If I tell Cassian now, he’ll lock me down harder. That’s his reflex when the air shifts—pull everything close and build a wall taller than the last. He calls it protection. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s a cage with velvet lining.
I put the phone on the dresser, face down again, and step into the shower.
Hot water is the first honest thing my body gets today. Paint is still clinging under my nails, ghost color that won’t quite let go. The nick on my palm stings and then warms. I stand there until the mirror fogs, and the small room fills with a hum that sounds like a better version of the inside of my head.
When I towel off, I dress deliberately. Black trousers, pressed seams sharp enough to cut. Silk ivory simple blouse, a small V at the collarbone that reads as woman, not ward. Boots I can walk in without thinking. Hair down. Minimal makeup. I’m going to a skeleton. I want to look like someone who knows what a finished structure takes.
At the vanity, I add small earrings, a thin ring. I slide my sketchbook into my bag and the small camera I bought with thegrant money I’m still trying not to feel dirty about. I add the scarf Cassian told me to bring because wind lies and I don’t need to prove anything by freezing.
I take one last look around the room. The bed is made. The window is pale with morning. The canvas I left leaning against the wall last night looks like evidence I’ve tried to hide by putting it in plain sight.
The phone buzzes on the dresser. I spin; my body readies before my mind does. Another message?
No. The calendar reminder I set for myself two weeks ago in a brighter moment:Studio block, 9–12. Work. Try not to think.
I laugh once, short, and humorless. “Working on it,” I tell no one, and pick the phone up. I open the thread one more time and stare at the words until they go fuzzy.
I tap, hold, and consider deleting, then don’t. I tuck the phone into my bag with the sketchbook, camera, and the scarf. I’m not brave enough to leave it behind, and I’m not naive enough to think leaving would make it safer. Whoever this is, they will follow. They were at the overlook. They were in the parking garage. Cameras where I don’t see them is a theme around here.
The hallway outside my room is quiet. As I make my way toward the courtyard, I pass two residents and a volunteer in blue, their heads bent together over a plant on a rolling table. The plant looks like it has been rescued from a bad indoor life. One of them glances up at me and smiles. I smile back and don’t stop walking. I’m too aware of the weight in my bag and the shape of the day ahead to do small talk with my better self-right now.
The courtyard opens all at once. Morning has arrived here. The fountain in the center tosses water into air. The sun is slanting across the flagstones in wide sheets. The bloom boxesalong the low wall are a planned mess of lavender and rosemary. The air is cool and smells clean.
The SUV idles near the service arch. It’s matte black and not interested in being admired. Tinted windows. No Foundation logo. The kind of car you don’t remember five minutes after it passes you on the highway. It purrs like a cat.
Reid is already there. He leans one shoulder against the rear door, tablet in the crook of his arm, coffee balanced on the trunk. “Big day,” he says as I approach.
I match his smile. “That’s what they tell me.”
“South Annex has good bones.” He nods to my bag. “You’ll see the skeleton and start designing the muscles in your head. It’s hard to resist once you do.”
“I’ll try to watch my impulse to put a skylight everywhere.”
“Put them everywhere,” he says, grin tilting. “We’ll make the budget cry later.” His eyes flick past me. “Boss man’s incoming.”
Cassian comes through the arch in a dark suit without a tie, sunglasses hooked into the V of an open collar. He looks like money and insomnia. His hair is just shy of formal; it’s the most human thing about him this morning.
He doesn’t smile when he sees me. He does something better. He looks relieved. It’s quick, gone in the moment he reaches me, but it’s there—a fraction of a beat where his shoulders let go of an inch of tension.
“You’re sure about this?” he asks.
“Yes.” My voice is steady. I keep it that way. “I want to see what you’re building.”
He studies my face like he’s searching for a tell. His eyes glance over my hair, blouse, boots, and the bag on my shoulder.
“Stay close to me,” he says, a request pretending to be an order. Or an order pretending to be care. With him, it’s both.
“I know how to walk next to a person,” I say. “I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
That earns me a flicker in his mouth that could be a smile if he had time to earn it. He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it. His thumb brushes the bandage on my palm without pressing. He lets go like it costs him.
A breeze spins through the courtyard and lifts the edge of my scarf. The fabric slithers against my neck. It should be nothing, a soft winter leftover in a spring that hasn’t quite made up its mind. But the way the wind catches it makes me feel exposed, like a camera lens just adjusted somewhere I can’t see. For a split ring of seconds I picture a scope across the street, a long barrel pointed through foliage at a fountain, a man’s finger resting gently on a trigger because patience pays.
I hate that the image doesn’t feel like paranoia. I hate that my body stands a little taller at it, as if you can make yourself a smaller target by pretending to be bigger.
Cassian’s eyes do a micro-scan of the perimeter while he keeps his face on me. If I didn’t know to look for it, I’d miss it. Reid does his own. The two of them are always measuring and recalculating where the world touches their edges.
Reid opens the front passenger door and steps back like a valet. It’s an old-fashioned gesture in a modern war. “After you,” he says.
