“With me and Jace, then,” Rhett says. “She was confident. She moved like she’d never been afraid of intimacy.”
“She was afraid,” Wes says. “Always. And she chose us anyway. That was the point.”
Theo looks at us, one by one. “What did she say to you after? When it was just the two of you?”
Rhett works his jaw. “She said it was perfect.”
Gray repeats it quietly, as if testing the word for truth. “Perfect.”
“She called being with me perfect,” I say. My throat tightens. “She looked at me like I was everything she’d ever wanted and like she finally had permission to take it.”
“Permission,” Stellan says. “Not choice.”
The distinction lands.
“Has anyone else noticed the way she talks?” Theo asks. “No hesitation. No mid-sentence self-correction. No apology.” His eyes unfocus slightly. “Bree second-guessed every word.”
“When I told her she was beautiful, she didn’t look away,” Wes says. “She asked for more. Bree used to blush.”
“This one receives praise like she expected it,” Gray says.
“Stop,” Rhett says, almost pleading.
No one does.
“Her Ether is inverted,” Thane says at last, and every head turns. “Black threaded with silver, not silver threaded with black. That isn’t evolution. It’s reversal.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means the Ether we’re seeing doesn’t belong to Bree,” Thane says. “It belongs to her mirror.”
Rhett’s hands fall. The heat leaves the room.
I think of last night—the way she held my gaze, the calm that followed, the word she used for it.
“She called it perfect,” I say, and the word tastes wrong.
No one speaks.
“Fuck.”
The word cuts through the silence like a knife.
Everyone turns to look at Thane. His silver eyes are wide—not with discovery, but with recognition finally landing.
“I’m an idiot.” His hands curl into fists. “I know exactly who’s in Bree’s bed.”
Silence. Waiting.
“Riley.”
The name lands like a bomb.
“Who the fuck is Riley?” Rhett demands.
Thane’s voice is flat. Cold. “Bree told us. That night in her bedroom after she crossed through the mirror. She woke up on the floor and said the name. Riley.” He looks at each of them. “You all heard it.”
“I don’t…” Wes trails off, confusion and horror mixing on his face.
