“To who?” His voice is quiet. Dangerous. Curious.
“I’m not stupid enough to tell you that,” I say.
A beat passes between us, and the room drops to a silence so thick I could cut it with a knife.
Then Vale leans back in his chair and lets out a low, delighted laugh. “Oh, this is delicious.”
Ash scrubs a hand over his mouth, like he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s smiling. “Caelum.”
Saint murmurs, “King.”
Wraith just says, low, almost pleased, “Told you she wasn’t stupid.”
Caelum doesn’t look away from me.
“Let me be very clear,” he says. His voice is controlled velvet. His eyes are ice. “If I agree to this, if I put ink to paper andbind my brothers to it, and you are lying to me? If you hand me nothing? If you attempt to play me?”
He leans in. The room goes silent. “I will not kill you,” he says, soft and absolutely lethal. “But I will make you wish you’d taken that option when it was on the table.”
My throat is tight, and I swallow hard, forcing my voice steady. “Then I won’t lie.”
We hold that for several seconds. Something passes between us that I can’t name yet. Something too sharp to be trust and too focused to be hatred.
Then Caelum leans back. “Ash,” he says without looking away from me.
Ash is already moving. “On it.”
“Draft it,” Caelum says.
“Language?”
“Exactly what she just said,” Caelum replies. “Word for word.”
Ash’s mouth twitches. “Cute. Binding signatures?”
“All of us.”
Wraith nods once, like that was never in question. Vale laughs again, dark and hungry, eyes on me like I just bared my throat for him. “Breakfast and contracts. Red, I think I might be in love.”
Saint’s gaze warms, almost devout. “Careful,” he murmurs to Vale. “Coveting isn’t a sin you survive in this house.”
“I don’t plan to survive it,” Vale purrs.
“Mateo,” Caelum says without looking at him.
Vale raises his hands in mock surrender, lips curving. My heart is still pounding. My hands are still shaking under the table where no one can see.
But I keep my face even.
I pick up the toast again, drag it through yolk, and take another bite like my stomach isn’t flipping. Caelum watches me. I don’t know it yet, but I’ve just changed something in this house.
They don’t say it. They don’t explain it. No one tells me congratulations, you passed the test, you’re not prey today.
But I canfeelit.
Something in the room has shifted.
And for the first morning since Owen’s body hit wet stone, I am not just surviving.
