Each slow drip of the faucet rang, clear as a silver bell. To my attuned hearing, the waves of sound reverberated like ripples of water in a still pond, washing over every particle of dust that hung in the sunlit space of my loft, over the scattered brushes and bolts of cloth and cans of paint, over the fuzzy sweater I'd thrown on to ward off the spring chill. It prickled over my skin, invisible filaments of tension scratching the delicate hairs of arms and neck.

  I shivered, and resisted the impulse to stare at shadows that were not there. Instead, I concentrated on my laptop, wrinkling my nose. I'd been staring at the screen for so many hours that the colors were beginning to blur together. I glanced at my phone, blinked, then cursed softly to myself in disbelief.

  Cat had flooded my Instagram inbox yet again.

  I picked out the last message she'd sent and exhaled.

  hey, kind of worried, haven't heard from you in a while. You ok?

  I sighed and picked up my phone in one hand, the other still fussing with the photo I was retouching. I thought I told you to text me, I fired off at her. I was aware my response came off grumpy and terse; I didn't care. Stupid messaging conventions.

  I did! It wasn't going through ??

  That was my company account! Cat didn't care, I knew, and none of my ranting or insults ever seemed to faze her.

  Well it took that to get you to answer didn't it ??

  Cat could be irritating. Ok fine. What's up?

  The "typing" animation cycled madly, and I rolled my eyes and let her write her little novel.

  Ignoring the faint zinging of that preternatural sound that filled the room, so soft as to be intangible to the human ear, I stood, stretching my poor, tortured muscles.

  I was getting old. To be precise, the body I preferred wasn't exactly, kept lean and strong from the spare lifestyle that I'd adopted. Grimacing, I sauntered to the western edge of the spartan loft I called home, and appraised myself in the frameless pane of mirrored glass that leaned there.

  Before me was the same reflection that had greeted me for the past twenty or thirty years: pale, slender, somewhat nondescript in the way I slouched, sleek dark hair kept shorn just below my shoulders. A sharp-eyed observer would have noted the small scars on my knuckles, angled cheekbones and dark eyes; my raw-edged clothing - avant-garde, wool and selvedge denim - cleverly concealing the slim muscle of my arms and legs.

  Whatever strength I had I kept well-hidden. I had, with this body, disdained the markings that my fellows had deliberately adopted to blend in with the young working crowd. No tattoos or piercings, not even a hint of dye in my hair. That marked me; I stood out.

  The reasons were many and complex, not just personal affectation.

  I didn't need the added worry someone might be trying to bind me with some spell through ink or flesh.

  Nor did I need this distraction that now saturated the room with its silvery chime, the unmistakable desperate song of another in need.

  I hissed through my teeth, threw on a jacket, and left the loft without so much as a backward glance.

  -

  It was on the train that I saw him.

  A sense of wrongness clung to him, as the musty scent of cigarette smoke would cling to a drunk at a bar. His clothes were all too new and ill-fitting, his hawkish features of inhuman symmetry. That was common enough here in the Meatpacking District, but an unearthly radiance lit his face from within like the light of a distant star.

  The people around me of course, would have sensed, seen nothing. The man stared straight ahead, nostrils flared as if to catch some elusive scent, and swept his gaze toward me.

  He was more than half a traincar away, and I froze in place, allowing the crush of bodies to envelop me in a concealing cocoon. Too fucking close!

  I whispered a prayer through gritted teeth - an invocation to myself - and reached up beneath my jacket. My knife was nestled there in the small of my back, secure in its sheath.

  Just as my fingertips grazed the hilt of my knife the inhuman hunter paused, and turned away, staring down the length of the car. Something else had caught his attention.

  The train had come to a halt. The crowd was beginning to mill about, shifting themselves to allow passengers off at this stop.

  A single passenger remained frozen as the crush around him parted, caught like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car. The unkempt figure in the grimy beanie stared wildly back at us, terrified.

  I didn't dare act. If it were another demon - none of my kindred would be so stupid as to be so vulnerable - it was him or me, and others were surely nearby.

  "A daeva." That voice, clear and resonant, rang in my mind rather than hearing.

  I nearly stumbled forward in surprise, and stifled the cry that rose in my throat when a gloved hand reached out and gripped my arm. It was my reflexes that saved the stranger who'd grabbed me as much as kept me from falling. If not for that I would have stabbed him through the heart.

  Time seemed to slow around us.

  Valen.

  His smile was beautiful. "They're a little far from home, aren't they?" That voice, that had been beloved for so long and so long ago, gave me a pang. I had missed it.

