Marked in Silver

Chapter 4

Two days later, I found the second file.

It wasn't hidden as well as the first one sloppy, almost, like whoever filed it had been in a hurry, or hadn't expected anyone to be looking this closely five years on. I'd slipped into the records wing during the shift change, when the guards rotated and the halls sat empty for exactly six minutes, a gap Theo had timed twice the day before just to be sure.

Six minutes wasn't much. I moved fast, fingers skimming case numbers until I found the drawer marked with the same year, the same month, and inside it, buried under a stack of unrelated property disputes, a witness statement, unsigned, describing a council-sanctioned removal the night my father died. No names. Just a location, a time, and a single line that made the floor tilt under me.

Subject resisted. Two enforcers present. Order confirmed by S.D. prior to engagement.

S.D.

I read it four times before I let myself believe what it said.

Selene Draven hadn't just buried the truth about my father's death. She'd ordered it.

I didn't notice Kade in the doorway until he spoke.

Council records room is restricted, he said, and I nearly dropped the file. He wasn't angry, not yet just confused, the kind of confused that was two seconds from becoming something else. What are you doing in here, Raine?"

I had eight months of prepared lies and every single one of them left my head at once.

Research, I said. For the border case. I thought there might be old incident patterns.

His eyes went to the file in my hand, then to the drawer behind me, clearly labeled with a case number that had nothing to do with any border case from the last two months. I watched him do the math. I watched the exact moment suspicion started winning against whatever else he felt when he looked at me.

That's a five-year-old closed file, he said slowly. Why would that help with rogue attacks happening now?

I didn't realise the date, I said, and even I could hear how weak it sounded.

He crossed the room and held out his hand, and for a second I thought about refusing, about running, about every version of this plan that didn't end with Kade Draven finding out who I really was in a locked records room with my father's death in my hands.

But I gave him the file, because the alternative was worse, and because some small, stubborn part of me was tired of lying to him even if he didn't know it yet.

He read it standing up, jaw tight, and when he got to the second page his whole body went still.

This is Marcus Voss's file, he said quietly.

My stomach dropped. You know that name?

Everyone who grew up in this pack knows that name. He looked up at me, and something in his face had shifted, careful now, searching. He was Lyra's father.

My own name in his mouth after five years nearly broke me clean in half. I kept my face still through sheer force of will.

Lyra, I repeated, like it meant nothing to me. "The girl who…

Who got rejected, he said, and something dark crossed his face, old guilt wearing a groove so deep it had become part of him. Five years ago. On the training green. I was there.

You were more than there, I thought, and hated how much it still hurt to not say it out loud.

Why does a rogue attack case from five years ago have your mother's initials confirming a sanctioned removal? I asked instead, because that question mattered more than my own unhealed wound, at least right now.

Kade's eyes dropped back to the page. I watched him read the line again. I watched the exact moment it landed.

That's not possible, he said, but his voice had gone thin, unconvinced even by himself.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, brisk and familiar, and Kade's head snapped up like a man caught somewhere he shouldn't be. He shoved the file inside his jacket a half-second before the door opened and Selene stepped through, her eyes sweeping the room, landing on the two of us standing far too close to an open records drawer.

Well, she said softly, her gaze settling on me like a blade finding its mark. This is a surprise.