Page 5 of Lost in Fire

Hargen

My hands are shaking.

The observation strikes me as clinical, detached—the kind of note I might make in one of my status reports. “Subject exhibits signs of acute stress. Physiological responses indicate severe emotional disruption. Recommend immediate isolation for assessment.”

Except I am the subject now. I am the one coming apart at the seams on a public street corner, drawing stares from passing strangers who sense the disturbance in their midst but can’t quite identify the source.

They’re going to kill our daughter. V.

The words burn across my vision again, white text on a black screen that might as well be carved into my retinas. I’ve read the message a dozen times since leaving the others behind in that penthouse. A dozen times, and it still feels like a hallucination. Adream brought on by too many decades of guilt and suppressed grief.

But the phone is real. The message is real.

V.

There’s only one person that could be. One person who could reach out with those words after twenty-one years of silence. Twenty-one years of believing her dead. Twenty-one years of carrying the weight of her execution like a stone in my chest, knowing that loving me had killed her.

Vanya Arrowvane is alive.

I find a bench in a small park, hidden behind a line of oak trees that provide the illusion of privacy. My legs give out as I sit, muscle memory of combat training the only thing preventing total collapse. The autumn air is sharp against my skin, but I barely feel it. Everything has narrowed to this moment, this impossible revelation that reshapes every truth I thought I knew.

Our daughter.

The phrase loops through my mind, leaving my head spinning. Two words that create an entire person—a child.Mychild. Now a young woman I’ve never met, never held, never protected. A child conceived in stolen moments between forbidden lovers, growing up in a world where her very existence could be grounds for execution.

My silver ring catches the weak sunlight as I lift my hand to read the message again. Vanya gave me this ring during one of our last nights together, slipping it onto my finger with whispered promises about futures that seemed impossible even then. I’ve worn it every day since her death. A reminder. A penance.

A lie, apparently.

Memory crashes over me without warning, dragging me back to places I’ve spent decades trying to forget.

The first time I saw her…

So damned beautiful. She was arguing with a superior in the Syndicate briefing room, ice-blue eyes blazing with conviction as she defended some protocol modification. Her pale hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, every line of her posture radiating authority despite her junior rank. When she looked up and caught me watching, the force of her gaze stole my breath.

“Problem, handler?” Her voice had carried the cultured precision of old bloodline nobility, but there was challenge underneath.

“None at all.” But that was already a lie. Everything about her was a problem I couldn’t solve.

Three months of stolen glances during joint briefings. Six months of manufactured reasons to consult on each other’s cases. Nine months before we finally gave in to the inevitable during a late-night strategy session that had nothing to do with strategy.

She tasted like winter fire and dangerous secrets.

The love affair was intense, all-consuming.

Until that last night…

“My clan knows.” Her voice had been steady, but I could feel the terror underneath. We were in my apartment, dawn light filtering through blinds I’d drawn tight against surveillance. Her naked skin was warm against mine, but suddenly she felt impossibly distant.

“Knows what, specifically?” My training kicked in automatically.

Assess the threat. Identify variables. Plan containment.

“About us. About this.” She’d gestured to the space between us, encompassing months of secret meetings and carefully hidden affection. “They know I’m seeing someone outside the clan. They’ve called for an interrogation.”

“I’ll find a way,” I’d insisted, the words desperate even to my own ears. “I’ll find a way to save us. We’ll disappear. There are safe houses—”

“There’s nowhere they can’t reach, Hargen.” She sat up, pulling a sheet around herself like armor. “You know this. You’ve helped track fugitives to the ends of the earth.”

---