He just lies there, massive and immobile, his crystalline tracery glowing softly in the dim orange light.
I wait.
Still nothing.
"Right," I say. "Well. I'll see you next week, then."
I grab my hoodie from the supply station and head toward the door. My legs are still shaky. My hands are still trembling slightly from the adrenaline, from whatever the hell just passed between us.
But as I reach for the door handle, I hear it.
A sound.
Low. Deep. Gravelly.
A voice.
"Next week."
I freeze.
I turn back toward the table.
He hasn't moved. He's still face-down in the padded cradle, his massive body sprawled across the furs. But I can see the way his shoulders have relaxed, the way the tension in his spine has eased.
And I can see the way the luminous seams beneath his skin are glowing just a little bit brighter.
I don't say anything.
I just nod.
And then I leave.
Except I don't.
Not really.
Because as I reach the door, I feel it—that same electric awareness from earlier, sharper now, more focused. His eyes on my back. Tracking me.Seeingme in a way that makes my skin prickle with something I can't quite name, something that feels like being known, like being claimed, like being marked as something important.
I don't turn around. I'm not brave enough for that.
But I'm hyperaware of every step I take, every breath I draw, the way my body moves through the space between us, the way the air feels heavier, charged, like the room itself is holding its breath.
It's ridiculous. It's paranoia. It's just adrenaline still flooding my system from the intensity of the session.
Except it doesn't feel like paranoia.
It feels like beingknown.
I push through the door and into the cool hallway, my heart still hammering against my ribs. And I don't look back.
Chapter 4: Cyprian
Eleven fifty-five.
The digital clock mounted on the volcanic stone wall counts down with agonizing precision, each minute ticking past while I sit here on the edge of the reinforced massage table like some pathetic creature desperate for scraps of attention. Five minutes until Tamsin Beck walks through that door with her compact frame and sharp tongue and impossibly soft human hands that somehow manage to crack through petrified tissue like it's nothing more than dried clay. I shouldn't be waiting in the dark like this, shouldn't be sitting here in the dim orange glow of the heat lamps with my wings folded tightly against my back and my hands resting on my thighs like a supplicant awaiting judgment.
I'm Cyprian, director of Obsidian Aegis Security, commander of operatives across three continents. I've survived wars, plagues, and the collapse of empires.
