Voices drift faintly from beyond the door. Muffled. Too low to catch words. One of them is deeper—the low gravel I’d recognize even without the mask. Wraith.
Another voice is quieter. Smoother. Steel folded in silk. The King.
My pulse spikes, traitor-fast. I make my face soft. Innocent. Wrecked but not hostile. I let my shoulders curve in, not slumped—worn. I rest my cheek against my knees and keep my eyes half-lidded, like I’m on the edge of sleep again.
If he walks in, I want him off-balance. I want him to underestimate me. I want him to think I’m tired, and pliable, and grateful I’m not still tied to a slab underground.
Let him think I can be managed—kept. Let him think anything he wants, as long as he forgets to watch my hands.
Because the truth is simple.
They’ve stolen a lot of things from a lot of people in this city.
They don’t get tokeepme.
Chapter 6
Rook
Idon’t knock.
Men like me don’t ask permission to walk into a room we already own.
The townhouse is quiet when I leave my office and cross the landing. Old London brick means the hall carries sound differently than steel and concrete do. Everything is closer here, warmer. The Riders use this house to disappear, not to work. The rooms still hold the heat from the radiators, the ghost of someone’s cologne in the walls, the faint hum of pipes. It shouldn’t feel intimate. But it does.
It feels intimate now, with Ember in a room upstairs. Waiting to see if we spare her or damn her.
Wraith is stationed at the far end of the hall, leaned against the banister in absolute, easy control. He doesn’t move when he sees me, just tilts his chin in a bare nod. Guarding the stairs, not her door.Good. He understood me.
No one in or out unless it’s me.
I stop outside the room and rest my hand on the latch. For a beat, I just listen. No crying. No pacing. No desperate rattling at the lock. She’s not panicking.
That already interests me more than it should.
I open the door.
She’s exactly where we left her—on the edge of the bed, knees drawn up loosely, chin resting where her thigh meets bone. She’s angled so she can see both the door and the window without having to turn her head. Cute. Tactical. Her face is soft, her body language small, but her eyes cut straight to mine the second I step inside.
Still awake, then. Still pretending not to be.
Her gaze flicks over me quickly. My black shirt, the open collar, the way I didn’t bother to put my mask back on. I let her look. I’ve kept my face from her this long. And I intend to let her see what hunts her.
She notices the details that matter. The way most people don’t.
Good girl.
I close the door behind me and turn the lock.
She doesn’t flinch at the sound. Her jaw tightens, though. I file that.
The room smells like steam and clean skin. She’s washed her face. Her hair is still a little damp around the edges, frizzy red curls catching light from the street through the curtain gap. There’s a smudge of dried blood at the corner of her mouth. She hasn’t wiped that off.
Interesting choice.
“Comfortable?” I ask.
Her lips curl. “Go choke.”
