Page 125 of Vows of Ruin

Max doesn’t wait. He stands, adjusting my limp weight in his arms, cradling my head against his shoulder as he starts toward the house, fast, determined, barely stopping short of running.

“Torque!” he shouts, voice breaking. “Get Doc. Now!”

Torque bolts. Hugo follows at Max’s heels. The morning air feels colder, sharper, wrong. Max presses his cheek to my forehead as he carries me inside. “I’ve got your Sparrow,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”

My world turns completely dark.

Chapter Forty-Six

Reaper

The city blurs past me in streaks of gray and amber as I tear down the road. My bike roaring beneath me like it’s trying to vibrate the thoughts out of my skull. I don’t let it slow. I don’t let myself think too long. If I do, I’ll turn around. And if I turn around, I’ll break.

The wind cuts cold against my face as I push deeper into the industrial district, empty warehouses, cracked pavement, streetlights flickering like dying stars. The sun isn’t even fully up yet. The world still looks half-asleep.

I’m wide awake. Too awake. My chest feels split open, raw, like I carved something essential out of myself and left it bleeding on that war room table beside the tracker and Max’s note.

By now, they’ve found everything. The note. The tracker. The video. The thought makes my stomach twist. God... Wrenley. I pray she doesn’t break. Not like last time. Not like when Max was taken and she shattered in front of us, violent, then quiet, then so heartbreakingly empty I thought I’d lost her forever. Before she was even mine.

I grip the handlebars harder. Hurting her is the last thing I ever wanted to do, but this is the only way. The only path that ends with her breathing. The only move that keeps his fangs off her skin.

The only sacrifice that makes sense is me. Not her. Never her. She’d tear the world apart to protect us. Now it’s my turn. A part of me hopes she screams. Fights. Rages. Letting Max hold her back from following me. But the other part, the part that’s drowning, hopes she forgives me one day. I hope she understands why I had to walk away.

I take a long turn, tires skidding slightly on gravel, and the city falls away behind me. Ahead, the outskirts loom. An industrial wasteland of empty fields and the skeletons of old factories no one bothered to demolish.

There it is. The place I found last night in a file Sebastian never meant for any of us to see. Coordinates scrawled in code. Maps of old tunnels. A supply chain routed through a name I recognized only because Torque once spat it out like venom.

The moment I saw it, I knew. This was it. Where he’s been hiding. Where he built his next stage. Where he wants the final act to play out. Where he expects her to come. I’ll go instead.

I pull up to the chain-link gate, half collapsed and choked by low shrubs and dying vines. The factory behind it is a rusted carcass, with broken windows, a sagging roof, and silence thick enough to choke on.

To anyone else, it looks dead. But I see what others don’t. The faint shift of a shadow behind a window. The glint of metal that’s been left too clean. The unnatural stillness. He’s here. Or his men are.

I kill the engine. The silence hits louder than the roar. I walk the bike off the road, tucking it beneath a curtain of low-hanging brush, hidden unless you know exactly where to look. It won’t matter if they find it. I won’t be riding it back.

I adjust the gear strap on my back, knife holsters, extra mags, a weapon he doesn’t know I carry, and the weight of a choice I can’t undo. The wind kicks dust across my boots as I start moving toward the factory. Slow. Silent. Every sense is sharp. I feel eyes. Maybe real. Maybe imagined. But I keep walking. Because this is the only way. I promised her always. This is how I keep it. Even if I’m not there to say it again.

The factory swallows me whole. The air inside is stale, dust, rust, mold, and something sour underneath it all, like old insulation and older secrets. Every step echoes off concrete and metal like a warning shot. No birds. No wind. Not even dripping pipes. Just silence. The kind that presses against your eardrums and dares you to breathe too loud.

I move through the first corridor slowly, clearing corners the way I’ve done a thousand times. The walls are flaking paint, industrial green peeling away like dead skin. Old machinery sits abandoned in the shadows, hulking shapes that look like they could wake up and lunge.

My boots crunch over broken glass. My breath ghosts in front of me. The place is cold. Too cold. A chill crawls the length of my spine. It smells wrong. Like it hasn’t been touched in years. But also… like someone has been here, recently. A faint whiff of bleach. Old cigarette smoke. Something chemical and sharp. Sebastian.

I follow a narrow hallway that feels like it stretches forever, lit only by what sunlight manages to cut through broken windows overhead. Left turn. Right turn. A catwalk groans under my weight. Staircase down. Another hall.

The deeper I go, the more wrong it feels, too quiet, too untouched, like everything was cleaned, cleared, staged. Purposefully. The hair on the back of my neck rises. He wanted someone walking through here. He wanted someone to feel this. He wanted her to feel this.

My jaw tightens, breath leaving me in a low hiss. Not happening. I keep moving, gun in hand, every sense sharpened so hard it hurts. Then I reach it. The hallway opens into a massive chamber, a factory floor that’s been completely gutted. I stop dead. Because the center of the room… is a theater.

An actual fucking theater.

Rows of seating, red velvet chairs that don’t belong in a place like this are arranged in semicircles, facing a raised platform that used to be a loading dock. But that’s not what makes my chest cave in. The stage itself—

My stomach drops. It’s a bedroom. Pink walls. White bedframe. A dresser with stickers. A lamp shaped like a rabbit. Bookshelves full of children’s books. A small desk. A cracked mirror with a child’s handprints still smudged on the glass.

On the edge of the bed, a tiny stuffed animal, a fox with patched fur. I know that fox. I’ve seen it in photos that Wrenley was sent by him. This. This is her childhood bedroom. Recreated. Down to the damn stitching.

My hands go numb around my gun. This isn’t just staging. This is an obsession. This is a ritual. This is a shrine built out of memory and madness. I see seven chairs lined up on the side of the stage. Seven identical metal chairs facing the bedroom like a panel of judges. Bile rises in my throat. This isn’t for Wrenley. This is for witnesses. The air hums, electric. Then—