“Those two things can be true at once,” she says. “They can be saving lives, and they can be using you. That’s why this is complicated. Which is why I need you to be extra careful. Cassian Ward is not just a man with a checkbook. He’s a machine with hands.”
I put my palm on the cold glass. It steadies me. “I know what he is,” I say.
“Do you?” she asks, sharply again. “Because the clause that lets them approve your subject matter is not about safety. It’s control. And the exit penalty that reads like a mortgage? Control.Arbitration in his state?Control.”
“I can handle a contract,” I snap, because the shame stings worse than anything she’s listed. “You don’t get to call me naïve because you’re holding a red pen and a law degree.”
“I wouldn’t call you naïve if I thought you were making a purely professional calculation,” she says in a measured tone. “This reads like a personal decision. That’s when my job is to say—be careful.”
The mirror across from the bed throws back a woman in jeans and a T-shirt and a face trying to look like she’s not getting smaller. The sketchbook on the bed is the only thing in the room that looks like it belongs to me.
“I sent you the contract because I trust you,” I say. “I’m grateful. I hear you. I am still in this house. I’m still going to the sessions. The boy in the clinic—” I stop. His eyes on the paperlook at me like I used them to get myself off the hook. “I’m not walking because a clause scared me. Not yet.”
“Aurora,” she says.
“I have to go,” I say, keeping my voice level so it hurts less. “There’s a briefing tonight.”
She swears once.
I hang up before she can say my name in the way that makes me picture myself from outside my body.
I stand in the middle of the room and feel my heartbeat in my teeth. Shame swells, then flips inside out into anger. There’s a clean line between being warned and being condescended to. People love to step over it when the person they’re advising is a woman with work they can turn into a story about saving her.
The minibar has exactly what you’d expect—two uneven glasses, a bottle of red with a label designed to look expensive, water in glass because the house likes to prove its taste quietly. I pour a third of a glass of wine and drink it standing, the way I did at gallery openings when I needed the taste of permission in my mouth.
“They all think they know better,” I tell the window.
Right on cue, a soft knock. Not the staff tap for housekeeping. The deliberate one from someone delivering an instruction.
I open the door. An aide stands there I don’t know by name yet. He offers an envelope embossed with the Ward crest.
“Ms. Hale,” he says. “For you. From Mr. Ward. Delivery at nineteen hundred as instructed.”
“Thank you,” I say. He turns to go, then pauses.
“Attendance is non-negotiable,” he adds. Not unkind. A sentence someone told him to say exactly that way.
“I got the memo,” I snap.
When he’s gone, I close the door and break the wax like it needs to feel my nail. The card is heavy stock, cream, simple.Aurora Haleacross the top in a hand I recognize from the margin notes on the contract. Below it:
West Hall — Private Wing
21:30 — Dinner Briefing: Sanctuary Protocols and Residency Scope
Attendance Required
I sip more wine because it gives my hand a reason to move. I could walk the envelope straight to Lila and ask her to tell me that a dinner in the private wing is a terrible idea. She would. She’d tell me to wear sneakers, keep my phone on, and set a timer to leave. I could call Nadia back and ask her to be on standby with a sentence that gets me out clean. I could pack the bag I never really unpacked and be at the gate in ten minutes, Lila in tow, and let the rain baptize us back into the city.
Instead, something dark and steady moves into place in my chest. If I’m already in the cage, I might as well know the lion. The line is awful. It is also honest.
I text Lila:Dinner with the boss. Don’t wait up.
Three dots appear.Text me if you need an extraction. I’ll bring a tray and pretend you’re not in there.
I’ll be fine. I chose this.
I set the phone on the bed and open the wardrobe. My fingers find the black dress I hadn’t planned to wear—low back, long line, and fabric that drinks light. It’s a dress you can’t stain with paint and ruin, which is why I didn’t touch it when we arrived. I lay it on the bed and look in the mirror. Hair up or down? Up gives me a neck he can look at. Down gives me something to hide behind. Neither choice is neutral.
