He’d avenged me.
And I didn’t know whether to run from that…
…or fall to my knees for it.
I stumbled back like she’d shoved me, like her words were knives instead of syllables. My chest ached, lungs squeezing against the truth I didn’t want to hear.
"You’re the key to destroying him," Callista said, stepping forward. "Don't you see that? He made you his weakness."
That line stuck in my skull, thick and cloying. My vision tunneled. My heart? It didn’t pound. It thrashed. A trapped thing begging to escape the cage I’d willingly stepped into.
And then her voice, smooth and sharp like broken glass. “That’s why we need you.”
I blinked at her, slow and disbelieving. “I don’t want to ruin him.” The words scraped up my throat, so soft I almost didn’t recognize my own voice. “I—God, Callista—I can’t.”
Her face didn’t move. No pity, no shock. Just that cold clarity that always made her terrifying. “He’ll come for me,” she said. “He always does. If we don’t stop him now?—”
“No.” It wasn’t a whisper this time. It exploded out of me, ragged and desperate. “You don’t understand. You weren’t there. You don’t know how he loves. He—he cares. He protects me. He?—”
I cut myself off, the image of his eyes flashing in the dark searing through me like fire. The way he’d held me when I cried. The way he’d whispered my name like it was a vow. The way the world bent when he touched me.
I’d given him everything. And he took it like he already owned it.
Callista’s expression cracked, just barely. “No, baby girl,” she said, voice so soft it felt like a lullaby. Then it turned razor-sharp. “You’ve been brainwashed.”
That word hit harder than a slap.
Brainwashed.
No. No, no, no—this wasn’t that. This was love. This was messy and real and sharp around the edges but it wasn’t fake.
Was it?
My stomach turned.
What if it was?
I thought about the bodies. The names. The way he never flinched at blood. The cold behind his smile when he didn’t get his way.
The way he made people disappear—quietly, efficiently.
I shook my head, slow and trembling. “I won’t be part of this,” I said, but even as the words left me, they didn’t feel like a promise.
They felt like a question.
Callista reached for me again. “Seph?—”
I stepped back like her fingers were poison.
Because maybe they were.
Or maybe I already drank the real poison. And maybe it tasted like his kiss.
Callista crouched beside me, her eyes red-rimmed, her voice quieter now—too quiet. The rooftop had fallen still, and the storm building in the sky felt like it was holding its breath with me.
“I didn’t run because I was afraid of him,” she said. “I ran because I knew he’d never choose me.”
I blinked, confused. “What does that mean?”
