Amara frowned, thoughtful. “Unless it’s not the real space.”
We both turned to her.
“What do you mean?” Lucian asked.
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing as she studied the far end of the hall. “Renee likes layers. Misdirection. You don’t hide the treasure in the first chest someone opens.”
My chest tightened.
“Keep searching,” I ordered.
We moved again—harder, faster. Ripping through walls now. Lucian flooded one room entirely, forcing water through cracks and seams to see where it drained unnaturally. I burned away false panels, my fire controlled but relentless.
Still nothing.
Minutes stretched. Then longer.
Panic started to creep in—the kind I hated most. The kind that whispered you’re too late.
That was when Amara screamed.
“DANTE—LUCIAN—HERE!”
Her voice echoed down the corridor, sharp with urgency.
We ran.
Boots thundered over concrete as we followed her voice, the sound pulling us toward the far end of the station—past the last visible platform, past a dead-end wall that should have been solid.
Should have been.
The wall was open.
Not broken.
Open.
A clean, rectangular doorway had slid aside, revealing a chamber beyond—dark, wide, and horrifyingly alive.
Lucian and I stopped dead at the threshold.
Girls.
Chained along the walls.
Dozens of them.
Thin. Pale. Some slumped unconscious, others barely upright, eyes tracking movement with the dull awareness of prey that had learned to conserve energy. Bruises marred skin. Wrists raw from restraints. Lips cracked. Bones too sharp beneath flesh.
The temperature hit me next.
Cold.
Artificially so.
My fire flared instinctively, heat rushing outward—but I forced it back, afraid of hurting them.
“Oh gods,” Amara whispered behind us.
I stepped inside slowly, every instinct screaming.
This wasn’t a holding cell.
It was a harvest room.
My gaze swept the floor—and then I saw it.
A scorch mark.
Not random.
Circular. Controlled.
My heart slammed into my ribs.
I dropped to one knee, pressing my fingers to the blackened concrete.
Fire answered immediately.
Her.
Seraphine.
I inhaled sharply, her heat rushing through me like a punch to the chest. Red and blue braided together—familiar, fierce—and underneath it something new. Something sharper. Purple, faint but undeniable.
“She was here,” I said hoarsely.
A woman closest to me lifted her head slowly, eyes sunken but sharp. She watched my reaction with careful interest.
“You know her,” she said. Not a question.
I looked up, meeting her gaze. “Yes.”
Her lips curved weakly. “Good. Because she’s terrifying.”
Despite everything—everything—a rough, broken laugh tore out of me.
“That tracks,” I muttered.
Another voice piped up from farther down the wall. “Is she the one who made it warm?”
“Yes,” someone else said. “The fire girl.”
“Is she alive?” the first woman asked again, more urgently now.
I stood. “Yes.”
A wave of sound rolled through the room—relief, sobs, whispered thank-yous, disbelief.
“She told us you’d come,” a younger girl said faintly. “Didn’t know if she meant it literally.”
Lucian moved past me, already breaking chains, water slicing through metal cleanly. “Where did Renee take her?” he demanded gently.
The woman nearest me shook her head. “She didn’t say. But she panicked.”
“Renee?” Amara asked incredulously as she helped another girl sit up. “That’s new.”
“No,” the woman replied. “Not her. The other one.”
My blood went cold.
“The other one?” I echoed.
She nodded. “A man. Not shadow. Not like her. Cold. Empty. He didn’t look at us like people.”
Lucian and I exchanged a look.
Thane.
“Did he touch Seraphine?” I asked, already hating myself for needing the answer.
The woman hesitated, then said quietly, “He took her.”
That was enough.
Lucian’s hand clamped on my shoulder, grounding me before my fire could do something catastrophic.
“Easy,” he warned. “She’s alive. That’s what matters.”
I nodded once, jaw locked tight.
Another woman squinted up at me. “You her… boyfriend or something?”
I huffed despite myself. “Something like that.”
“Well,” she said dryly, “you should probably hurry. She’s got a mouth on her, but even she looked scared.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
Then I straightened, fire settling into something lethal and focused.
“We’re getting you all out,” I said, voice carrying through the room. “Every single one of you.”
Lucian nodded, already issuing orders into his comm.
And as Seraphine’s heat burned steady in my palm, I made myself a promise.
Hold on.
I’m coming.