“What?”
“Cover your ears.”
I hesitate, but do it.
When he moves, it’s sudden. Too sudden. The book slams against the counter with a crack that shakes the room. Even with my ears covered, it reverberates through my bones.
It only takes a second to realize who it was for. Talon.
But Talon just groans and rolls over, rubbing his face like a hungover cat.
“Did someone die?” he mutters without opening his eyes. “Wait. No. That’s your line, Little Grim.”
“Shut up,” I hiss at him.
“You’re welcome,” he replies, completely unfazed.
Cassian turns, face unreadable, but it’s the kind of neutral that could curdle milk.
“Next time, keep it off the table.”
“Duly noted,” I rasp.
He doesn’t look away.
“I was talking to Talon, not you,” he adds.
“Uh-uh,” Talon only mutters, which makes Cassian’s already tense shoulders get even tenser. I brace for impact. A chair thrown. A fist slammed. Something. But before the tension can boil over, Nathaniel moves.
He stands up, takes a second mug, pours something dark and fragrant into it, and hands it to me without a word.
The air shifts instantly. The violence in the room just… dissipates, like he flipped a switch.
“Get up,” Nathaniel says. “We’ve got things to do.”
I look at him, and I mean to be grateful, I really do, but the expression I manage probably lands somewhere between sheepish and mortified. He doesn’t make a big deal of it. Just gives me a small nod. Just enough to say we’re fine, even if… I don’t think we are.
Nathaniel’s hard to read in a way that’s more dangerous than Cassian’s stone mask. Cassian wears his threat like armor. You can see it coming. But Nathaniel’s restraint? That’s the real weapon. I know he wants me. He hasn’t exactly been subtle about it. But when it comes to the lines between protection and possession, affection and jealousy, I don’t know where he stands.
Still, I’ve seen inside him. I know what’s under the mask.
There’s fire there. Not the kind that warms. The kind that razes cities.
If Nathaniel were a social construct, he’d be purge day: calm every day of the year, until the one where he wipes out half a village.
Maybe that’s why I squirm a little under his gaze.
“What things?” I ask, clutching the mug.
“We might’ve found a way to get rid of the wraith,” he says, heading to the kitchenette again. Cassian steps aside without comment, letting him retrieve the book he’d just tried to murder a minute ago.
Only now I can see that it’s not really a book. It’s a journal. Old, weathered, leather-bound.
Nathaniel exhales through his nose, like he’s already exhausted by whatever comes next, and tosses it onto my bed.
“Here,” he says.
I eye it warily. “What is it?”
