The word stings and for a moment, everything goes quiet. My power dims—silver threads flickering like candles in a sudden breeze. I’m back in that tiny space, changing clothes, showering, crying myself to sleep while someonewatched. While someone recorded every private moment and probably shared them with—
“You’ve known.” My voice comes out flat, deadly quiet. “For how long?”
“Bree—”
“How. Long.”
The silence stretches until I think it might snap and cut us all to pieces.
“Since the night Jace and Theo moved you out,” Gray finally says, the admission torn from somewhere deep in his chest. “Since Jace moved you out.”
Since the beginning. They’ve known since thebeginningthat Phil violated my privacy in the most intimate way possible, and they decided I couldn’t handle the truth. They looked at me—broken, terrified, barely holding myself together—and chose to manage me instead of trusting me.
The betrayal feels different this time. Not like drowning, but like lightning. Sharp and clean and illuminating.
“You kept me powerless,” I say, and my voice doesn’t shake. “You made decisions about my life, my safety, my right to know what was happening to me. And you called it protection.”
“We were trying to keep you safe,” Rhett says, but there’s something careful in his voice. Like he’s testing words before he speaks them. “Phil is—”
“Don’t.” The word stops him cold. “Don’t stand there and tell me what Phil is after everything you’ve hidden.”
“You’re not yourself,” Thane says, stepping forward with that measured control he wears like armor.
“Are you kidding me right now?” I turn on him, and something hot and jagged unfurls in my chest. “You don’t know who I am. Not after you—”
I cut myself off, but we both know what I’m not saying. What I can’t say with everyone listening.
After you couldn’t protect me in the Void. After you let something else touch my mind while you just stood there.
Thane goes very still, and I watch him realize exactly what I’m referring to. What I’m choosing not to say out loud.
“It wasn’t like that,” Rhett says, still trying to defend them. “We were trying to—”
“To what?” I interrupt, and this time I’m the one moving closer. He flinches—actually flinches—from the Ether writhing around me. “To keep me compliant? To make sure I stayed grateful and quiet while you handled the big scary world for me?”
His mouth opens, closes. No words come out.
“Touch me,” I say.
The command stops everyone cold.
“You want to protect me so badly. You want to make decisions for me, keep secrets from me, treat me like I’m made of glass. So touch me.” I spread my arms wide, Ether crackling between my fingers like miniature lightning. “Show me that you’re not afraid.”
Wes takes half a step forward, fingers reaching before he catches himself and stops. The aborted motion hurts worse than if he’d never moved at all. Like a door slammed just as I reached for it.
But Stellan moves closer, elegant and unafraid, while the others flinch away. The contrast draws sharp lines between them—those who fear what I’m becoming, and the one who sees it as something else.
“Stellan.” Thane’s voice carries a warning, but Stellan ignores it completely.
He steps close enough that I can feel the warmth of him, leans down until his lips brush my ear. “You’re magnificent,” he whispers, and his voice does something to my pulse that I wasn’t expecting.
Then he presses a soft kiss to my cheek before pulling away, gray eyes holding mine for a heartbeat. The Ether around me actually settles at his touch, silver threads calming instead of lashing. He winks—actually winks—and walks back to stand with the others like he didn’t just prove every single one of their fears wrong.
The gesture hits me harder than it should. Not because of the kiss, but because of what it means. He touched me. Willingly. Without fear.
While the others stand there with want in their eyes, but fear still chains them where they stand.
The air grows thick with want and fear and something that tastes like the beginning of an ending.
