Part 1: "City of Ghosts"
Last line from previous chapter:
["Be careful what you awaken, Miss Hart. Some muses draw blood."]
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Lila didn't breathe until the elevator doors closed.
She leaned against the cold mirror of the back wall, pulse hammering beneath her skin, the echo of Damien Blackwell's voice still clawing its way down her spine. "Some muses draw blood." What the hell did that even mean?
The elevator dropped in eerie silence. No music, no comforting hum—just her reflection warping in the mirrored walls. She looked like someone else in this lighting. Someone brave. Someone foolish.
The rain met her again the second she stepped outside. Not the kind of gentle rain that poets loved. No. This was the punishing kind—the kind that smeared mascara, soaked clothes, and made the city look like a crime scene in progress. She didn't pull her coat tighter. Let it rain. Let it soak through. It made it easier to feel *real*.
People brushed past her with umbrellas like shields. No one looked at her. She liked that. Manhattan was good at pretending you didn't exist.
She turned down 14th Street, past the boarded-up bookstore and the deli that always smelled like scorched onions. Her heel clicked against the wet sidewalk like a stubborn metronome. One heel, she reminded herself—the other was still in a subway stairwell somewhere, sacrificed during the second transfer. A metaphor, maybe.
*What the hell just happened up there?*
She replayed it all—the marble floor, his stare like a scalpel, that painting bleeding down the wall. And him. Damien Blackwell. She hated the name. Hated how it sounded like fiction. Hated more how her body had reacted to his voice.
She rounded the corner and reached the rusted gate of her building. East Village. Rent-controlled, miracle of the decade. Her fingers shook as she keyed in the passcode and yanked the door open.
Inside, the hallway light flickered. The walls were the same mustard yellow they'd always been, peeling in corners like sunburned skin. The elevator was broken again, so she climbed the stairs—fifth floor, fifth circle of hell. Every step away from Blackwell Tower felt like trying to climb out of a dream that refused to let go.
Her apartment door creaked when she opened it. The air inside smelled like candle wax and old books. Safe. She kicked off her shoes, dropped her bag, and leaned her forehead against the closed door.
It wasn't relief that hit her.
It was confusion. And something like dread.
She pulled off her wet coat and tossed it over a chair, then crossed to the tiny kitchenette and poured a glass of tap water. It tasted metallic, like always. She didn't care.
Above her little drafting table hung one of her oldest sketches. A woman made of wire and velvet, her heart caged in bone. Lila stared at it, then sank onto the cracked leather sofa and pulled her knees to her chest.
Damien Blackwell saw something in her.
That was the part she couldn't make peace with.
She'd spent years trying not to be seen. Blending in. Keeping her head down. Now here she was—caught in the orbit of someone who could burn cities down with a sentence.
She should quit. Cut it off now. Take back control.
But somewhere deep in the part of her she didn't show anyone, a whisper curled like smoke:
You don't want to run.