“You did good,” I say.
Her smile goes slow, satisfied, pleased in a way that makes my pulse stutter. “Thank you, Lysander.”
I exhale through my nose. “You’re insufferable.”
“Mmm,” she muses, tilting her head. “And you’remine.”
That lands hard, right in my fucking chest.
I choose not to react. “We’re done for now,” I say instead. “Get some sleep. Wraith’s not going to let you out of arm’s reach long enough to piss tomorrow, so enjoy these last hours of personal space.”
She laughs, quiet and wicked. “You say that like I don’tenjoyhaving his hands on me.”
Heat spikes in my chest. I ignore it. “Out,” I say, pointing at the door.
She rolls her eyes, backs toward the threshold, and only turns at the last second. Before she disappears, she glances back at me over her shoulder. “Ash?” she says.
“Mm.”
“We’re going to kill him,” she says. “I need you to know I’m not going into this just to breathe the same air as him and run. I’m here to end it.”
There’s no tremor in her voice. No play, no bluff, no desperation.
Just a vow.
I meet her eyes. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “I know.”
And I do. That’s what worries me. Because I’ve prepped assets. I’ve stabilized witnesses. I’ve cleaned bodies. I’ve wiped networks. I have never, not once, stood across from the weapon and realized I loved it.
She vanishes, bare legs, Caelum’s shirt, Ronan’s holster and my mic, and the room feels wrong without her in it.
I sit down at the table, pull the laptop toward me, and start pulling feeds for Canary Wharf. Traffic cams. Fire exits. Syndicate patterns. Everything Ruskin ever touched. I stack intel like sandbags against a flood I can feel coming.
Because tomorrow, we walk her into open ground.
And for the first time since I started doing this work, I’m not entirely sure that if it comes down to her or the mission—I’ll choose the mission.
Chapter 42
Ember
Mission day tastes like metal.
Even before we leave the manor, I can feel it — that low, electric static under the skin, the one that says we’re past threat and into inevitability. This isn’t practice anymore. There’s no more “if.” There’s only “when.”
The house moves like a machine.
Saint’s up first. He’s in black today instead of his usual tailored decadence, sleeves rolled, throat bare. He lays out the last of the comms on the kitchen island like sacraments — earpieces, backup batteries, slimline radios with no markings. He’s quiet, calm, and efficient. He murmurs final logistics to Rook in low tones like confession.
Wraith is all hands and motion. He checks gear, checks angles, checks lines of sight, checks me. Constant, constant, constant. Tightening my holster strap one more notch. Fastening a small blade to the inside of my boot with a strip of matte tape. Adjusting the fall of my jacket so the gun doesn’t print. He doesn’t tell me to stay close. He doesn’t have to. His eyes say it for him.
Mateo is pacing like he’s already bored of the plan and itching for the part where he gets to make someone scream. He’s the only one smiling. That smile is fucking feral.
Ash is on his tablet, last-minute camera pulls, rerouting feeds that shouldn’t be rerouted and looping footage that shouldn’t be looped. He looks like he hasn’t blinked in half an hour. When I pass him, he doesn’t look up, just reaches out and ghosts two fingers at my hip — the exact spot my mic patch sits under my jaw controls. Test. Live. He exhales when he hears me through his wrist.
Rook doesn’t hover.
He stands at the head of it all in a charcoal coat and black shirt, hands in his pockets, gaze ice-steady. Calm like command. He’s watching all of us. He’s watching me.
