“If you try the window,” I say softly, “you’ll break your legs on the fall. If you try the hall, Wraith will put you back in bed. If you scream,no onewill come. If you hide anything sharp, I’ll find it.”
Her chin lifts. “And if I kill you in your sleep?”
My mouth curves. “You won’t,” I tell her, and let her watch my eyes when I say it. Let her see the absolute certainty there. “You don’t want me dead.”
She laughs, disbelieving. “You’re delusional.”
“Mm,” I say. “We’ll revisit this discussion when you’ve had some proper rest.”
I open the door. Step into the hall. Close it softly behind me. For a long moment I just stand there, hand still on the panel, jaw tight. Her voice echoes in my skull.
He wouldn’t have risked me.
Something about that line slides under my armor and sits there, persistent and unwelcome.
I exhale through my nose, controlled. I am sure of Owen’s guilt.
Iam.
So why the hell does it feel less certain now than it did an hour ago?
Chapter 7
Ember
Idon’t sleep. Idrift.That isnotthe same thing.
My body drops in and out in shallow, jerked edges. Every time I start to slide under, I jolt awake again, heart sprinting, sure there’s a hand on my throat. My brain keeps replaying the room in loops. Curtain. Window. Door. Chair. Escape angles. Him in the chair opposite me, voice quiet, eyes too steady.
Owen didn’t die because of what he knew. He died because of what he did.
Liar.
No.
Maybe not.
And that’s the worst part. It would be easier if Caelum Voss — Rook — had just lied. Monsters should lie. It’s cleaner.
By the time the dark outside the curtains turns into weak gray, my mouth tastes like old metal, my muscles ache from staying ready, and my eyes burn.
My body wants sleep.
My anger won’t let it.
Neither will the house.
Old buildings talk. This one hums. I can feel it through the floorboards and the walls and in the air itself. A wardrobe door closing somewhere far down the hall. Footsteps at 4 a.m., heavy and unhurried, not even pretending to hide. Voices under my floor at some point — low, a rumble and a smoother reply. Water through pipes. A door that sounds like iron on iron. Someone laughing, low. Someone swearing in Spanish. Then quiet again.
They shift in cycles. Like wolves changing patrol, or priests preparing ritual. Like a machine that never fully powers down.
At some point my eyes do finally close. And when they open again,he’sin the doorway.
Not Caelum. The other one. The one who looks like he could snap me in two with his bare hands and use my bones as a toothpick.
Wraith.
He doesn’t knock either.
