People look at us.
Not with awe.
With curiosity.
With something darker—a hunger that matches the heat.
I feel exposed here in my silk dress and expensive skin, like I don’t belong and everyone knows it. I feel like a sacrificial lamb paraded through the streets. The locket presses cold against my chest, suddenly too visible, too heavy. It feels like a target.
Kai flashes through my mind again—him in the trees, in the dark, his hands covered in the same grime that coats this market, breathing this air like it belongs to him.
I wonder if he’s been here before.
I wonder if this is the kind of place he learned how to disappear. I wonder if he’s watching me right now, counting the seconds until he can rip Noah’s hand off my body.
Noah steers me toward a stall selling old knives and tools, their blades dulled with age but still sharp enough to draw blood, to gut a man from groin to chin. He picks one up, testing the weight, the balance, his eyes sparking with a sudden, sharp interest.
“See?” he says, holding it out to me. “Still useful. Still dangerous. Even after all this time.”
The implication settles in my gut like a stone. He’s talking about the violence he’s capable of.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
I swallow hard, the air suddenly too thick to breathe. “It’s… sharp.”
He smiles faintly. “Exactly.”
He pays without haggling, tucks the knife away like a souvenir.
A warning. A promise of what’s coming.
As we walk deeper into the market, his grip on me never loosens. It’s a vice. Every time someone gets too close, he tightens it just enough to bruise, just enough to remind me where I’m meant to stand—under his heel. I start to feel likeI’m being paraded, displayed in a place that doesn’t care about appearances. A place that only understands power.
“People here believe in spirits,” Noah says casually, his voice dropping to a low, intimate crawl. “Old gods. Old debts.” His thumb presses into my spine, hard enough to hurt. “They believe some bonds can’t be broken. Only transferred through blood.”
My breath catches.
Kai.
The name beats against my skull now, a rhythmic, pulsing scream, loud enough that I’m afraid Noah can hear it.
I imagine Kai here—leaning against a post in the shade, his eyes dark and homicidal, watching me move through this crowd with Noah’s hand on me. I imagine him cataloguing exits, planning the exact trajectory of the bullet, waiting for the moment he can reclaim what’s his. The thought sends a shiver through me that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with a sick, twisted inevitability.
“You’re shaking,” Noah murmurs, leaning down so his mouth brushes my ear. It feels like a snake sliding over my skin. “Don’t.”
“I’m hot,” I lie. My voice is thin, pathetic.
He hums softly, unconvinced, his fingers twitching against my back.
“We’ll stop soon,” he says. “There’s something I want to show you. Something final.”
The words settle heavy between us, a death knell.
The jungle closes in as we leave the market behind, the noise fading, the path narrowing again. My pulse keeps time with the tires on gravel. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Whatever he’s taking me to—I know, deep in my bones, that it isn’t meant to make me feel safe. It’s meant to break the last of my spirit.
And the worst part? The most fucked up, terrifying part?
