My Sister’s Murderer Is Protecting

CHAPTER FOUR: THE BOY WHO KILLED HER

POV: Vespera Vale

I found the police report at midnight, hidden in a folder my father thought he had deleted from the family cloud account. It took me three hours of searching to find it. It took me thirty seconds to see the lie. Riven Ashcroft told police he left Seraphine at 11:15 p.m.

But the phone records attached to the file told a different story. A call from Riven’s number to Seraphine’s phone at 11:47 p.m. The exact same minute Seraphine called me.

My hands were cold by the time I closed the laptop. He had lied. To the police. To everyone. For three years.

~~~~

I found him the next morning outside the library, and I didn’t bother saying hello.

“You lied,” I said. “You told the police you left her at 11:15. But you called her at 11:47. The same time she called me.”

Riven’s face didn’t move. That was the worst part. He didn’t look shocked. He looked like he had been waiting three years for someone to finally say it out loud.

“Say something,” I said.

“I was there,” he said quietly.

My stomach dropped. “What?”

“I was there. At 11:47, I found her.” His jaw tightened like every word cost him something. “She was in the bell tower. She was hurt. Bleeding.”

“She was alive?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you call an ambulance?” My voice cracked on the last word. “Why, Riven?”

“Because she told me not to.”

I stared at him, waiting for it to make sense, and it never did.

“That’s not an answer,” I said. “That’s an excuse. My sister was bleeding and you just left her there?”

“I didn’t leave her…”

“You killed her.” The words came out before I could stop them, sharp and furious. “You were the last person with her. You lied about the time. You let her die. You killed my sister.”

He moved so fast I didn’t see it coming. His hand closed around my wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make me stop.

“If I had killed your sister,” he said, low and rough, “do you really think I would still be here? Waiting for you to find out? I could have made sure you never came to Blackthorn. I could have made sure you never asked a single question. Instead I’ve spent three years watching this place, waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For you.”

The air between us felt too thin. I hated him. I was almost certain of it. But standing there with his hand around my wrist, I felt something else too, something I didn’t want to name, something that scared me more than his lie ever could.

I pulled my hand free. “Waiting for me to what? Die like she did?”

“Waiting for you to be safe enough to know the truth.” He exhaled hard, like the words had been trapped in his chest for years. “Your sister wasn’t afraid of me, Vespera. She was afraid of someone else.”

“Who?”

He opened his mouth. My phone buzzed.

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO SERAPHINE?

Then, seconds later.

COME TO THE BELL TOWER ALONE.

I looked up at Riven. “I have to go.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s not your decision.”

I was already walking. He caught up to me in three long strides.

“You’re not going alone,” he said.

“The message said alone.”

“I don’t care what the message said.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue. Some part of me, the part that still didn’t fully trust him, was almost relieved he was coming.

~~~

The bell tower door was unlocked when we arrived, which felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain. Inside, dust hung in the air, thick and gray, catching the afternoon light coming through the broken windows.

“There,” Riven said, pointing to a section of the wall where the stone looked slightly uneven. I pressed against it. A small compartment clicked open, revealing a metal box.

My hands shook as I opened it. Photographs, dozens of them, Seraphine sleeping in her dorm room, the angle wrong for a friend, too close, too invasive. Seraphine was walking across the courtyard alone. Seraphine was crying, her face pressed into her hands. Seraphine arguing with Riven, both their faces twisted in anger.

Someone had been watching her. For months. Maybe longer. Then I found the last photograph, and my heart stopped, It was me. Fourteen years old, standing inside the bell tower, wearing my old blue coat.

The exact photo from the message. But there were more details this time. Blood on my hands. Blood on the floor beside me.

My vision was blurred. Something shifted in my memory, a door creaking open after years of being sealed shut.

I remembered holding Seraphine’s hand, I remembered it being warm, then cold. I remembered blood, so much blood, soaking into my sleeves.

I remembered a voice, low and urgent, whispering into my ear.

“You have to forget this.”

“No,” I whispered, the photograph shaking in my hand. “No, no, no.”

“Vespera.” Riven’s voice sounded far away. “What’s wrong?”

I turned to him, my whole body trembling. “What did you do to me that night?”

His face changed. For the first time since I had met him, Riven Ashcroft looked afraid. Truly afraid, the kind of fear that had nowhere left to hide.

“I didn’t do anything to you,” he said.

“Then why do I remember blood on my hands? Why do I remember someone telling me to forget? Why was I here, Riven? Why don’t I remember any of it?”

He opened his mouth to answer. A sound came from behind us: slow and deliberate, a footstep against stone. I spun around. The doorway, which had been empty seconds ago, now held a shape in the shadows, still and watching.

Riven stepped in front of me instinctively, his whole body tense. Then the heavy door swung shut on its own, the old lock sliding into place with a metal groan that echoed through the tower.

We were trapped inside.

“Who’s there?” Riven’s voice was hard, controlled, but I could hear the edge underneath it.

Nobody answered right away. The silence stretched so long I thought maybe I had imagined it, that fear was playing tricks on me the same way it had three years ago.

Then a voice spoke from the darkness, calm and certain, a voice that made every hair on my body rise.

“That is not what Seraphine told me.”