Charlie’s voice, when it finally came, held a tremor of fear I had never heard from him before. “Did you find something? Is she in immediate danger?”
I gripped the phone tighter, my knuckles going bone white. I was unsure how much to relay when Violet had begged me not to reveal the whole truth—her hunt for Edward, her dancing at Oubliette, the drug. . . So I went another route, offering a truth that was public knowledge.
“There was a murder at the school. Surely you have seen the news?”
“I did, but. . .” He paused, and I could practically hear him choosing his words with deliberate care. “Was it one ofthem?”
The way his voice shook—part disbelief, part shock, part hope that I would say no—nearly had me laughing. Still the cynic, it appeared. Still hoping the supernatural world would leave our family untouched despite evidence to the contrary.
“I do not know yet, but I am investigating.” I kept my tone measured, professional, even as rage and protective instinct churned beneath the surface.
“If it is, Violet needs to leave that campus immediately. Are we clear?”
Violet’s face flashed through my mind—her expression tortured and defiant when she’d said, “I’ve had enough of men doing what they think is best for me.”
Ah, fuck. She is not entirely wrong.
“Wait.” I forced my voice to remain steady, to not betray the internal war I was waging. “Violet is an adult, Charlie. More of an adult than any of us want to admit, given her previous life’s experience. She needs to decide what to do with her future, but she needs to be aware of the dangers if she chooses to stay.”
Charlie’s voice turned hesitant, uncertain. “Rowan, I do not know if Levi will—”
“Then you handle him.” I cut him off, injecting steel into my tone. “He holds you in high enough regard to leave you alone with Sloane. We both knowthatmeans he trusts you more than any other living person.”
I waited for Charlie to process the implication, to understand I was calling in a debt of trust.
Finally, he said, “Okay. Do you plan on telling Violet? About your past life?”
The question burned at me, reminding me of what a coward I was.
I did not know if Violet would find solace if I told her of my reincarnation. Despite her knowledge that both Charlie and Levi had been reborn like her, she never opened up to either of them about what she’d suffered during her first life.
Then, if I were to tell her of my own complication of being in a completelydifferentbody? I was afraid she would reject me or believe that I was mocking her. Just as I was forced to do—over and again these past five years—with Charlie and Levi, I would have to spend time proving my first life to her.
“No,” I said. “I will tell her when I am ready. Charlie, when you have time, look into something called thePax Tacere.It might be related to things happening here. I will reach out if anything changes.” The words came out commanding and final.
We said our goodbyes—brief and awkward, the conversation having stripped away our usual easy rapport. I ended the call and stared at my phone’s dark screen, seeing my reflection distorted in the glass.
It had been nearly three weeks since the night I first found Violet outside Oubliette’s entrance, all defiance and desperation wrapped in an ebony cocktail dress. Three weeks since I’d watched her dance for the first time and felt something fundamental shift in my chest, some tectonic plate of my carefully constructed emotional landscape cracking under pressure.
Fourteen days since I first felt her cunt clench around my cock as I whispered filth in her ear—since I first heard the sounds she made when she came apart in my arms.
After I’d taken her back to her dorm—after we’d fucked with a desperation that had left us both shaking, after I’d tied her up and learned she trusted me with her body in ways she’d never trusted anyone—something between us had shifted.
Violet was more guarded than ever, refusing to let me back in. She’d rebuilt her walls higher and more vicious than before. While she had never verbally said it was a ‘mistake’, it fucking felt like she thought that way. Despite my pleas, she stalked the shadows of Oubliette each night, searching for her monster with a single-minded focus that left little room for us to discuss the intimacy we’d shared. Each night I watched her dance was a reminder of the dangerous games she played between the veils.
Our days were filled with loud notes—her hurled barbs and bratty retorts designed to provoke, my cold counters and visceral threats I'd meant in my bones—sharp enough to cut, and driving us apart.
Other days were filled with quiet notes—how much closer we stood, how lightly our fingertips brushed together, how often we’d reach out to grace a brief touch on an arm—that would set our blood singing so sweetly, we had to force ourselves to walk away.
So we’d fallen into a complicated rhythm, alternating between forbidden desire and frustrated anger, that pulled at us both. Yet, somewhere between her venom and my control, we’d created a space neither of us admitted to needing—a dance that simmered beneath our skin and occasionally erupted into arguments that left us both breathless.
Hopefully, this would not turn into one of those arguments.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Violet as I stood in her dorm room.
“Bring you to class?” Violet clarified, shoving textbooks into her bag with more force than necessary. The canvas bulged, overstuffed with the evidence of her academic dedication. “Professor Wright’s instructions for today were, ‘bring a friend to traumatize,’ as he put it. He even booked a larger auditorium to accommodate the extra bodies. I believe it’s his way of making up for having to postpone his guest speaker.”
“Guest speaker?”
