His thumb stills mid-sweep against my waist, something flickering behind his eyes. “The one thing I thought he gave me because he believed in me.” A bitter smile ghosts across his mouth. “Should’ve known better. Nothing in Eclipsera comes without a contract. It wasn’t freedom, just a longer leash.”
Remorse claws at my chest. “Rowe, I’m sorry. I know what that place means to you. The creatures. The work—”
“It’s okay.” His voice stays quiet, though his fingers flex against my spine. “You were right to be angry. I got out, or so everyone thought. But Alexander doesn’t release what he thinks he owns.”
I drag my focus anywhere else. The marble floor catching fractured glimpses of movement, the chandeliers scattering candlelight into splintered shards, the strings straining with a tension that won’t align with the chaos hammering in my chest. Anything to avoid the maddening sweep of his thumb at my waist, each slow pass of calloused skin awakening something aching inside me.
“I know what you’re doing,” Rowe murmurs, steering us through the sea of silk and scrutiny. A lock of dark blond hair falls across his brow, catching in the amber glow. “Using me to make him jealous. It’s fine, I’ve been your buffer since the Academy.”
The truth cleaves sharper than I expect, cutting the breath from my lungs and replacing it with a weight I can’t dislodge. Because that’s what Rowe has always been—an unspoken refuge. A quiet loyalty I never earned but always leaned on. Once, his steadiness was enough.
“Rowe . . .” His name claws its way out, carrying the weight of a thousand regrets. He leads us through another pivot, and I can’t meet his eyes. I can’t bear the kindness still burning there. “I didn’t think you’d actually say yes. Not after what I said earlier.”
His laugh is soft, a breath carrying something hollow. “When have I ever been able to say no to you?” His voice lowers. “I’d never pass up a chance to dance with you. Even if it’s only another move in your game with him.”
A flash of memory surfaces, his hands steady and reverent as he tended to Blue, his childhood companion. The iridescent bird’s wings shimmered under moonlight, fluttering as it hopped between his fingers. I had watched, frozen, as its soft trill pierced through me. It sounded exactly like the Prism Hamster in my father’s lab that morning. And then the darkness surged. My magic struck before I could hold it back, lashing out at the innocent sound. I’ll never forget the horror in Rowe’s eyes—not at the outburst itself, but at what he saw uncoiling beneath my skin.
“I’m sorry,” I say now. “You were just trying to help and I—”
“It’s fine.” His voice is gentle, while his hand slides fractionally lower on my bare back as we turn. I try not to react, but my body betrays me again. Another memory surfaces of how he looked at me after that day, his eyes searching for a girl who no longer existed. “You were hurting. I understand.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” The confession catches in my throat, barbed as briars. I remember tear-streaked pages and his careful handwriting. Words that let me grieve when everyone else expected composure. “Those letters you wrote . . .” My voice falters, and his stance shifts closer. “Everyone told me to steel myself and move on, but you . . . you gave me permission to shatter. To stop pretending and be broken for a while.”
“Aria—” My name on his lips carries the shape of a forgiveness I haven’t earned.
“No. Let me say this.” I force myself to meet his gaze and immediately regret it. “I lied. I read every one of your letters. All of them. And the honesty in them, the way you saw me, it terrified me.” His fingers glide higher, searing a path between my shoulder blades. “I burned them because I couldn’t bear it. Because being known like that felt unbearable.”
For one unmoored breath, I wonder what those hands would feel like unrestrained against more than just my back. But the thought shatters as my gaze catches across the ballroom and collides with Dom’s.
He watches us like he always does, with that liquid-metal stare that sets my blood aflame. People whisper we’re toxic, that we’ll ruin each other beyond repair. But Dom knows what it’s like to house something you don’t understand. Something dangerous that doesn’t want to be tamed.
Rowe’s thumb draws a slow arc against my waist, and I have to fight the instinct to recoil. Not from discomfort, but from the unbearable tenderness of it. Another memory strikes. His face after I confessed what happened in the lab—one more creature dead. How he tried so hard to convince me I wasn’t like my parents, even as I saw the fear flickering in his eyes.
“You’re nothing like them,”he’d insisted. “This isn’t who you are.”
But Dom? He didn’t flinch when I’d confessed how my magic had surged with that first kill in the lab. How something in me had hungered for more even as guilt clawed at my throat.
“Everyone pretends they don’t feel it,”he’d smiled, fingertips ghosting along my jaw. “That rush when you hold a life in your hands. The power and curiosity. It’s not sick, love. It’s honest. The only difference between you and them? You don’t lie about how good it feels.”
And he was right.
Where Rowe tries to anchor me to the girl I used to be, Dom hands me the blade and tells me to see what it can do. He made the darkness mine and let me wear it without apology. Why fight what comes so naturally, when he’s never once asked me to be less?
That’s why me and Rowe could never work. His kindness comes from seeing only my better angles, from believing in a version of me that died a long time ago. I have too many sharp edges now, too much darkness coursing through my veins. I would slice him to ribbons with my jagged pieces. The worst part? He’d let me.
My gaze finds Dom for the third time where he lounges against a marble column, a predator at rest in expensive tailoring. The whiskey in his hand gleams like a blade half-drawn, a warning I’venever been able to obey. Because he’s the only one who’s never tried to rescue me from the wreckage.
“You’ll go back to him, won’t you?”
Rowe’s question breaks through my thoughts as his hand moves higher now, the hesitant reverence from before gone. The touch burns with purpose, his fingers mapping my spine with a certainty that says he’s done being careful. He knows we are down to the last few heartbeats, and refuses to pretend this doesn’t matter.
When I don’t answer—can’t—he pivots us sharply, his broad shoulders eclipsing my view of Dom.
“Every time I see you at these events, every rare moment you let me near,” a dangerous edge creeps into his voice, “you look at him the same way. Like he’s gravity and you’re already falling. No hesitation, no fear of the impact.”
“You don’t understand what Dom and I—”
His hand leaves my waist, and the absence carves a wound in its place. Then, his fingers brush my cheek, tucking a wayward curl behind my ear with such devastating tenderness that my breath catches. The touch lingers, breaking every unspoken rule between us. Something in those blue eyes turns the fortress I’ve built around myself into a ghost town—abandoned, defenseless, and crumbling into dust.
