He hesitates, rubbing a hand over his mouth. His breath fogs the window for a second.
Then: “You really her brother?”
“Yeah.”
He lets out a long exhale. Then finally, grudgingly—
“…Then let’s go inside, yeah? I’ve been trying to call her. She’s not answering. I’ll show you we’re friends. Face-to-face.”
It’s not an admission. Not surrender.
Just a pivot. A way to keep this from escalating into something neither of us wants to explain to a cop.
I think about it.
If heisthe creep… If this is just some clever angle to get through the front door, then fine. I’ll catch him in the act, note his name, face, who he is. I’ll have caught him red-handed. He won’t be able to talk his way out of it later on.
“Alright,” I say. “Let’s go.”
He gets out of the car. The door slams shut with more force than necessary, like he’s trying to send a message I won’t bother decoding. He falls into step beside me and we walk toward the house.
I don’t let him take a single step without my eyes trailing over him. Head to toe, back to front. Every twitch, every hesitation, every breath.
Because if he tries anything?
He won’t get a second chance.
After Cassian carries me inside, I lose consciousness within minutes. It’s not gradual. Just a sudden, silent plunge into blackness, as if someone hit a switch and the world blinked out.
When I wake again, everything feels still. The kind of still that makes you second-guess whether you're awake at all.
But then the ache in my body returns, dull and distant, like I’ve been lying still too long. My mouth is dry. My limbs are stiff. Blinking slowly, I lift my gaze and try to make sense of my surroundings.
Hours must have passed.
I’m no longer in Nathaniel’s room where Cassian put me and told me to rest. I’m lying on a hospital bed, but not in one of the guys’ rooms. This space is different. Wider. More open. I turn my head, taking it all in.
It’s the common room. The overhead lights are off, leaving most of the space steeped in shadow, the corners softened into murk. Only a soft, silver glow filters in from the kitchenette. It casts long, low beams across the floor.
My bed is positioned in the center of the room, with two others flanking it—one to the left, one to the right. On those beds, Cassian and Nathaniel are asleep, both angled slightly toward mine, like their bodies turned that way instinctively.
Cassian’s face is slack, unreadable. Nathaniel’s, though—
His brows are pinched tight, his lips pressed into a tense line, even in sleep. He looks like he’s still fighting something in a dream he can’t wake from. I hesitate, caught in the urge to reach over and smooth the worry from his brow. But my hand doesn’t move.
That’s when I notice it. The light. Something about it feels off.
It’s moving. Not flickering, but swaying, back and forth. My first instinct is to panic. Some kind of scanning device? A drone? Have the police found us? My heart jumps before I can fully reason my way through it.
But no. It’s nothing mechanical. It’s a flashlight.
Held in a steady hand.
I follow the path of the beam, letting it guide my eyes to the source.
Talon.
He’s seated in a metal chair positioned at the edge where the common area meets the kitchenette. He sits with his legs spread, one hand gripping a thick, battered book, the other holding the flashlight. It sways gently in time with the rhythm of his reading. Back and forth, like a metronome.
