21 — Widow

The Widow enters. Silence bends. Allegiances fracture.

The door hung crooked from its hinges.

Smoke curled in from the hall.

Rain hissed through bullet holes in the window frame.

But the Widow didn’t step over the threshold—she glided, the way a knife glides across a throat when the hand holding it has forgotten mercy.

Her coat was black silk soaked through with stormwater, clinging to her like a second skin. Her hair was pinned high, streaked with silver—not from age, but from fire that hadn’t finished burning. Her eyes—

Gods.

They were Eirwen’s.

Talia choked on a breath behind her. Heller pressed himself to the wall like a man awaiting execution. Domenik didn’t move at all, but every muscle in his body coiled, slow and lethal.

The Widow’s gaze landed on Eirwen.

Not Domenik.

Not the blood on the floor.

Not the guns.

Just her.

“Hello, little ghost.”

Eirwen’s heart stuttered. Her mouth went dry.

“You’re dead,” she said, but it came out soft, wrong, too fragile for someone who’d survived a lifetime of fire.

The Widow smiled. “Not well enough, apparently.”

Domenik stepped in front of Eirwen before she could answer.

A territorial move.

Instinct, not thought.

The Widow didn’t look at him—she looked through him.

“You’ve grown bold,” she said, voice like velvet over broken glass. “Standing between a mother and her heir.”

Domenik’s jaw flexed. “She stays with me.”

The Widow raised one perfect brow.

“Does she? Or do you simply keep what you don’t understand?”

Eirwen moved before he could respond—slipping past Domenik’s arm, stepping forward until she and the Widow stood nearly chest to chest, breath mixing in the cold, dust-thick air.

“Why are you here?” Eirwen whispered.

Not accusation.

Not fear.

Not yet.

The Widow cupped her daughter’s chin. Her touch wasn’t warm.

It was… assessing.

Weighing.

“My little ghost,” she murmured. “Do you truly think all this began with you? With the fire? With the man who mistook obsession for destiny?”

Her eyes flicked toward Domenik.

He didn’t blink.

“You were always meant to survive,” the Widow said. “You were forged. Hidden. Prepared.”

“Prepared for what?” Eirwen asked, breath shaking through her teeth.

“For the throne stolen from your bloodline.”

Silence dropped like a guillotine.

Domenik spoke first—low, dangerous.

“You’re lying.”

“For once,” the Widow replied, “I am not.”

She reached into her coat and withdrew a small silver seal—round, weighty, engraved with a symbol Eirwen had only ever seen burned into the door of her family home the night it turned to ash.

The Cayde Seal.

Eirwen’s pulse thundered.

“That belongs to—”

“Your line,” the Widow finished. “The covenant written before these men twisted it into an empire of mirrors and ruin.”

Heller swallowed hard.

Talia’s eyes filled—not with hope, but dread.

Domenik’s voice was barely controlled violence.

“What do you want from her?”

The Widow finally turned to him, gaze steady, cold, knowing.

“Everything you think you own,” she said. “Everything you promised her in blood and breath. Everything you built on the bones of the family you helped burn.”

Eirwen flinched.

Domenik didn’t.

“You can’t take her,” he said.

The Widow’s smile sharpened. “I don’t need to. She will come.”

Steam rose from a gas canister rolling in the hallway. Boots pounded on the stairs. Shouted orders barked through respirators.

Civic Shadow.

Closing in.

The Widow leaned close, lips brushing her daughter’s ear.

“Come find me, Eirwen. When you’re ready to stop being owned.”

And then she was gone—slipping out the shattered back window just as smoke flooded the room, vanishing like a whisper returning to the grave she’d refused.

Eirwen stood frozen.

Domenik’s hand hovered inches from her spine, like he wasn’t sure if touching her would steady her—or make her shatter.

She didn’t turn.

She just whispered, barely audible:

“She’s alive.”

And Domenik, voice low and wrecked and reverent with something he didn’t know how to name, said:

“I know.”

But what he didn’t say hung heavier than the smoke:

And she wants to take you from me.

⟅━━━━━⟆ ⚜ ⟅━━━━━⟆

Next: 22 — Fault

Power breaks.

Loyalty fractures.

And this time, love cuts deeper than revenge.