Finally, he turns down a narrow, unlit alley, the car’s headlights cutting a swath through the darkness. The alley ends in a solid brick wall. He kills the engine. The sudden silence is more deafening than the roar.
“Stay here,” he says. It’s not a request. Cassian gets out of the car and disappears into the shadows.
I am alone. My hand instinctively goes to the door handle. I could run. I could get out, flee back into the anonymous streets, find my way back to the library, to my apartment, to the nothingness. The thought feels hollow, a lie. Running now wouldbe like reading the first page of a book and then throwing it into the fire. The curiosity he ignited in me has become a ravenous, gnawing need.
A moment later, a section of the brick wall groans and slides sideways, revealing a heavy steel door. A man, a mountain of muscle with a scarred, impassive face, stands silhouetted in the doorway. He nods at Cassian, a gesture of profound, unquestioning respect. Cassian gestures back toward the car.
He comes back and opens my door. “Come on,” he says.
My legs feel unsteady as I get out of the car. The air in the alley is cold, and smells of damp rot and garbage. Cassian places his hand on the small of my back, the familiar gesture both a comfort and a brand. He guides me toward the open door, toward the mountain of a man who watches me with cold, dead eyes.
“She’s with me, Tiny,” Cassian says, his voice casual.
The man, Tiny, just grunts, his gaze sweeping over me once, dismissive and uninterested. I am not a threat. I am just an accessory.
Cassian leads me through the doorway, and the world explodes.
The sound hits me first, a physical blow that makes me stagger. It’s a wall of noise, a tidal wave of raw, human sound—a thousand desperate voices yelling, screaming, baying for blood. The air is thick and hot, choking me with the smell of sweat, stale beer, adrenaline, and something else; something metallic and sharp that I recognize with a sickening lurch: the smell of fresh blood.
We are on a narrow metal catwalk overlooking a vast, cavernous space. It must be an old, abandoned warehouse. The ceiling is lost in darkness high above and single, harsh bare bulbs hang down on long wires, casting stark, dramatic shadows. Below, a seething mass of people, mostly men, are packedshoulder to shoulder around a makeshift ring in the center of the floor. The ring is nothing more than a square of canvas on the floor, surrounded by thick, greasy ropes.
Inside the ring, two men are tearing each other apart. They are huge, monstrous figures, their bodies slick with sweat and blood. It’s not a sport, it’s not boxing. It’s a brutal, primal, unrestrained brawl. There are no gloves, no referee to be seen, just two men locked in a savage dance of pain.
My stomach churns. I feel a wave of nausea so intense I have to grip the metal railing of the catwalk to keep from falling. This is what he meant,somewhere you’ll feel something.He has brought me to the heart of the violence, to a place where the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away and only the raw, ugly truth remains.
“Cassian, I can’t—” I begin, my voice a choked whisper.
He leans in close, his breath warm against my ear, his hand still a possessive weight on my back. “Yes, you can,” he murmurs, his voice a low, hypnotic rumble beneath the roar of the crowd. “The Crimson Cat is where I go to think. This... this is where I go to pray. You wanted to see the monster, Aria. Welcome to the sermon.”
He guides me along the catwalk, the crowd parting for him with a deference born of fear. Men with hard, cruel faces nod at him, their eyes flicking to me with a mixture of curiosity and appraisal that makes my skin crawl. A man reeking of whiskey stumbles into our path, his leering gaze fixing on me.
“Well, look what we have here. You lost, little thing?” he slurs.
Before I can even flinch, Cassian moves. He doesn’t push the man. He simply shifts his body, blocking me from view, and places a hand on the man’s chest. It’s a deceptively gentle movement.
“She’s not lost,” Cassian says, his voice dangerously quiet, a blade of ice in the suffocating heat. “She’s with me. And if youever look at her again, I will personally gouge your eyes from their sockets. Do you understand?”
The man’s drunken bravado evaporates. He pales, his eyes wide with a sudden, sober terror. He has seen the same thing the drunk at the bar saw, he has seen the monster behind the mask. He stammers an apology and scrambles away, disappearing into the throng.
Cassian doesn’t even watch him go. He turns his attention back to me, his expression unreadable. “I told you,” he says softly. “You’re safe. With me.”
He leads me to a small, raised platform at the edge of the catwalk, a sort of VIP section that offers a clear, unobstructed view of the ring. There are a few rickety chairs, but no one is sitting. The tension is too high.
He positions me against the railing, standing behind me, a solid, warm presence that cages me in. I am trapped between him and the brutal spectacle below. One of the fighters in the ring goes down, a sickening crunch of bone echoing even over the roar of the crowd. The fight is over. Men in the crowd are exchanging money, their faces flushed with greed and bloodlust.
My entire body is trembling. I am disgusted, terrified. I want to close my eyes, to block it all out, to retreat back into the familiar, safe void, but I can’t.
I am mesmerized. It’s horrifying, but it’s also the most real, most alive place I have ever been. There are no lies here, no pretense, just raw, unfiltered, primal humanity.
“Watch,” Cassian whispers in my ear, his voice a silken command.
I realize he’s no longer standing behind me. He’s beside me, shrugging off his leather jacket, his movements fluid. He hands the jacket to me. It’s heavy, and still warm from his body.
“Hold this for me,” he says.
I take it, my fingers numb. My mind struggles to understand.Why is he giving me his jacket?
He turns and begins to wrap his hands in thin strips of black tape, the movements practiced and precise. He’s not watching the men cleaning the blood from the canvas below. He’s watching me.
