“You’re a terrible liar, Aria,” he says, and the casual way he uses my name makes my skin crawl. It’s too intimate. He has no right to it.
Before I can summon a response, a shadow falls over us.
I look up into the flushed, vacant face of a man reeking of cheap beer. He’s big, his shoulders blocking what little light reaches our corner. “Well, well. Look what we have here,” he slurs, and his eyes don’t look at my face. They drop, hot and heavy, to my chest. “You’re a little too pretty to be hiding in the corner, sweetheart.”
A familiar, sickening wave of dread and annoyance washes over me. It’s a feeling every woman knows. The unwanted advance. The reduction of your existence to a single, consumablepart. My body tenses, my muscles coiling as I prepare to deploy the usual defenses: the cold stare, the sharp dismissal, the pretense of a boyfriend on his way.
But Cassian doesn’t give me the chance.
I watch him, and what I see terrifies me more than the drunk ever could. He doesn’t get angry. His expression doesn’t even change. If anything, he gets calmer. The faint, mocking amusement in his eyes vanishes, replaced by an absolute, chilling emptiness. It’s like watching the light go out in a room, leaving something cold and dead in its place. His entire body goes still, a predator that has locked onto its prey.
“She’s busy,” he says. His voice is quiet, dangerously quiet.
The drunk scoffs. “I wasn’t talking to you, asshole.”
Cassian slowly turns his head. He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t move a muscle. He just looks up at the man, and the sheer, focused malice that pours off him is a tangible thing. It sucks the air out of our little booth. “This is your one and only chance to walk away,” he says, his voice a blade. “If you take one more breath in this booth, I’m going to break your fucking jaw. Do you understand me?”
It’s not a threat, it’s a statement of fact. It’s a promise of swift, brutal, and absolute violence. I can see it in his eyes. He wants the man to challenge him, he is hoping for it. I suddenly see the alley again—the blood, the manic energy, the beautiful, broken thing designed for violence.
The drunk sees it too, and his beery bravado evaporates in an instant. The color drains from his face, replaced by a pasty, slack-jawed fear. He sees the monster Cassian keeps leashed just behind his teeth. He mutters, “Whatever, man,” and practically falls over himself to get away.
The silence he leaves behind is deafening. The bar is still roaring, but in our booth there is a pocket of absolute, ringing quiet. My heart is hammering so hard it hurts.
Cassian turns his gaze back to me. The emptiness is gone, replaced by that unnerving, intense focus. He looks at me as if nothing out of the ordinary has just happened.
“See?” he says softly, his voice a low murmur that is somehow more frightening than the violence he just promised. “It’s a warzone, but you’re safe. With me.”
The words hang in the air, and I feel the true meaning of them settle into my bones. He wasn’t protecting me from the drunk. The drunk was an annoyance, a gnat. He was protecting his claim. The man’s crime wasn’t threatening me; it was looking at me.
“Why?” I whisper, the word scraping my dry throat. “Why did you do that?”
“Because he was looking at you,” he says like it’s the most obvious reason in the world, like it’s a law of physics. The sun rises in the east. Gravity holds us to the earth. No one looks at you but me. The chilling, absolute possessiveness of it is breathtaking.
He leans forward, and I flinch, my back pressing into the cracked vinyl of the booth. “You’re terrified right now,” he says, his voice dropping even lower. “Every part of you is screaming to run out that door, but you’re not leaving. You’re still sitting here. Why?”
He’s right. I am terrified. He’s also right that I’m not leaving. The curiosity, that tiny, burning ember has become a forest fire. I have to know. I have to understand the creature sitting in front of me. After two years of feeling nothing, this terror is a confirmation that I am still alive. The intensity of it is horrifying, but the absence of the void is almost a relief.
He leans closer still, and my world narrows to his face. The sharp line of his jaw, the faint scar through his eyebrow, the impossible green of his eyes. He smells of whiskey, the cold night air, and something else, something uniquely him—like ozoneafter a lightning strike. “You came here for an answer, Aria,” he murmurs, his breath warm against my skin. “You want to know what I am. You want to know why you’re not as empty as you thought you were.”
Then he pulls back. He stands up and walks away, leaving me in the booth, my heart a trapped bird against my ribs.
This is my chance. I can run, I can slide out of the booth, walk out the door, and never look back. I can go home, lock my door, and try to rebuild the walls of my nothingness. It’s the smart thing to do. It’s the sane thing to do.
My legs won’t move. Running feels like a lie. I walked in here for a reason. Fleeing now would be a betrayal of that single, terrifying, active choice.
Cassian returns. He’s holding two glasses. He slides back into the booth and places one in front of me. It’s a simple glass of water, condensation beading on its side, a slice of lime floating among the ice cubes. It’s a gesture of care, of consideration. It’s so completely at odds with the cold-blooded monster I saw just moments ago that the dissonance makes me dizzy.
He doesn’t say anything. He just watches me, his own glass of whiskey held loosely in his hand.
The glass of water sits on the table between us. It’s not just water. It’s a contract. It’s a question.Are you in or are you out?
My hand trembles as I reach for it. My fingers feel clumsy, too big. They brush against the cold, slick glass. I lift it. The ice cubes clink, a tiny, fragile sound in the overwhelming noise. I bring it to my lips. I can feel his eyes on me, watching my every move.
I take a sip.
The water is cold and clean. It’s the most definitive, terrifying, and irrevocable decision I have ever made.
Eight
