She doesn’t wait for permission. She slides right past me and steps into the light like I’d put her there myself, and Wraith shifts with her — immediate, instinctual — shadowing her left side, one step back, ready to put a body between hers and impact in under a heartbeat.
She stops in front of Damien, close enough to be personal. Close enough to be intimate.
The restraint in Wraith’s shoulders is visible. Every muscle in his body goes tight, like a loaded weapon waiting on my command.
“Hi, Damien,” she coos.
Damien exhales through his nose, disdain wrapped in patience. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why,” she asks calmly. “Because this ismen’swork?”
I hear Vale’s low laugh behind me. Dark. Pleased. Hungry.
Damien sneers. “Because you have no idea how far this goes. You think these animals can protect you from what happens when you involve yourself in shit that doesn’t belong to you?”
For the first time since we walked in, Ember smiles. It’s not kind. “I don’t need them to protect me from you,” she says.
He barks a laugh. “Don’t play brave, girl. You’re leverage. You have been leverage since the night you were born. You were a tool to pull Owen. You’re a tool now to pull me. You’re not a player at this table, you’re the—”
“Do you rememberMarcus,” she asks, cutting him off with a single name. He goes still. Quiet. Eyes wide like he hasn’t heard the name in years and almost forgot it existed.
He doesn’t hide it fast enough.
My entire body goes still. Beside me, Ash’s head lifts slowly. I feel rather than see the shift in him — that focused quiet that means whoever we’re talking about is already dead in Ash’s mind, the rest is just logistics. Saint’s expression doesn’t change, but the muscle in his jaw ticks once. Wraith makes a low sound that doesn’t belong to any human vocabulary. Vale leans forward like someone just turned his favorite program on.
“Marcus,” Damien repeats, cautious now.
Ember tilts her head, like she’s thinking, like she’s scrolling through a pleasant memory.
“My first handler,” she says. “Do you remember him?”
Damien’s eyes flicker. “This isn’t—”
“He used to take me out,” Ember goes on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Alone. When Owen was on assignment and I wasn’t cleared for field work yet, remember? I wasn’t authorized for external transport without my primary clearance officer present. That would’ve beenyou. But he said you approved.”
Her voice doesn’t waver, but my heartbeat does. Forher.
“He used to tell me that if I wanted to actually get recruited past ghost work, if I wanted to matter, if I wanted to bevaluable— his word, not mine — then I had to learn how to ‘handle myself in the room.’”
Her eyes never leave Damien.
Damien’s face is flattening out now. The bureaucrat mask. Calm. Measured. Like he’s taking notes to weaponize later. “You’re mischaracterizing—”
“He used to put his hands on me,” Ember says, still calm, still soft. “In the car. On my leg. Higher and higher until I asked him to stop. He used to tell me I had a pretty mouth for an orphan.”
Something in my chest goes cold and black. Wraith’s snarl rips through the room. It’s not loud. It’s not even fully voiced. It’s low, animal, vibrating under his breath. I feel it in the floor. Saint takes one step forward, splinted wrist cradled to his chest, his other hand loose at his side. His eyes have gone ice-pale. No priest left in them. Just executioner. Vale is grinning now. It’s not his teasing grin. Not the one he uses when he wants to push and prod and pull someone apart for fun.
This one isferal.
He looks like he might walk over and take Damien’s tongue just to see what sound comes out when he tries to talk without it.
Ash hasn’t moved. Which is honestly more fucking terrifying than if he had. He’s standing with his hands in his pockets, shoulders loose, expression almost blank. But I can see his jaw ticking. Once. Twice. He’s reciting names in his head and putting them in the ground.
Ember goes on.
“I told him to stop,” she says. “The first time. I told him to stop again the second time. The third time I grabbed his wrist and I told him if he touched me like that again I would break his fingers one by one and make him swallow them.”
Despite everything boiling in my veins, I almost laugh. Of course she did. I would expect nothing less.
