“Bread again?”
I nod, throat tight, the words catching somewhere behind the lump that’s lived there for days.
“What happened to your face?”
He touches the swelling absently, wincing a little as his fingers brush the split skin.
“He went for the door last night.”
“And?”
“I was in the way.”
I grab a pack of frozen veggies from the freezer, the plastic crinkling coldly in my grip, and go stand beside him, rising onto my toes to place it gently on the side of his face. The contact makes him hiss softly, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Doctor said the worst of the cravings should be over now,” I say, assessing the damage to his face.
“Phase two,” Ian mutters, then takes the veggies fromme and moves to the other side of the kitchen, creating distance. I hate it. “Emotional destruction. The part where the ghosts start whispering loud enough to hear.”
“You’ve dealt with this before,” I note quietly, watching the way his shoulders tense under the worn fabric of his shirt.
“My dad was an asshole.” Just that. Nothing more. The words drop like stones into still water, rippling out with implications I don’t press. We’re all going through enough as it is. Dragging up ghosts from the past can be on our to-do list another day, when the present isn’t trying to drown us.
“I’m sorry,” I say, leaning back against the kitchen counter, the edge digging into my spine like a reminder to stay upright.
“For what?”
“Your face.” I shrug, the movement small and helpless. “The fact that I can’t do more?—”
“Don’t.” He says it gently, but it lands with the weight of a door closing, final and protective. “Don’t apologize. We’re both doing what we have to in different ways. And right now, my way is the one that can take a punch and still come back tomorrow.” He throws the veggies back in the freezer with a soft thud. “Besides, something tells me you’re gonna be of more help with phase two. The quiet war. The one that needs soft hands and words that don’t cut.”
I scoff, the sound brittle even to my own ears. “You saw him. He doesn’t want me near him. Every time I try, he looks at me like I’m another chain waiting to lock around his throat.”
“Give it time. We have no idea what the fuck he’s beenthrough down there.” Ian’s voice drops, heavy with the kind of knowledge that comes from seeing too much darkness and surviving it.
A hollow feeling settles in my stomach, deep and aching, like a stone dropped into an endless well. I’ve been playing out so many scenarios inside my head—flashes of blood and paint and screams that match the fragments he’s let slip in his fevered delirium—but something tells me the worst things I can imagine doesn’t even scrape the surface.
Valeria didn’t just break his body; she remade him, piece by jagged piece, into something that still flinches at kindness because it’s never come without a price.
He grabs one of the half-decent cupcakes and heads for the stairs, his steps heavy with the exhaustion we’re all wearing like second skin. “If he doesn’t eat this on his own, I’m shoving it down his goddamn throat. Stubborn son of a bitch.”
The timer goes off, and I pull the bread out of the oven—too dense, I already know without cutting it, the crust cracking under the weight of my disappointment—but I let it cool on the rack anyway because throwing it straight in the trash feels like one defeat too many for today. Then I notice Ian’s phone on the counter where he left it charging. Face up. Unlocked, the way he never bothers to lock it, trusting the fragile sanctuary of this house more than the world outside it.
I pick it up before I let myself think about why, my flour-dusted fingers leaving faint prints on the screen like evidence of my unraveling.
My fingers find the browser, and I type her name before I let myself think about that either.
Valeria Capello.
The first page of results is exactly what I expected and somehow still manages to turn my stomach. Galas. Charity boards. A foundation with her name attached to something about arts education, photographs of her in floor-length gowns beside senators and minor royalty, always smiling the specific practiced smile of someone who has never once been caught off guard by a camera.
She’s beautiful in the way old money is beautiful—understated, expensive, the kind of beauty that doesn’t need to announce itself because everyone in the room already knows, and fears, what it costs to maintain.
But I see past it. I see the monster wearing silk. The devil who sank her claws into a little boy and twisted until he believed he was nothing more than her weapon.
My hands start to shake as I scroll, a violent tremor that has nothing to do with the failed bread and everything to do with the woman staring back at me from the screen.
How dare she look so polished, so untouchable, while Reth lies upstairs fighting demons she planted in him like poisonous seeds? How dare the world celebrate her after what she did to him, turning a guardian into a ghost?
