That wins me a low laugh. It’s small. It’s real. It slides along my skin like static.
I look at her for a long breath. Then whisper, “Ember.”
Her head tilts. “Lysander.”
“We’re not going to let you die,” I say.
Her expression shifts. Not softened — she doesn’t soften. But something in it goes warmer. Sharper. A little feral, like a promise.
“I know,” she says.
“You don’t,” I correct. “Not how I mean it.”
Her brows pull in.
I step in again. Close enough that there’s only a span of air between us. Close enough to make sure she can’t mistake me. “I will burn every file I’ve ever kept,” I say quietly. “I will erase every ledger. I will black out every CCTV feed within a kilometer and make the Thames run with static. I will turn off this city for you. Do you understand?”
Her throat works. Her breath stutters, eyes going glassy with unshed tears.
“Nikolai,” I continue calmly, “will put men in the ground and then pray over them like it absolves him. Ronan will tear through Syndicate lines and leave nothing salvageable. Mateo will make Damien beg. Caelum will end careers, governments, contracts, entire fucking networks. There will be nothing left that remembers Damien existed.Nothing. I am not being poetic. I am telling you the scope of response.”
She’s staring at me.
“And if something happens to you,” I finish, low, clinical, honest, “I will doworse.”
The silence that follows is not quiet. It’s vibrating with everything I’ve said.
Her voice, when it comes, is barely above a whisper. “You’ve thought this through.”
“I think about everything,” I say.
Her eyes flick down to my mouth, then up. The air shifts. Slows. Gains gravity.
“Lysander,” she says, and there’s something in the way she says my name that almost knocks me back a step. “Come here.”
I shouldn’t. Not now. Not with adrenaline pulsing in her veins, heat sitting under her skin and the mission only hours away.
So I don’t touch her.
I just move in close enough that I can feel her breath on my lips.
She smiles, slow, dangerous. “Coward.”
I almost laugh. “Not coward. Professional.”
“Mm,” she says. “Shame.”
I breathe out. Slow. Controlled. My heart is beating too fast for how still I am.
“Lesson two,” I say.
She makes a tiny noise like she’s disappointed and amused in equal measure. “Fine. Go on, teacher.”
I reach for the black box. Her attention sharpens instantly. I set it on the table between us and flip the lid.
Inside sits a tiny flesh-toned in-ear, matte and unremarkable. A wafer-thin mic patch meant to sit under her jawline, and a chip the size of my thumbnail sealed in clear casing.
“What’s that,” she asks softly.
