Not request. Not bargain. Not mercy.
Something above Seytan. Above the island. Above whatever petty kingdom she thinks she owns.
“Leaving,” I echo, tasting it. “With what? Shackles?”
“With oversight,” Valentine says. “With conditions. With a handler.”
He looks at me when he says handler, and for a heartbeat it’s almost funny. Almost.
“You,” I say.
His mouth doesn’t change. “Yes.”
I step closer, slow, deliberate. “You think you can handle me.”
Valentine’s eyes sharpen but he doesn’t reply.
I lean in until the guards tense, until the air between us feels like it could spark.
“You’re here because she’s your daughter,” I whisper.
If that’s true, it’s leverage. If it’s false, it’s an insult.
Valentine’s expression holds – perfect, polished, empty.
But his eyes?—
His eyes darken for a fraction of a second, like something deep shifted and then locked back into place.
Not grief. Not love.Ownership.
Or guilt, perhaps.
Maybe both.
“She is an objective. An asset of the system,” Valentine says quietly. “Not a conversation we need to be having.”
My smile is a knife. “That’s what you tell yourself so you can sleep.”
Valentine’s gaze flicks over my face, then past me, as if he can see the shape of my obsession in the air.
“We leave at dawn,” he says. “Be prepared.”
He turns to go.
I move.
Fast.
The guards are nothing. A blur. A mistake. I’m across the room in a heartbeat, hand closing on Valentine’s collar, dragging him back hard enough that his boots scrape.
His head snaps toward me. Not startled. Just…displeased.
The kind of displeasure that comes from a man who rarely experiences resistance.
“Say her name,” I snarl in his face. “Say Kayla. Say it like she’s real.”
The guards surge. Two hands grab my arms.
