Page 10 of Lost in Fire

The certainty hits me. Whatever his response to my message, whatever plan he’s forming, he’s moving toward us. The father Ember doesn’t know exists, racing against time to save a daughter he’s never met from protocols designed to destroy people like her.

I open my eyes and study Ember—really study her. The silvery hair catching the lamplight. The stubborn set of her jaw when she’s thinking. The way her fingers move in unconscious patterns when she’s working magic, tracing symbols I taught her, but that came from another heritage entirely.

She’s beautiful. Brilliant. The living proof that love can create miracles even in the darkest circumstances.

“I love you.” The words escape before I can stop them, raw with too many years of hidden truths and the desperate fear that I might not have much time left to say them.

Ember looks up, startled by the emotion in my voice. “I love you, too. But Mom—”

“But you need more than love. You need honesty.” I meet her gaze, letting her see some of the pain I’ve carried alone for so long. “And you’ll have it. I promise. After your birthday, no more secrets.”

If we make it that long.

Her eyes widen slightly. It’s the first completely honest thing I’ve said to her in years, and she recognizes the weight of it.

“Okay,” she says softly. “Two weeks.”

Two weeks that might as well be two years with Vex closing in. Two weeks to prepare for the end of the world as we know it. Two weeks to find the courage to choose truth over safety.

He’s coming.

But will he arrive in time?

Chapter 4

Hargen

The mountain road winds through shadows and uncertainty, each mile carrying me toward a choice I never thought I’d make. My thoughts are a clusterfuck of chaos that I’ve been struggling to make sense of.

They’re going to kill our daughter.

The words that have shattered everything I thought I knew about my life. About loss. About the woman I loved and the future we never had.

Except we did have a future. We have a daughter.

The Aurora Collective’s outpost emerges from the wilderness like something carved from the mountain itself. Mining equipment rusts in scattered heaps around the approach road, their skeletal frames creating false history against the mountainside. Camouflage, I realize—deliberate deception that makes the casual observer see abandonment where a fortress waits underground.

I pull up at the checkpoint, waiting for a uniformed guard to emerge from the reinforced booth.

“This is a secured area, sir,” he says, his tone professionally neutral but his hand resting casually near his sidearm.

“I’m here to see Viktor.” I meet his flat stare.

“That so?” A dark eyebrow lifts beneath a steel-gray beret. “And who might you be… sir?”

“Hargen Cole.” I pause. “Of the Rossewyn line.” It’s a stretch, but not untrue—the distant heritage that made me suitable as Lila’s handler.

“The witch handler.” His eyes widen a fraction. “Didn’t expect you back.”

“Yet here I am.” I hold his stare.

He looks at me for a moment, then gives a nod and steps back, waving me through the checkpoint. I catch his curious glance in my rearview mirror as I drive toward the main complex.

The compound reveals itself as far more sophisticated than the mining facade suggests. Clean buildings nestled into the mountainside. Personnel moving with purpose between structures. This is what careful organization and hidden funding can accomplish.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” a voice stops me short as I step out of my vehicle.

“Zoe?” I recognize the witch who’d helped facilitate our escape just days ago.

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