Alistair POV
The city hummed tonight, low, restless, like something alive and irritated. Honestly, same.
I crouched on the ledge of a narrow rooftop, bootheels balanced on old stone, watching the girl I'd seen die walk through the street below.
Yeah. Sarafina Ainsley.
Alive. Again.
Because the universe apparently hates me personally.
Her coat collar was pulled up, her steps a little quicker than last night. She kept glancing over her shoulder, unaware that the real threat was above her.
And it wasn't me.
Not tonight.
A ripple of wrongness slid across my senses, like static crawling under the skin. I shifted, head tilting. There, movement in the alley two streets down. Three heartbeats. Light, practiced. Hunter rhythm.
Of course. They never learn.
I dropped down the fire escape like a shadow, quiet, controlled. My boots hit the alley concrete without a sound. The first hunter was mid-sentence when I grabbed him by the throat.
"Hi," I murmured, voice flat. "Surprise."
His blade clattered to the ground as I slammed him into the wall. The second drew a crossbow, commendably fast and I snapped it in half with my forearm. Splintered wood rained down. The third tried to run.
Smartest choice he made all night.
Still didn't save him.
I took them down with quick, efficient strikes. No theatrics. No blood on my shirt. (I liked this shirt.) When the last one hit the ground, gasping and unconscious, I exhaled slowly.
"New orders," I muttered, nudging the hunter's broken wrist with my boot. "Someone's getting desperate."
Hunters didn't patrol this area unless they had a target, and she was the only target that mattered.
I stepped back into the shadowed alley entrance, eyes tracking Sarafina's figure as she crossed the intersection. A streetlamp flickered above her, an actual, physical flicker, not the magical kind and she flinched.
Cute.
Terrified, but cute.
Her power pulsed again, faint and uncontrolled, like a heartbeat beneath her skin. Too fast. Too early.
"This is bad," I whispered to myself. "This is really, really…"
She stopped walking and looked around. Brow furrowed. Breath quick.
She felt it. The shift in the air. The pressure of being watched. Of course she didn't look up.
No one ever looks up.
She started moving again, faster now. I followed from the rooftops, my pace matching hers, footsteps silent. Her fear rolled off her in waves. Not panicked, instinctive. Like something inside her was recognizing the threat before her mind could name it.
A pulse of light flickered at her wrist, barely there, but unmistakable.
Her seal was slipping.
Fantastic. Exactly what I needed. A walking prophecy meltdown in the middle of the city. On a Tuesday.
She slowed in front of her building, breath fogging in the night air. For one strange moment, she looked up, high, higher, straight in my direction.
My heart actually stopped.
She couldn't see me. Impossible.
Her senses weren't awakened enough for that.
But something in her gaze sharpened, like she felt my presence through the darkness.
Then she shook her head and went inside. The door shut.
I exhaled, tension leaving my shoulders one controlled muscle at a time.
"She's alive," I whispered into the empty night, and the words still tasted unreal. "And the world is about to lose its damn mind."
A cold wind slipped through the alley. I didn't shiver.
But something else did. Power.
A quiet ripple.The same signal I felt when she died, only now, it was growing.
If she awakened too fast…
If the seal cracked the wrong way…. If the prophecy triggered—
No. Not happening.
I stepped back into the shadows, eyes fixed on her apartment window.
"If she dies again," I murmured, voice low and lethal, "I won't forgive myself."
Or anyone else.