Todos los capítulos de The Silent Wing : Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

Adrian’s POVThe clearing was empty by the time we broke through the last line of trees. The emptiness hit me harder than I expected. I had braced myself for danger. For a fight. For blood, maybe. I hadn't braced for nothing. Snow lay churned and flattened in a wide, uneven circle. Two long skid marks cut deep through it where the helicopter's runners had touched down and lifted again. And then there was the silence. The kind that presses against your ears after a loud sound finally stops. So complete it almost hurts.Sienna stopped at the edge of the trees as if she'd walked straight into a wall. She didn't cry out. She didn't say her sister's name again. She simply stood there, chest heaving from the run, staring at the flattened snow as though she could force it to give Mara back if she looked hard enough."Sienna."I said it quietly, carefully, the way you speak to someone standing too close to a ledge.She didn't answer. Instead, she walked into the clearing. She crouched at the

(Adrian's POV)The scream hit the east staircase like something physical, and I was already moving before I'd fully registered whose voice it was.Corinne. I placed it half a second too late, three strides down the hall already, Sienna's footsteps close behind mine.We found her in the drawing room, standing over Margaux's chair. Empty. A folded blanket still holding the shape of a body that wasn't there anymore. A teacup gone cold on the side table. The fire had burned down to embers and that told me more than Corinne's panic did. She hadn't just discovered this. She'd been standing here a while, working herself up to the sound she'd finally let out."She was here twenty minutes ago." Corinne's hands wouldn't stop moving, smoothing the blanket over and over like tidiness could reverse whatever had happened to it. "I brought her tea. She was here."I clocked the timeline without meaning to. Old habit. Twenty minutes. One fire went cold. One teacup, untouched. None of it added up to a

(Adrian's POV)For three full seconds, none of us moved.Margaux stood in that candlelit chamber like a woman receiving guests in her own parlor, not a mother who'd vanished into a blizzard two hours ago while her family tore the house apart looking for her. Behind her, chained to the rock wall by one wrist, a young woman stared back through the gap in the stone Sienna's exact eyes, set into a face I'd never seen before in my life.I felt Sienna go rigid beside me. Felt the tremor start in her hand, still laced through mine, and understood in that second that whatever came next was going to break something in her I wouldn't be able to put back together with words alone."Margaux." Sienna's voice cracked, barely more than breath, but it carried in that stone chamber like a shout.The reaction was instant. The chained woman flinched hard against her restraints, eyes wide with something closer to terror than hope. Margaux turned toward the gap in the rock without a flicker of surprise on

(Adrian's POV)We lost Julian's voice somewhere past the wine cellar, swallowed up by stone and distance, but I didn't slow down until two more corridors sat between us and the sound of him. Sienna's hand stayed locked in mine, cold enough that I could feel her pulse hammering right through her fingertips, and I didn't let go until we reached the narrow servant's stair that lets out near the east conservatory. Quiet at this hour. Unused. The kind of place I'd already mapped out of pure habit my first week in this house, long before I had any reason to think I'd need it.I should've known better than to expect it to stay quiet.Elena Duval was waiting for us at the top of the stairs.She stood there in the half-dark like she'd been expecting us for hours, arms crossed, and for the first time since she'd checked into Wraithmoor three weeks ago, I actually looked at her. The sharp line of her jaw. The particular tilt of her head. Details I'd filed away back then as an odd resemblance and

(Adrian's POV)Julian's words followed me down the tower stairs like something with teeth, and by the time we reached the library where Corinne, Margaux, and Theo were already waiting, I knew something had shifted in me for good. I wasn't just trying to get Sienna out of this house anymore. I was trying to survive a hunt he'd just told me, gladly, I was already standing inside of."He has the ledger." My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "Knew exactly where it was hidden the whole time. Let us walk straight into that room."Corinne's face went the color of old paper. "That's not possible. I've moved that lock twice in three years""He knew." Flatter this time, because there wasn't a gentle way to say it. "He's been three steps ahead of every single one of us since the moment this started."Margaux, seated near the cold hearth with a blanket someone had draped over her shoulders since the tunnels, closed her eyes like the words had landed as a physical blow. "Then he knows abo