Silver Heart

Chapter Three

Freya POV

I turned toward the voice on legs that suddenly belonged to someone braver than me.

Two points of light hung in the dark where a face should have been. Yellow, steady, catching the low lamp glow like coins underwater. My body forgot how to move.

Then he wasn't there anymore.

Not stepped back. Not faded into shadow the way a person leaves a room. One second whole and solid, the next gone in a blur past the shelves, past the door, the air itself flinching from how fast he moved. Something rushed cold across my cheek, and then only the door swung once on its hinge and settled, quiet, like nothing had happened at all.

The metal thing slipped out of my hand and hit the floor. I didn't remember letting go of it.

For one useless half-second, all I wanted was my father. Wanted him barreling through that door the way he always used to when I cried out from a nightmare, scooping me up before I even finished the sound. The want cracked something loose in my chest that had nothing to do with the eyes, and everything to do with the fact that he wasn't coming. Not tonight. Not ever again.

The scream came half a beat too late to matter, tearing loose as I bolted through the doorway, bare feet slapping cold concrete hard enough to sting all the way up my shins.

"FREYA!"

Esther's shout cut through the dark, already close, already running toward me from the kitchen. I crashed into her hard enough that we both staggered against the wall, her cardigan soft and familiar against my cheek, the same worn lavender smell that had wrapped around me every hard night since I was six years old. Her arms locked tight, shaking as badly as mine.

"What happened? What—"

"Eyes." The word barely made it past my teeth.

"Yellow. He was right there and then he wasn't. Nothing moves that fast, Esther. Nothing human."

"Okay. Okay, you're safe—"

"I'm not safe! Someone was in there and he looked right at me!"

Esther pulled back far enough to grip both my shoulders. Every trace of color drained from her face, her eyes darting past me toward the garage door like she expected something to come through it any second.

"We need to get upstairs. Now."

"No." I planted my feet against the pull of her hands. Every part of me wanted to let her drag me somewhere with a locked door and pretend the last five minutes hadn't happened. I didn't let myself. "I'm not moving until you tell me the truth. All of it. Right now."

"This isn't the time—"

"It's exactly the time." My hands closed around her wrists, gripping back as hard as she gripped mine. "Dad is dead. A stranger with glowing eyes was hiding behind a door he told me collapsed ten years ago. You've lied to me my whole life about that room, and I want to know why, or I call the police myself and let them ask the questions instead."

Esther flinched like the words physically struck her.

Neither of us moved, standing there in the dark hallway with our hands locked around each other's wrists, her breath coming ragged and uneven. Something behind her eyes gave way, the last wall she'd held up since the morgue crumbling all at once.

"Werewolves are real." The words came out flat, quiet, like she'd rehearsed them a hundred times in her head and hated every version.

The words didn't fit together right. Werewolves. Something from an old movie, not something that belonged in my own hallway at midnight. Except I'd just watched a man vanish from a locked room faster than my eyes could follow, and no ordinary explanation held up next to that anymore.

"Your father found out." Esther's grip loosened, but she didn't let go. "Years ago now…”

"Your father found out. Years ago now. Quiet, careful, always somewhere I thought he was just working late." Her grip loosened, but she didn't let go. "He kept digging until he found something they couldn't let stay found."

The locked office door. The nights he came home smelling like rain with no explanation. The way he checked the windows twice before bed, every single night, and I used to roll my eyes at him for it.

None of it had ever been about me. I'd never been anyone's reason for anything, not really, not the way Esther meant it now.

"Why would that have anything to do with me?" My voice came out small. "I'm nobody, Esther. I'm just his daughter."

Esther's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again, like she was pushing against something far heavier than fear to get the rest of it out.

"Because of you."

The house went very still around those two words.

"Your father found out that you—"

The lights died.

Not a flicker. Every bulb in the house went out in the same breath, and the dark that dropped over us felt thicker than anything waiting in that room ever had.

Esther's hand clamped tighter around my wrist.

"Freya, don't move—"

Something breathed, close, too close, right behind my shoulder. Slow. Even. Warm against the back of my neck where no one should have been standing at all.

I spun. A hand closed around my other wrist, ice cold and strong enough to grind my bones together. Not Esther. Esther's grip tore away from mine as she stumbled back with a cry.

For half a second, moonlight through the window caught two points of yellow, low and steady, exactly where I'd left them in that room.

Him.

My body reacted before my mind caught up. I twisted into the hold instead of away from it, the way he wouldn't expect, and drove my elbow back with everything I had. It connected, ribs or gut, hard enough to punch a grunt out of him close to my ear.

His grip didn't loosen. Not even slightly.

"Not bad." Low. Almost amused. His breath was hot against my ear, and my stomach turned. "But you're fighting the wrong fight, little one. This was never about that room."

Cold dropped through me that had nothing to do with the dark or his hand still locked around my skin.

"It was always about you."

"FREYA!"

Esther's scream tore through the black, followed by a crash, something heavy hitting the floor, wood or glass splintering somewhere close by. The grip on my wrist stayed locked, unmoving, holding fast in a house with no lights and no way to see what exactly still had hold of me.

I opened my mouth to scream again.

Nothing came out at all.