She was gone before Cassia could respond.
The thunder outside intensified.
“Cassia.” Aero’s voice was quiet. “Breathe.”
She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath. Hadn’t realized the wind was howling outside, rattling the station’s windows, threatening to tear the antennae from the roof.
She breathed. Pushed the magic down. Forced the wind to be gentle.
“I hate her,” she said.
“I noticed.”
“There’s something wrong with her. I can’t—” She shook her head, frustration coiling in her gut. “I can’t put my finger on it, but every time she talks to me, I feel like I’m being taken apart. Like she knows exactly where to cut.”
Aero was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. “Sirens have an innate sense for vulnerability. Their magic allows them to identify emotional weak points.”
“So she’s been manipulating me.”
“Not overtly. If she were using her Voice, you’d know.” He moved to stand beside her, and the warmth of his proximity steadied something inside her. “What she’s doing is more subtle. Targeted observations. Pointed questions. Establishing herself as sympathetic while undermining your confidence.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.” His jaw flexed. “But I intend to find out.”
TWENTY-TWO
CASSIA
The afternoon passed in a blur of data and calculations and the quiet hum of Aero working three feet away.
Cassia threw herself into the analysis with desperate focus. Anything to avoid thinking about Nerissa’s words. Anything to avoid noticing the way Aero’s presence made her magic settle and spark in equal measure.
She cross-referenced historical storm data from the archives with current anomaly readings. Mapped surge intensity against wave patterns. Tried to find the thread connecting the chaos.
It was there. She could feel it. Some underlying pattern that would make sense of everything if she could just?—
“You need to eat.”
She blinked, surfacing from her focus to find Aero standing beside her desk. The windows had gone dark. Night had fallen without her noticing.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly eight. You’ve been staring at that screen for six hours.”
“I’m close to something. The patterns?—”
“Will still be there after you eat.” He held up a paper bag—the kind from Maggie’s Diner down on the main dock. “I brought dinner.”
Cassia stared at the bag, then at him. “You brought me dinner.”
“You weren’t going to feed yourself. Someone had to.”
“But—” She tried to process this. The ancient dragon elder, who’d probably eaten dinner with kings and witnessed the fall of empires, had walked to a harborside diner to buy her takeout. “Why?”
His expression flickered—that crack in his composure she’d learned to watch for. “Because I wanted to.”
Four words. Simple. Devastating.
