“I don’t understand.”
“He didn’t return the same.” Yasmin can barely control the fury in her voice. “He came back changed. He asked to be deactivated and never said why. The MSA refused, because we don’t just destroy sentient beings on request. For the past three months, we’ve been trying to restore him to his previous self, but all his confessions are failing. Brother Tolliver is at a loss. No purge works anymore. Castien can’t work, can’t function, can’t do anything except kneel in that blasted confession room. He’s locked himself inside and won’t let the other steel seraphim use it. Brother Tolliver is the only one who has access to him. Both of them refuse to tell me anything, insisting that confession is private and we have no right to know what’s happening inside his head.”
The air leaves my lungs, and I feel like I’m in the Drowning Room again. I struggle to process Yasmin’s words. Castien has locked himself in a room for three months, refuses to function, and has asked to be deactivated.
“What did you do to him?” Yasmin demands.
“I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know,” she repeats. “Three months, Miss Holloway. Three months he’s been like this. What happened in those caves?”
“I–” I stop because I don’t know how to explain it. “I fully intended to reach out to him. I got caught up in managing… everything. I’ve been so overwhelmed by decisions and responsibilities, and I kept thinking I’d call tomorrow or next week, as soon as I had a moment to breathe, but–”
“Whatever you did,” Yasmin interrupts, “fix it. Fix him. Pardon my language, Miss Holloway, but get your ass to London and fix what you broke.”
The line goes dead.
I stand there holding my phone, staring at my reflection in the glass. The woman in the pearl necklace stares back at me, and I don’t recognize her.
Does Castien want to die? Can he even die if he’s a machine? No, not a machine. He’s more than that. He has thoughts, feelings, and a soul, even if he doesn’t believe it. He told me he loved me in the Confession Chamber, and I said no. I said I didn’t love him back.
I told Yasmin the truth. I was swamped by work, buried under paperwork and decisions. But I thought about Castien relentlessly. I wanted time and space to decide what I truly feel for him. The madness of dealing with the inheritance kept me busy from dawn till dusk, but I missed him.
Every night, I’d unlock my phone and stare at the contact number for the Monster Security Agency branch in London. But the longer I stared at the screen, the heavier the phone felt in my hand, until I inevitably set it down. I told myself it was for his own good. Castien is pure and devout, and I am the woman who corrupts everything I touch. I convinced myself that dragging him into my world would only ruin him. I believed I didn’t deserve him, and it was safer to leave him be.
I wrench the door open and stride back into the reception area, where Tara is reviewing her tablet. She looks up when I approach.
“Get the plane ready,” I say. “I’m flying to London in an hour.”
“London?” Tara’s eyes widen. “But the opening is in two weeks. We have meetings scheduled with the Rikers administrators tomorrow, and the final walkthrough with the interior designer, and…”
“Cancel them,” I say. “Reschedule everything. I don’t care what it takes, I need to be in London today.”
“Of course, Miss Holloway.”
I turn away from her and walk to the window, looking out at Manhattan spreading below me. I have everything I ever wanted sitting right here, at my feet. Money that will last generations, status that opens doors I didn’t even know existed, and a practice that will change lives. I’m the Holloway heiress now, the woman who claimed a cursed fortune and survived where all her ancestors failed. I’m rebuilding a legacy that was lost for generations.
And I left him broken.
I need to get to him before it’s too late. What have I done? I’m a horrible person. I corrupt, then abandon… I only think about myself.
Castien… How could I? He is pure. I need to make this right.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Castien
The only way I can ignore the passing of time is if I stay in sentry mode.
In this state, I exist without the weight of hours or days pressing on me. Time doesn’t pass the way it does for creatures made of flesh and bone. I’m aware, but I use minimal energy. My processors run at their lowest capacity. I stand upright against the wall in the Quiet Room, still, conscious but not living.
Three months have gone by like this.
After I said goodbye to Jessa after a meticulous debriefing and watched her walk away with her inheritance secured and her future bright, I came straight here. Brother Tolliver was waiting. We went through the confession protocol the way we always do. I knelt at the docking station, exposed the port at the nape of my neck, let the cable connect.
I verbalized my sins one by one – every detail, touch, and every moment I coveted her flesh and helped myself to it.
None of it could be purged. The deletion protocol ran, but the files remained. We tried again, and again. Brother Tolliver’s shift ended and he had to leave, but I refused to go. Days passed, we kept trying, but got the same result each time. The memories stayed locked in my Aether Core.
