For the first time, something close to approval touches Arsen’s face.
“You were always very smart, Ayla.”
My mouth goes dry.
I make myself sneer anyway. “What, you think he’s going to come running because of me?”
Arsen doesn’t even blink. “That’sexactlywhat he’s going to do.”
My stomach drops, but I keep my chin up.
“What’s your plan?” I ask. “Because this worked out so well with the Amatos, didn’t it?”
That does it. His jaw ticks. Not much. Just enough.
Good.
So he can still feel something.
“This one is personal,” he says.
I let out a short, sharp laugh. “Of course it’s fucking personal.I’mpersonal to you.”
“No.” His voice turns quieter. Colder. “Not you to me.”
He steps closer.
“Himto me.”
Something dark turns over in my chest.
I stare at him through the bars, then at the ruined side of his face. At the eye that doesn’t work. At the skin Maksim once put back into breathing.
“This is about him saving you?”
Arsen goes still. Really still.
Not a blink. Not a shift. Nothing.
“You think that’s what he did?”
I hold his stare.
I’m not stupid enough to say yes. But I’m not built to back down from men like him either.
So I shrug one shoulder. “You’re breathing.”
He is fingers wrap around the bars of my cage.
He’s close enough now that I can see every warped edge of scar tissue, every place the fire reached and stayed.
“Andthat,” he says, voice low and flat, “was his mistake.”
His good eye holds mine.
“And unfortunately for you, Ayla”—his gaze flicks over me, the bars, the space I can’t get out of—“it may be your demise.”
This time the fear doesn’t come smart.
