Ihatethat. I hate it way more than I should.
“Don’t,” she whispers again, rawer now. “Don’t make me talk about Owen with you.”
I hold her face in my palm and let my voice go low and even. “I’m trying to give you something.”
Her laugh is small and savage. “You’re trying togetsomething.”
“Both,” I say. “Why can’t it be both?”
Her mouth twists in disgust. For a long, quiet beat, she doesn’t speak. Then, so soft I almost don’t hear it, she says, “He told me torun.”
My hand tightens a fraction on her jaw. Her eyes stay on mine. Wide, blown, wet, furious.
“He called me,” she whispers, voice shaking now like she’s holding herself together by fingernails. “He never called when he was on a run. Never. But he called that night. He sounded— he soundedwrong. Like… breathless yes, butterrified. And he said, ‘Em, you have to go. You have to gonow. Pack a bag, go to ground, don’t talk to anyone, don’t tell anyone, don’t trust anyone in a mask.’”
She swallows thickly. “And I laughed,” she chokes out. “I laughed at him. I told him to stop being dramatic. And then he—then he hung up. And the next time I saw him was on a slab.”
The room is very, very still. My jaw is tight enough to ache. My thumb is pressing harder into her cheek than I meant it to.
He told her to run. He told her not to trust anyone in a mask. And she stayed.
She stayed, and she mourned, and she painted us on brick and hunted our sigils and walked herself straight into my hands because she refused to listen.
She’s been angry at herself this whole damn time. Not just us.Herself.
That knowledge hits something in me I do not like. Something that feels uncomfortably like sympathy.
Dangerous.
“Ember,” I say quietly. Her eyes flicker — shock that I used her name like that. Like it belongs to me now. Like I’m allowed. I lower my voice until it’s almost a rasp. “Look at me.”
“I am looking at you,” she whispers.
“No,” I murmur. “You’re looking at the mask I’m not wearing.”
That lands. She swallows, and the tears finally spill. Two of them, clean paths down her cheeks. She doesn’t sob. She doesn’t shake. She just… leaks. Silent.
I swipe one tear with my thumb. She inhales sharply, like the action surprised her. Her mouth parts. She leans — barely, instinctively, a fraction of an inch — into the touch like she didn’t mean to, like her body decided for her.
Heat flares low in my spine and spikes like hunger. I could kiss her.
I could.
Right now, I could take her jaw in my hand, tilt her face up, and taste that split lower lip. I could swallow that soft broken sound she’s holding in her chest. I could put my mouth on her and end the last of her resistance with one slow, careful, honest kiss.
And she’d let me. She’d tell herself she wasn’t. She’d call me a monster while she opened under me, just to keep her pride intact. But she’d let me.
I can feel it in the way she’s breathing.
I don’t. Not because I shouldn’t. Because if I start,I won’t stop.
And I can’t afford to lose control of this particular fire yet.
Not when I still don’t know who Owen was really working for. Not when I don’t know who in this city just made the Syndicatehold their tongues. Not when I don’t know if I brought a weapon into my house or a fuse.
So I take one slow, measured breath. Then I lift my hand from her face. Her expression breaks in real time — shock, anger, humiliation, need — and then slams shut. The rage comes back fast, snapping up like armor. She scrubs her own cheek with the heel of her hand, vicious.
“Get out,” she whispers, voice jagged and somewhat broken. “Get the fuck out of my room.”
