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There are two of them and one of me. My husband’s hand is still around my arm, and my cousin, my dearest friend, is about to be shipped off to pay my debt.

Beside me, Jade has gone very still, his gaze moving from the two men to Dad, then back to me as his fingers tighten around my arm. When he looks at Dad again, his face shows no pity. Just anger.

“Leave us, Asher.” Dad’s gaze stays on mine. “Take your husband home. This concerns Ryven. I only wanted you here because I thought you should see the consequences of your choices.”

“But—”

The two men take another step, and I flinch. I don’t let myself look Ryven in the eye, and I hate myself for it.

“Jade.” Dad turns to him with that same fucking smile. “Take your husband home, please.”

Jade says something I don’t hear. His hand closes around mine, pulling me away from the table, away from Ryven and Seren, and from my dignity. He gets me through the corridors and out of the house before I can look back.

He takes the wheel without asking, and for a moment I wonder why I ever assumed he couldn’t drive. Then we lift off, dip into traffic, and head home.

“The fucking asshole,” I mutter. “I hadn’t thought⁠—”

I can’t finish it.

I’ve been so fucking stupid.

“That he’d marry your cousin off for his cause?” Jade asks, keeping one hand steady on the controls as he guides us through traffic.

“Yeah.” I push the hair back off my forehead and let out a long breath. “I should’ve known. He’s wanted that Veyra contract for years, long before he decided I could be stock for the Imperial’s second son.”

“Well, at least the guard’s gone.” Jade glances at me, then looks ahead. “We can talk freely about how we get Ryven out of this.”

But there’s no way out, even though I can’t tell him that. He still believes there’s a way to reason with that motherfucker, some angle we haven’t found yet.

And I just left him there.

I didn’t even look at him.

We come down onto the pad so gently that I barely feel it, Jade killing the engine a second later.

“Where did you learn to fly?”

“I didn’t.” He sits back, and only now do I see his hands. They’re shaking. “I’ve never driven anything in my life. I’ve stripped engines out of half of them. I’ve never sat in the front.”

I stare at him, replaying every turn he took to get us out of my father’s valley.

“You needed to get out of there,” he says, as if that settles it. Then he opens his door.

The house is dark when we come in. Jade goes ahead of me into the living room, switching on the lights as I make it only as far as the chair by the cold fireplace before my legs give out. I sink into it with my coat still on, hands hanging between my knees.

Ryven. Because of me.

I scrub both hands over my face. I’ll fix it, but I don’t know how. Still, I don’t care what it costs. The mine. The House. Every credit with my fucking name on it.

Except he didn’t want it. I put Calder on that table tonight, all of it, and he poured himself more tea and asked if I’d finished. Whatever I won down there isn’t currency to him.

So it’s still mine. Sitting under my name, doing nothing.

Ryven is not paying for my choice. He doesn’t get to leave Tempest. I’ll find another way.

Something touches my knee. I’ve been staring at the grate for who knows how long, and when I look down, my husband is on the floor in front of me.

His shoes are off, his jacket gone. He sits up on his knees between my feet with both hands flat on my thighs, looking up at me, and adrenaline kicks straight through me.