“My room,” I correct softly. Her eyes blaze. I let myself smile, just a little. “Rest. Eat again later. Don’t make Wraith drag you.”
“I hate you,” she spits.
“Yes,” I murmur. “You keep saying that.”
Her jaw clenches, teeth grating together. I turn toward the door. Her voice cuts after me, small and shaking and furious. “Caelum—”
I stop. The sound of my name in her mouth lands low in my gut like impact. Slowly, I look back at her over my shoulder. Her chin is high. Her eyes are still wet. Her hands are fists at her sides because if she doesn’t clench them, I think she’ll reach for me and she knows it.
“If you find out who set him up,” she says, each word deliberate, scraped raw, “you tellmefirst. Not your men.Me.”
Power hits the air between us like electricity. Something in me — something old, something territorial, something that does not answer to logic or strategy — likes that more than it should. “Of course,” I say quietly.
Her eyes widen, like she didn’t expect me to agree. She tries to cover it with a scowl. “And don’t call me your disobedience.”
“My disobedience,” I respond automatically, knowing exactly what the words do to her, letting my eyes drag down her body, slow, hungry, unapologetic. “Rest.”
Her breath hitches for the final time, before fire ignites behind her eyes. Then I open the door and step out before I do something I can’t walk back.
I don’t lock it behind me. I could, but I don’t. And I tell myself that’s strategy. Not softness. Not care.Strategy.
It’s a lie.
But I let myself believe it until I hit the stairs.
Chapter 10
Ember
He leaves and the room doesn’t feel the same. The door shuts softly behind him. Not locked, just a soft click when the door closes. Like a sense of finality has swept through the room.
I stare at it anyway.
My whole body’s buzzing — not like adrenaline, or panic. Different. Deeper. Like I walked out of a fight and didn’t realize I was bleeding until the air hit it.
Hetouchedme. Caelum Voss touched me and I let him. That should scare me. It should disgust me. It doesn’t, and that fucking terrifies me.
I exhale too fast and it punches out of me ragged—like a balloon losing its air. My knees feel weak in a way I hate. I’m still half-pinned against the window like his hand is still there under my jaw, like his thumb is still pressed under my cheekbone. Like he’s still brushing my hair back behind my ear, as if I’m something breakable he’s already decidednotto break.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
I shove off the wall too hard. My legs don’t like it. Too much coil left in the muscles. I’ve been tensed since last night and I can feel it now — a deep ache in my shoulders, the knot at the base of my skull, my jaw clenched so tight it almost hurts to open my mouth.
I pace, because if I sit I’ll start thinking. And if I start thinking, I’ll start shaking.
The room smells like him. That’s almost worse than the touch. The air still holds that expensive, controlled warmth he carries — clean soap, whiskey, something sharp like pepper and something darker underneath it like smoke. It’s in the fabric of my shirt where he leaned in. It’s on my skin where his thumb dragged under my eye.
I scrub at my cheek with the heel of my hand like I can erase it. And I know… I can’t erase the rest. He said “Ember,” and it did something to me like someone hooked a finger at the base ofmy spine and pulled. He said “my disobedience,” and I wanted to claw his face open. He said, “Look at me,” and I did.
And then I told him. God! Fuck!I told him. “He told me to run.” Why did I say those words?
I drop onto the edge of the bed and grab a pillow, crushing it against my stomach, curling around it hard enough to dig my nails into the seam.
Stupid. Reckless. Weak.
I can still hear the way my voice sounded when I said it. Thin. Cracked. Not smart. Not sharp. Not the girl who forced five criminals to sign a protection contract before breakfast. Just a sister, shaking. Just a sister who watched them put a toe on Owen’s memory and couldn’t stop herself from snapping.
I don’tbreakin front of men like him.
