“That you’re not wrong,” he says softly. “About Owen. About Damien. About all of it.”
Everything in me goes still. His green eyes flick up to meet mine, and for once there’s nothing clinical or detached in them. It’s not dissection. It’s loyalty.
“I document everything,” he says quietly. “Even them. Especially them. Meetings. Shipments. Names. Routes.Payments that shouldn’t exist. People who shouldn’t know each other knowing each other. It’s all in here.”
My heart is in my throat.
“And you’re giving it to me?” I whisper.
“I already backed it up,” he says, like of course, like obviously. “This one’s yours.”
My voice cracks. “You trust me with that?”
His jaw tightens, and for a second, I watch something raw move over his face. “No,” he says, almost a whisper. “Ineedyou to have that.”
Need, not trust. God.
He presses the book into my hands, and for a second his fingers stay there, overlapping mine. His thumb brushes once along my knuckles. It’s barely anything. It feels like everything.
Then he steps back and takes his place amongst the rest. My hands are full now — Saint’s rosary, Vale’s blade, Wraith’s holster pressed warm to my side, Ash’s book weighted down in my arms — and my heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
Rook hasn’t moved. He’s been watching silently the whole time. Like a king holding court.
When he steps toward me, the others shift. Not away. Around. Like closing a circle. Like sealing an oath. He doesn’t go to the table. He already has his offering in his hands.
It’s a black box.
Not big. Matte, with gold filigree carved into the lid in curling vinework. His sigil — the crown — glints for a heartbeat in the firelight.
My fingers tighten around everything I’m already holding.
“Caelum,” I say softly.
His eyes flicker, just once. I don’t think I’ve ever said his first name like that. Soft. Devotional.Mine.
He steps in close enough that I can feel the heat from his chest through my jacket.
“This is the last piece,” he says, voice quiet, almost intimate. “After this, there is no walking it back. Not for you. Not for us. Do you understand?”
My mouth is dry. “Yes.”
“Say it,” he murmurs.
“I understand.”
He studies my face for one long, slow beat. Then he nods, satisfied, and opens the box.
For a heartbeat I forget to breathe. It’s a mask. Not one of theirs. Not a copy. Nothing I’ve seen before on any wall.
It’s beautiful and wrong at once. It’s carved in deep, almost liquid black — not glossy, not matte, something in between with a faint iridescent sheen like beetle wings. The shape fits over the upper half of the face, sweeping high over the brows in sharp, branching arcs like antlers or thorns. Vines curl across the cheekbones, delicate and lethal all at once, each one edged in dark green so deep it’s almost black until the light hits it and it blooms emerald.
It isn’t sweet or soft. It looks like the face of something old that lives in the dark part of the forest and demands sacrifice. Like a queen of something that isn’t human.
A dryad, my mind supplies. A fae monarch. A forest god with blood on her mouth. Rook holds it like he’s holding a relic. My voice comes out a whisper. “That’s mine?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Why does it look like that?”
