That’s what this is.
A container turned into a human holding pen.
Christ.
The man walks toward me slowly, and the closer he gets, the more the light catches.
Black clothes. Long sleeves. High collar. Burn scars climbing one side of his neck.
Then his face.
One side untouched. Hard. Familiar.
The other dragged and ruined by old fire, the skin pulled tight and shiny in places where it should move naturally. One pale blue eye stares dead and flat from that side, wrong in a way that makes something cold slide down my spine.
I know him before he gets all the way into the light.
Of course I do.
“Arsen?”
His mouth tips, not quite a smile. “Ayla.”
For a second I just stare at him through the bars.
Then annoyance wins.
Because really?
Really?
“What the fuck is this?”
His gaze drops over the cage like he’s assessing workmanship. “Temporary.”
I bark out a sharp laugh and instantly regret it when pain stabs through my skull. “Did Gabriel put you up to this?”
“Not for him,” he says.
That wipes the rest of the sarcasm off me.
My brows pull together. “Then why?”
Arsen stops a few feet from the cage. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to make it clear he doesn’t need to.
For a second I just stare at him.
At the face I’ve known since I was a kid. At the man whose house I used to walk through like it meant nothing. At the same voice, the same shape, the same presence—only now standing on the other side of a cage with me inside it.
“What the hell is this about, Arsen?” I ask. “You know me.”
His expression doesn’t move.
“If this isn’t for Gabriel, then why the fuck am I here?”
Nothing.
So I go uglier. “I’m not good enough to traffic.”
