Wraith huffs something that might be a laugh, though there’s no humor in it. “She hasn’t asked for anything yet.”
“She will.”
And I’m right. I can feel it like a shift in the air before lightning strikes. Ember’s not the kind of woman who takes what’s offered and calls it enough. She’ll want control. She’ll want vengeance. And I’ll have to decide whether to let her burn the world for it.
Footsteps echo down the hall. Light, measured, familiar.
Wraith glances up first. “Speak of the devil.”
Ember appears in the doorway, barefoot, hair tousled, wearing one of our shirts that falls nearly to her knees. It shouldn’t be disarming, but it is. The woman we brought into this house a little over three weeks ago—the defiant, furious witness we should’ve silenced—isgone. What stands in her place is something else entirely. Someone who knows her power.
“Morning,” she says, voice rough but steady.
“Morning,” Wraith answers, softer than I expect.
I gesture to the counter. “Coffee’s fresh.”
She crosses the room, the hem of the shirt brushing her thighs, and reaches past me for a cup. The faint citrus-and-smoke scent of her perfume curls into the air. She doesn’t look at me when she pours, but she doesn’t need to. The room already bends toward her like gravity.
It’s strange, this sense of balance we’ve built—five predators orbiting the same flame. Stranger still that none of us seem eager to extinguish it.
She takes a sip, then sets the cup down. “I want to make a move on Damien.”
Just like that. No preamble. No hesitation.
Wraith stiffens beside me, his calm fracturing. “Already?”
Her chin lifts. “He’s been moving pieces for months. You know it as well as I do. I’m not waiting for him to take another shot. He thinks I’m dead—or worse, broken. I want to use that.”
I lean back against the counter, arms folded. “And what exactly are you planning to do?”
She looks straight at me. “Whatever it takes.”
The words are simple, but they land heavy. I see the spark in her eyes—the one that’s part vengeance, part rebirth. It’s dangerous, that look. It’s what made me notice her the first time I saw her name scrawled across the wrong file, and it’s what’s going to drag us all into the fire if I’m not careful.
“You’re not ready,” I say, even though it fucking guts me.
“I decide that,” she counters.
My jaw flexes. I can feel the argument gathering between us, the clash inevitable.
Wraith glances between us, then sets his mug down with a quiet thud.
“She’s not wrong,” he says.
I turn to him, incredulous. “You’re siding with her?”
He meets my gaze, unflinching. “I’m saying she’s earned the right to be heard. You made her Queen, Rook. Queens don’t take orders—theygivethem.”
The words hang there, sharp as knives.
Ember doesn’t smile, but the faintest glimmer of satisfaction crosses her face. “He’s right, ya know.”
Of course he is. And of course she knows it.
I sigh, dragging a hand through my hair, the old instinct to command warring with something newer, quieter—trust.
“Then we plan,” I say finally. “Not move. Not yet. We start by gathering intel. Damien’s not just a name—he’s a network. If we go at him blind, we’re handing him the knife.”