  Furious, I lifted my gaze to his. As always he had a cool, intent gleam to his eyes, now frost-blue, now silver as the light caught them. His face was younger and sharper than I remembered, new flesh over a very, very old soul.

  "You forget yourself, 'Brother,'" I let the near-formal honorific cut deep, as we were certainly close enough never to have bothered to use it. His lips parted in a soundless laugh at my spite, and I resisted the urge to step in close and huddle in the shadow of his coat. I easily could if I so wished; he, like most of his kin, was tall and achingly beautiful, in their mortal forms or otherwise. The electric lights in the station crackled and flared, the wild halo of his platinum hair near-luminous in their glow.

  Among us, there are only two kinds.

  We are all kindred, but some are of the light and others of shadow. Good and evil are concepts that came from humankind; in our world, right and wrong often wear different faces. Those that upheld the laws by which we kept our power were often more blessed, and those who sought another path cast aside the earthly laws for the freedom to live as they pleased.

  "Shadow-walker," he said, a word for which there was no equivalent in human language. Even if I had cast the first barb, it hurt to be named so. I kept from baring my teeth. "You still begrudge my presence, I see."

  "Only when you've dogged my footsteps for the last hundred years or so." I willed myself to calm, and breathe. Amusement flared in his gaze, which he'd kept intent upon me, and I lifted the arm that he still held, his long fingers like a manacle on my wrist. "Are you going to let me - and these poor people - go?"

  He tsked beneath his breath, relaxing his grip only very slightly. What he'd done had placed us outside of the normal flow of time; everyone around us stood frozen, like flies trapped in amber. "Only if you stop trying to stick -that- in me."

  "Fine. I promise."

  The spell unraveled itself before the last word left my mouth. The train seemed to lurch wildly, and I was thrown off-balance. I gave a shriek of outrage before I could catch myself, the sound suddenly muffled against his coat as he easily pinned me to him with one arm.

  He quirked an eyebrow as he held up the knife he'd plucked from my sleeve. "Up to your old tricks again. I know you've little sympathy for humans." He straightened and let go of me, his voice cold and quiet as he stared at the enemy before us. "You've gotten careless. I wouldn't have been able to get this close to you even around a daeva. Even before I'd taught you."

  I had expected that insult, and bore it, though it stung. I could not allow him a glimpse of how much his presence unsettled me, or how my resonance sang at his proximity. "You know nothing. Have known nothing-"

  "The time for talk is over," he chided softly.

  The Daeva turned to stare at us.

  It had been perhaps over forty years since I'd last seen any Untethered this close. Despite my long years of experience, living in the human world had dulled some of my edge. It was bitter to realize it, but I had no time for regrets.

  Whatever time I'd spent here, I had not spent idle, however. Freed of the ensnaring magic, my body obeyed me like the well-honed weapon it had become. I flowed into readiness without thought.

  The mortal realm, with its limited geometries and inviolable rules, was difficult to navigate for Daeva and Ashura alike who had not spent time in mortal flesh. Our celestial bodies chafed against the confines of the human form and the dragging horrors of pain, aging and death. They often sought to push the human body beyond the ability of the very atoms that held them together.

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  In the myriad lifetimes I'd spent in this realm, I had mastered it. Valen was stronger than me - I, who had earned my reputation over centuries on battlefields from Asia Minor to the Yucatan - but here, in the martial disciplines of the human body, we were evenly matched. And more than enough for most rogue Daeva or Ashura who might cross my path.

  Until it came time for them to release their resonance, and in this, it was rare to find a greater wielder of it than he.

  As if he'd sensed my thought, he glanced at me.

  Valen didn't need to speak to convey intent - our staying here would obliterate this fragile web of steel and the crush of humans contained within it. The two of us had hunted immortals since time had woven our paths together, for countless millennia, lifetime after mortal lifetime.

  Until my path had been cut from his.

  I moved.

  Empty-handed, knife yet undrawn—but it hardly mattered. Instinct guided me, weight shifting low as I slipped seamlessly through the final crush of mortal bodies. My form knew the rhythm of this dance, anticipated his pursuit.

  A shimmer brushed the corner of my vision, silver-bright.

  Valen's voice reached me softly, woven between heartbeats: "Catch."

  I sensed the blade's arc more than saw it, steel humming with resonance, its song familiar. My palm rose to meet it effortlessly, closing around the hilt's comforting weight. A practiced movement, refined over lifetimes. I surged forward.

