Caelum doesn’t do that.
He watches. He waits for you to show your throat. And when you do, he doesn’t rip it out. He puts his hand there and says, “Look at me.”
My breath stutters again. I hate that I can still feel his thumb where he wiped my tears. I also hate that there were tears for him to wipe.
My eyes burn again just thinking about it, and I get angry at myself fast, like slamming a door. I stand up and move, because staying still is a trap and I know better.
The cameras in the corners tick faintly. Always watching.
Ash’s domain.
I glance up at one, just long enough to make sure it catches the look I want it to — tired, small, harmless. I even yawn for effect. Then I turn my back, give them nothing else.
They think I’m broken. Let them. They’d already torn this room apart when they brought me here. I know they did. They checked the floorboards, the mattress, the seams, every piece of furniture. If the drive had been here, they’d have it by now.
It isn’t.
I was careful.
The night before I was captured, I knew what I was walking into. I’d already moved the drive out of the flat and into a dead drop only one person in the city besides me knows how to access — and he’s not talking, because he’s buried under a name that doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s still there. Secure. Invisible.
They can watch all they want. They won’t find it.
I don’t have to touch it to know exactly where it is. Beneath brick, rain, and a layer of wet, London grime, locked in a junction box that looks like it hasn’t worked since Thatcher. My heartbeat steadies a little just remembering it.
They think they have me boxed in. They don’t. They never did.
I turn the tap on in the bathroom and splash my face. The shock of cold water snaps the fog out of my head. I dry off with the towel, meet my reflection.
Copper hair, tangled. Ice-blue eyes rimmed red. Mouth still split, faint shadow of his thumbprint fading near my jaw.
I look like hell. But I’m breathing. I can do something with that. “Get it together,” I whisper. “No shaking. No crying. No slipping.”
No giving anything else to Caelum Voss unless I decide he gets to have it.
No telling him what I am.
Agent.
That word finally sits all the way in my head, and I feel, for the first time since his hand left my face, like I can breathe.
Owen and I weren’t street kids who got lucky. We weren’t just survivors.
We were placed. We were trained. We had purpose.
They thought we were disposable. Thought he died and I’d go quietly. They thoughtwrong.
I drop the towel and lift my chin. The girl in the mirror lifts hers back. Copper-red hair, ice-blue eyes, freckles across her nose, inked vines and bones up her arms, silver glint in her nose ring. I look like London chewed me up and spit me back out for round two.
Good.
Round two is where I usually win.
“Get it together,” I tell her quietly. “No shaking. No crying. No slipping.”
No giving anything else to Caelum Voss unless I decide he gets to have it.
