"You were never my father," I say, the words tasting of ash and freedom. "You were just the man who owned my mother's cage."
And I pull her out of the house, out of the tomb and into the cold, clean air. I don't stop until I have her in the passenger seat of my car, the door slammed shut. I get in, the wooden box on my lap like a sleeping child, and I drive away from the house, away from the kingdom, away from the man who thinks he is a king, tires squealing on the pristine pavement.
The silence in the car is a living thing. It is filled with the sound of her ragged breathing and the frantic, possessive beat of my own heart. I look at her. Her hair is a mess, her eyes are wide and haunted, but she is alive. She is breathing, she is mine.
Aria is a queen of ashes, and she just tried to burn down the wrong kingdom. She thought she could control the fire. She doesn't understand, Iamthe fire.
I did not save her from him. Itookher from him. It was not an act of heroism, it was an act of war. An act of claiming the one thing in this world that mattered more than my hatred for him. She is no longer just the ghost girl from the crash, she is the woman who walked into my father's house and made me choose.
She did not steal my ghosts. She woke them up, and now they are screaming for her.
I look at the road, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. The cage is gone. The leash is gone. There is only my gravity, andher orbit. She is tethered to me now, not by walls or locks, but by the violence I wrought in her name.
And I will never, ever let her fall out of it again.
Forty Seven
Aria
Thesquealofthetires is the first sound that registers. The second is the violent slam of the gearshift as Cassian throws the car into park. We are on a precipice, a scenic overlook high in the hills, the sprawling, glittering expanse of the city laid out below us like a carpet of fallen stars. A kingdom he just rejected for my sake.
The engine ticks, a frantic, cooling heartbeat in the sudden, suffocating silence. I can’t breathe. The air in the car is thick withthe ghosts of what just happened; The sound of bone breaking. The high, thin scream of a man in agony. The low, guttural roar of my stepfather’s fury. And beneath it all, the steady, terrifying drum of Cassian’s voice claiming me.Mine.
I stare out the window, but I don’t see the lights, I see the blood on the white marble floor. I should be horrified, I should be sickened. A part of me, the ghost of the girl who used to paint is screaming in a distant, soundproofed room. But the woman sitting here, the wraith he created feels nothing but a terrifying, electric hum. He did that. He unleashed that apocalypse. For me.
This isn’t a rescue. This is a claiming. He didn’t save me from his father; he stole me. He saw a shiny, broken object in his father’s house and decided it belonged in his collection.
I feel his eyes on me, burning a hole in the side of my face. I force myself to turn and look at him. His face is a mask of dark, beautiful fury. His knuckles are split and bloody on the steering wheel. A small cut on his cheek from my studio has reopened. His chest rises and falls in deep, ragged breaths. He is not a man. He is a storm contained in a suit, and the pressure in the car is about to shatter the windows.
I didn't want a hero, I didn't want a knight. I wanted a monster who would kill for me, and he was here. He was real.
“Aria,” he says, and my name is a piece of gravel in his throat.
It’s the only word he needs to say. It’s the spark that ignites the gasoline-soaked air.
He moves. One hand comes up, not to my face but to the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair, gripping tight. He pulls me across the center console, my body clumsy and weightless against his strength. There is no tenderness. It is the brutal, efficient motion of a predator claiming its kill.
His mouth crashes down on mine.
It is not a kiss, it is a collision. It is the violent, desperate punctuation to a day of chaos. His lips are hard, demanding,punishing. He tastes of adrenaline, rage, and a darkness that calls to the same void inside of me. He is trying to consume me, to brand me, to erase the scent of his father’s house from my skin.
And I am letting him. I am not just letting him; I am meeting him.
My hands come up, grabbing fistfuls of his jacket, pulling him closer though there is no more space to give.
I kiss him back with all the terror, fury, and shattered pieces of myself. I am a queen of ashes, he is the king of the fire, and we are burning together in the wreckage of our lives. This is not about love. It is about survival. It is about two people so full of violent energy that the only way to release it is to crash into each other.
He groans, a low, guttural sound of frustration and need, and breaks the kiss only to drag his mouth down my throat. His teeth graze the sensitive skin and I cry out, a sound that is half pain, half pleasure. It isn’t pain. It is a promise. A brand. He is marking his territory.
“You lit the match,” he snarls against my skin, his voice a raw, ragged whisper. “Now we burn.”
His hand leaves my hair and goes to the buttons of my coat, his movements rough and impatient. He is not undressing me. He is excavating me. A button pops, skittering into the darkness of the car. I don't care. Nothing exists but his hands, his mouth and the overwhelming, possessive heat of him.
He pulls back, his eyes boring into mine. They are black holes in the dim light of the dashboard, pupils blown wide with a savage, unrestrained need.
Cassian looks at me, really looks at me, and a shiver racks my body. This is not the cold, calculating captor from the loft. This is not the furious predator from the warehouse, this is somethingelse entirely. Cassian is a man stripped bare of everything but his most basic, possessive instincts.
“You walked into my father’s house,” he says, his hands gripping my hips, his thumbs pressing into the bone, holding me in place. “You have no idea what you did.”