  The train shuddered as it slowed, metal shrieking as West 4th Street emerged from darkness—low, glistening platforms bathed in sodium-orange glow. The Daeva ahead shifted slightly, anticipation tightening its spine like a wire pulled taut. Its attention flickered toward the doors moments before they sighed open, catching the cool drift of ancient stone, tiled walls, and night air breathing quietly beyond stairwells. A hidden stop beneath Sixth Avenue, where sound dissolved rather than echoed, smothered by layers of earth and concrete. Above, the park waited—vast, silent, filled only with sky.

  The creature turned its head, graceful, precise, meeting our gaze directly.

  No fear marked its expression—only cold amusement.

  "A Judicator and his wayward blade," it purred. Its voice was smooth yet dissonant, an edge of glass over a serrated knife. "How quaint. How utterly behind the times." It smiled, lips drawn tight over too many teeth.

  Then, in the space of a heartbeat, it was gone. One breath, one pulse, and it blurred forward, threading through startled mortals like mist slicing through air. Its shape solidified only as it leapt beyond the open doors, radiance threading outward from beneath its skin. It touched neither tile nor stairs, simply ascended in a streak of light toward the surface, leaving the bitter tang of ozone and ruptured resonance behind.

  Valen moved ahead of me. He did not leap—he simply was and then was not, appearing yards forward without so much as disturbing the air around him. He moved with inevitability rather than speed, an unstoppable force.

  The platform blurred beneath my feet as I followed, wind catching at my coat's edge, the blade still warm from his grasp. Reality seemed to tilt, the station melting past as we vaulted upward in a single, fluid motion. Cold night air shattered around us, edged in iron, tinged with the refracted neon glow of unseen city lights filtering through a promise of rain.

  West 4th Street opened above.

  Here, the city lay hushed beneath the gentle bloom of cherry blossoms, paths winding toward shadows pooling at the park's edge. The Daeva did not flee as prey does—it raced as one outrunning inevitability, fleeing a truth it had long foreseen.

  It ran with the memory of flight.

  Its steps barely grazed earth, each stride slicing through space, trailing ribbons of fractured light. Its radiance was no longer seamless but torn at the edges, spilling brilliance from open wounds. Even gods bleed light when pressed too far.

  Its body tensed for ascent. Resonance arched along its spine, limbs lifted with the first pulse of lift, coat catching wind. The moment swelled, breathless and bright.

  Valen's resonance unfurled beside me—not visibly, but felt—a pressure born from silence, forged into power.

  The world yielded to him.

  His resonance surged outward, inexorable, final, immense. It struck the ascending figure like a divine hammerblow—an unseen fist descending to earth. The figure crumpled mid-air, spine folding, body driven into the ground.

  It struck the earth violently, stone fracturing beneath its body, petals scattering silently in a bloom of dust. The light contracted inward, dimmed but not extinguished, drawn taut in a strained gasp. Its perfect symmetry fractured, face no longer flawlessly inhuman, now simply a body broken, preparing to rise again.

  I halted beside Valen, heartbeat steady, blade angled low at my side. We stood silently at the crater's edge, the space between us sharp and clear as cut crystal.

  For a breath, the city paused.

  Wind ceased.

  And the world, briefly, remembered what we were.

  I caught my breath. "I thought you weren't supposed to do that."

  A corner of Valen's mouth twitched wryly. "Exceptional circumstances."

  The Daeva rose to its feet, expecting battle.

  The ruin of its face wept light and blood intermingled. Static shrieked in the burnt-ozone halo around it, its arms spread wide as if in supplication, mouth opening in hymn.

  The song warped reality around it and struck us head-on with startling force, a pulse of resonance so strong it left the air screaming. Even as my own resonance lifted to meet it Valen's slammed between us implacable as a wall. The Daeva keened.

  I hadn't waited for the shockwave to subside before I was moving, the bright force in my bones propelling my resonant form as swiftly as physical laws would allow. I feinted left, low and sharp—knife aimed toward the liver. The true strike came a breath later: a jab at the throat, barehanded and quick.

  It slipped the blow with the smooth efficiency of something long-accustomed to violence. We turned through each other's angles like reflections off glass—every movement tight, coiled, deliberate. I dropped low, swept my leg through its stance, felt shin meet shin, then followed with a hard, rising knee to the inner thigh, targeting the nerves, the weight-bearing line.

  The Daeva absorbed the shock, barely shifted, light spilling from its open wounds like flame.

  Its counter came without pause. A downward elbow arced toward the side of my head, a blow designed not just to stop but to crush. I rolled under it, felt the heat skim past my temple, and came up beside it, my blade flashing across its ribs. The steel met resistance—flesh, fabric, bone. A shallow cut, but enough.

  It spun. The back of its elbow slammed into my jaw. Lights burst across my vision, staccato and white.

