I looked at our hands, intertwined. At the steadiness of him.
“You’re going to ruin my peace,” I murmured.
Cassian’s mouth curved faintly, but his eyes stayed serious.
“No,” he said. “I’m going to change it.”
I swallowed.
And because I couldn’t help myself, because my body was honest even when my mind tried to be careful, I leaned in and pressed my mouth to his—soft, brief, a promise sealed in public where anyone could have seen.
When I pulled back, his gaze locked on mine, darker now.
“Careful,” he murmured.
“Why?” I asked, breathless.
“Because if you do that again,” he said, voice low and steady, “I’m going to forget we’re surrounded.”
Heat rushed through me, fast and sharp.
I held his gaze, anyway.
“Then don’t forget,” I whispered. “Remember who you are.”
His fingers tightened around mine.
“And who are you?” he asked, quiet and dangerous.
I swallowed, heart hammering.
“I’m the woman you’re bringing home,” I said.
Cassian stared at me for a long beat.
Then he nodded once—small, decisive.
“Yes,” he said. “You are.”
And as the plane began its descent, Charleston rising to meet us, I felt the shape of what was coming settle around my shoulders.
Not a cage.
A claim.
And somehow, terrifyingly?—
I didn’t want to escape it.
22
Charleston always made the air feel like a decision.
Even in winter.
It wasn’t warm. Not really. The damp pressed into everything, carrying salt and marsh and old brick. It slid under my coat the second I stepped off the plane, and my body reacted the way it always had here: a small exhale, a loosening in my chest, the sense that I’d returned to something that didn’t need my permission to exist.
Home.
