Chapter 64: The Gossiper
Chapter 64: The Gossiper
Ariel POV
For a moment, the only sound in the penthouse was my heartbeat — it's was loud, wrong, just too fast to belong to me.
Talia’s voice still echoed in my ear.
"Ariel… please… help me…"
i remember her plead but something about it was just fishy.
It wasn’t her breathy, dramatic whisper she always used when gossiping.
It wasn’t her small-laugh-between-words tone.
This… this voice dragged.
Like something was wearing her throat. Maybe that's in my imagination but that's what I feel.
The phone slipped from my hand onto the couch. “Damian… that wasn’t her.” My voice came out thin. “I know her. I know how she talks. That wasn’t—” My chest tightened. “That wasn’t her.”
He didn’t try to soothe me with a lie. Damian never did.
He sat beside me and cupped my jaw gently, his thumb brushing just under my lip. “Tell me exactly what you heard.”
I hadn’t realized I was shaking until his touch steadied me.
“It was… her voice, but not her. Like…” I swallowed. “Like someone was pulling the words out of her lungs. Slow. Wrong.”
His eyes darkened — wolf-dark, protective-dark. “She didn’t call on her own. She was made to.”
I blinked, and guilt slammed into me like a punch.
“Damian, she was just being nice to me earlier—just talking, just trying to help. And now—now she’s—”
“Stop.” His voice cut clean through the spiral in my head.
I lifted my gaze. He leaned closer, forehead brushing mine in a soft, grounding touch that made the world slow down just an inch.
“You are not responsible for anyone being dragged into this,” he said. “They targeted her because she’s connected to you. This is on them. Not you.”
His tone was calm, but the anger under it simmered hot enough to melt steel.
Marcus entered quietly, as if he knew the room was balancing on a thread.
“I traced the number,” he said. “It’s… not a phone.”
Damian straightened. “Explain.”
“It’s a relay,” Marcus said. “A ghost connection. Someone routed a voice through a dead line.”
I frowned. “So it came from nowhere?”
“No,” Marcus corrected softly. “It came from someone who didn’t want to be found.”
The words landed heavy.
I felt something coil inside me—fear, anger, guilt, all wrapped together in a knot I couldn’t name. “So Talia’s alive,” I whispered. “But someone has her.”
Marcus’s expression softened just a fraction. “Most likely, yes.”
Damian paced once, jaw tight, shoulders tense. When he turned back to me, he didn’t touch me this time — he studied me, searching my face with that quiet intensity of his.
“You’re thinking of blaming yourself again,” he said.
“I should’ve—”
“You should’ve what?” His tone sharpened. “Predicted dark magic? Read minds? Stopped the world from turning?”
I hated that he was right.
I hated that someone used Talia to reach me.
“Damian… what if she’s hurt because of me?”
He knelt in front of me, his hands sliding around my lower legs, his thumbs resting on my knees like an anchor. The gesture was intimate and grounding and entirely him.
“Ariel,” he said, slow and certain, “if they wanted to hurt her, they wouldn’t have used her voice. They want you scared. They want you unstable.”
I froze.
He wasn’t wrong.
“You reacted when you heard her,” he continued. “Your power spiked.”
My stomach dropped. “You felt that?”
“Of course I did.” The ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Your magic isn’t subtle. And it’s tied to your emotions. They know that.”
“So whoever took her… wants me to lose control.”
“Yes.”
I pressed my hands to my temples. “This is insane, Damian. First Ethan, now this—”
The mention of Ethan made something flinch across Damian’s face. Not jealousy. Not anger.
Recognition.
“They’re connected,” he said. “Whoever is pulling the strings is using familiar faces to get to you.”
I shivered. “So Talia’s being used like Ethan was?”
Marcus and Damian exchanged a look — the kind that said yes, but they didn’t want to say it aloud and break me further.
I stood too fast. “We need to find her.”
Damian caught my wrist. “We will. But not if you’re unsteady. Whoever called you wants you emotional. They want you acting blind.”
“I’m not blind—”
“You’re scared,” he said softly. “And that makes you reckless.”
The worst part?
He was right.
I’d run out the door if he let me.
Damian stepped closer, hand sliding up my arm, slow, steady. His thumb brushed my inner elbow — a stupidly small touch that somehow anchored me to the floor again.
“We will get her back,” he said. “But we do it smart. We do it with a plan.”
My breath shook. “Okay. Fine. What’s the plan?”
“We wait for Marcus to pull the remaining data,” he said. “We secure the floor. And—”
He lifted his gaze toward the window, scanning the skyline like he sensed something shifting.
“We prepare for whoever’s coming next.”
The room went quiet.
Too quiet.
Marcus glanced at the hallway. “Sir—”
Damian’s head turned sharply.
My pulse stilled.
Then—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Not loud.
Not soft.
Just… deliberate.
My throat tightened. “Damian—”
He stepped in front of me instantly, one arm stretching back to shield me.
“Don’t move,” he murmured.
Another knock.
But this time—
The voice that followed made my blood freeze.
“Ariel?”
It was soft. Weak. Familiar.
Too familiar.
“Ariel… it’s me.”
Talia.
Or maybe it's was something wearing her voice. I don't really know but something about it felt weird.
Damian’s hand tightened around mine.
I didn’t dare breathe. The lights flickered.
The air and everything in me shifted
And her voice came again. But this time, it's was right outside the door—
fragile, desperate, wrong.
“Ariel, please, please open.”
The sound crawled down my spine