  I staggered back, heels skidding over wet grass and loose soil, blossoms sticking to the hem of my coat. Air knifed into my lungs. My grip tightened.

  It advanced. I circled, felt the shift in its balance—too much pressure on the forward leg. I struck low, again. A diagonal kick, sharp and decisive, angled through the knee. The joint bent, not fully, but enough to send it half to the ground.

  The blade moved again—two slashes, fast, crossing its chest. Wrongness bloomed in their wake, radiant and cold.

  It surged upward, elbow flashing like a hook dragged from the dark. I slipped under, so close I could feel the hum of its breathless body.

  My knife went high, aimed for the soft space beneath the jaw.

  It caught my wrist.

  The grip locked—too fast to break cleanly, too strong to pull away. My arm screamed in protest, nerves shrieking where its hand met bone. My own resonance rose instinctively, tried to cushion, to push it back.

  It didn't hold. The Daeva's will cracked through mine like a faultline, brutal and precise.

  I pivoted in close, not retreating but collapsing the space between us. My body turned through the constraint of the grip, shoulders dropping, hips rotating with the practiced speed of muscle memory. I drove the butt of the knife—not the edge—into the base of its skull. Once. Twice.

  The Daeva's grip faltered.

  I wrenched free, blade still in hand, breath burning in my throat.

  Time leaned inward. And I felt it before I saw it: the soft pull of intent through the air, a thread laid bare.

  An opening. Not earned.

  Valen.

  I moved without pause, blade reversing neatly in my grip, weight shifting forward in a fluid coil of motion. The angle came not from force, but from precision—guided not by rage, but memory.

  Steel slid upward beneath the sternum, clean and absolute.

  It met no resistance, only inevitability.

  The Daeva's body arched, resonance convulsing along its spine like lightning caught in glass. For a moment, the brilliance within it flared too brightly—then snapped inward, drawn back through the blade like silk through a needle's eye.

  I felt it sever. That last tether, the one that bound immortal will to mortal shell, came undone in silence.

  And in that silence, it fell.

  The world breathed again.

  Silver flickered again—closer this time, near enough to draw breath from my skin.

  Valen's soft, appreciative laugh cut into the thunder still echoing in my ears.

  "Well done, fanged one," he murmured.

  An old endearment. I hadn't heard it in a hundred years.

  My eyes ached.

  His knuckles brushed my cheek—light, precise, like he didn't trust himself to linger. I looked up, caught the sharp focus behind his stillness.

  "Are you hurt?" he asked.

  It wasn't empty habit. He already knew. His resonance was moving through me—subtle and invasive, like smoke beneath a door. I felt it pause at the wrist the Daeva had crushed, then fold back toward him, silent as breath.

  His expression didn't shift, but the air between us did—tightening by degrees.

  "You should have waited," he said, too softly.

  But there was no heat in it.

  I shivered. The cold had found me again.

  And I leaned—just slightly—into the warmth that radiated from him like memory.

  Valen did not speak — but I sensed the subtle shift to him, the surprise beneath that cool, implacable mask. I hadn't reached for him or asked for his help in decades, even when our paths had crossed now and again ever since I'd chosen to walk alone.

  He knew something had changed.

  As if afraid to touch me now that I'd freely offered contact of my own volition, he stood still, only inclining his gaze to meet mine where I rested lightly against his shoulder. He was so much taller that his eyes looked shadowed, unreadable.

  "Is there something you need to tell me?"

  I bit back the retort that rose to my lips. We'd been circling each other for too long, trapped in a rhythm of avoidance and memory. I couldn't tell him that the moment I'd seen him, a breath I hadn't known I was holding had eased. That in all the wrongness unraveling in the world, his presence alone felt like safe harbor.

  He was still Vashirai, and Daeva besides —-when we fought together the fact that I was Ashura mattered less. Now that I had returned to the paths of chaos our very resonance would be in disharmony.

  The old Valen would have rebuked me for allowing myself to get hurt by such an enemy. Not that he hadn't tried countless times to reach out, to coax me from the path I walked.

  Instead, he stepped forward, casting a glance toward the crumpled body in the grass, already cooling. The shimmer that had once been tethered to it had fled.

  "We shouldn't stay," he said quietly.

  His hand found my uninjured arm—his grip sure, but gentle. Not command. Not presumption. Just a shared knowing that this place, this hour, had given us all it could.

  I let him guide me.

  Behind us, the city resumed its breath. And the night moved on.

  Chapter 1 Notes:

  The park is Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.

  Kira uses a combination of martial arts, including the knife art Kali.