Page 24 of Lost in Fire

I nod and push open the door.

Chapter 9

Vanya

The corridor outside Interrogation Chamber Seven stretches before me like a gauntlet. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting stark white against polished concrete that reflects my shadow in fractured pieces. Each footfall lands sharply despite the soundproofing, setting my teeth on edge.

Twenty paces to the door.

Nineteen.

Eighteen.

My spine straightens, chin rising to the angle I’ve perfected over decades of deception. A wave of nervous energy threatens to buckle my knees. I force it down, compress it into the dark space where I’ve buried everything that once made me human.

The ornate silver mask rests against my skin, its familiar weight both armor and anchor. For years, I’ve hidden behind this mask, using its anonymity to hide in plain sight.

Seventeen paces. Sixteen.

He’s in there.

The bond stretches taut between us, that invisible thread I’ve maintained for two decades. Through it, I feel him—the steady drum of his pulse, the controlled tension in his shoulders, the way he sits perfectly still like he always did when thinking through impossible problems. Some habits never change. Some men never break, no matter how thoroughly you destroy their world.

Fifteen paces.

The last time I was with him, he was sleeping on the cot we shared while dawn bled through the blinds we’d drawn to shut out reality. Peace had softened the harsh lines around his eyes, erased the careful persona he wore for everyone else. His dark hair had fallen across his forehead in the way that made him look younger, almost boyish, despite the weight behind those brown eyes.

Just Hargen. Not the handler. Not the Syndicate puppet.

Mine.

I’d traced every detail into memory like I was mapping territory I’d never see again. The scar along his jaw from a training mishap in his first decade of service. The way his chest rose and fell in the deep rhythm of true rest—something he’d told me he rarely found. The calluses on his palms, rough against my skin when he’d reached for me in sleep.

The way he’d whispered my name in the darkness, like he was tasting the sound.

That final morning, I’d known I was memorizing moments that would have to last forever.

“Promise me you’ll live,”I’d breathed against the hollow of his throat.“Promise me you’ll find a way to be happy, even if I can’t be part of it.”

He’d argued with me then, refused to accept that things might not work out. But eventually, he’d given in. His arms hadtightened around me. His voice had broken on the words.“I promise. But only if you promise me the same.”

Liar. We’d both been such accomplished liars, even to ourselves.

Fourteen paces. Thirteen.

I’d kept my word, technically. Survived the chemical flames that were meant to consume every trace of Vanya Arrowvane. Spent months in Cassia’s hidden safe houses while my body changed to grow the baby within it. Learned to become someone else entirely. Learned to become a mother.

I’d lived. But happy? Happiness had died with my old identity, somewhere between my first execution order and the hundredth time I’d looked our daughter in the eye and lied about her father’s fate.

Twelve paces. Eleven.

The reports I’d stolen over the years read like clinical assessments of a functioning machine. Hargen Cole: Asset Handler. No romantic entanglements. No close personal attachments. Psychological evaluation: Stable. Reliable. Emotionally detached.

Perfect.

He’d carved away every piece of himself that could be used as leverage, turned his heart into stone and his soul into steel. Exactly what survival demanded. Exactly what I’d begged him not to do in those last desperate hours before my staged execution.

It had been agony to sense him deliberately numbing himself, feeling each wall he built between his heart and the world. Through our bond, I’d experienced every moment he chose duty over connection, every time he walked away from something that might have brought him joy. But it had also kept him breathing when lesser men would have broken or burned.

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