Chapter 54 – Aurora
I wake with paint in my hair and the wrong ceiling above me.
For a second I don’t know where I am. The bulb over the easel glows a tired amber, and the smell of turpentine has settled into the blanket like a second skin.
The sofa under me is narrow, the kind that forces you to choose a position and suffer for it.
My shoulder’s cramped, my neck is a knot, and my palm pulses in time with my heartbeat under the small white bandage Cassian wrapped last night.
My canvas leans on the easel where I left it—furious slashes of red and blue and black, the knife-scrapes showing the underpainting, my handprint smeared down the left third like I tried to climb out and got caught.
Cassian is gone.
I push the blanket down and sit up slowly.
My chest feels hollow, a room after a storm where you can smell the water but don’t see it.
The paint on my collarbone has dried into a stiff stripe; when I run a fingertip over it, flakes dust down onto my tank top.
There’s a streak of ultramarine on my knee where his hand had been, and the sight hits me in the solar plexus, fast and mean.
It isn’t shame exactly. It’s recognition: of how far I let myself go, how deep I let him pull me, how much of last night was mine and how much I let him make.
I rub sleep grit from my eyes, swing my legs to the floor, and make myself stand.
I peel the blanket off, fold it, and set it on the sofa arm like the act might fix the parts of me that feel scattered. I find the tiny bathroom attached to the studio.
The mirror is honest in the flat light. My hair is a constellation of paint flecks and sleep tangles.
There’s a faint bruise low on my throat that looks like a thumbprint, my own black crescent moons under both eyes, and a streak of blue along my cheekbone I didn’t notice last night.
I could write a confession on my skin if I wanted to.
I turn on the shower and step out of my clothes while the water beats the pipes into warmth.
Hot water helps. It melts the dried paint, softens the clumsier parts of last night into something my body stops bracing against. When I lift my bandaged palm to the spray it stings, then calms. I close my eyes and let the stream run over my face and down my back until the bathroom fogs. For three minutes my brain goes quiet.
The quiet doesn’t last. Images edge back in: the knife’s cold flat against my neck, his voice in my ear, my own name split in half on my tongue.
I brace my hands against the tile and breathe until the heat forces my lungs to choose air over memory.
When I step out, my fingers are pruned, my hair is a wet rope down my back, and the woman in the mirror looks like she could pass for someone who slept.
I find an old pair of leggings folded on a shelf and a soft gray long-sleeve shirt that must have been left by another artist, or stocked by some assistant who guessed at sizes and neutral colors.
The fabric smells like the room. I tie my hair into a knot at the nape of my neck and leave it damp.
I’m suddenly aware I’m thirsty, hungry, and full of a restlessness that has nowhere to go.
The East Wing corridor is empty when I step out, carpet thick enough that my footsteps make no sound.
A new face sits on a low stool at the far end, pretending to scroll through a tablet.
She looks up as I pass. Her eyes flick to my bandaged hand, then back to the screen.
She’s young and pretty. The shortest route between soft and unthreatening.
I don’t want food. What I want is air.
The garden doors on the ground floor open to a wash of damp morning. Mist clings low over the grass. The stone path is wet, the hedges beaded with droplets like someone dusted them with sugar. I fold my arms and step onto the path, the cool coming through the thin soles of my flats.
The grounds at this hour feel like a place between places.
The hidden level hums below, the house breathes behind me, and out here the world pretends Sanctuary is just a rich person’s estate with too many gardeners and very quiet guests.
My chest loosens on the second lap around the nearest fountain.
The restlessness stays, a dog tugging at its lead, but it stops yanking my ribs out of position with every breath.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, a small mechanical heartbeat against my thigh. For a split second I think it’s him. I want it to be him and I don’t—both feelings arrive at once and bang against each other, canceling themselves out. I take the phone out and swipe without thinking.
Unknown number. No name. The preview is a sentence and a thumbnail.
You’re not safe. He used you at the gala. He’ll use you again. Want proof?
I stop walking. My stomach does a small mean flip. I hold down on the message to bring up the full view. There’s more text and a photo. It opens over the words like a sudden window in my palm.
It’s the overlook. The river’s curve is unmistakable, the way the tree line dips right of center, the slant of late afternoon light hitting the rock face like a fake set.
The frame is distant, the focus bad, but it’s us.
He’s on the hood of the SUV; I’m standing next to him, head tipped up.
His hand cups the back of my neck, his thumb under my jaw.
It’s not obscene, not even really intimate, except it is.
You don’t know how much you’re saying with your body until you see it from fifty feet away.
I’m not breathing right. The air that felt like medicine a minute ago has turned into a narrow straw jammed into my throat. I swallow and force two mouthfuls of mist in and out. It tastes like cedar and copper.
How did they get this?
The ground under my flats might as well be glass. Every hedge could be a camera. The electric hum of the perimeter fence at the far edge of the lawn, a sound I’ve come to find weirdly comforting, suddenly feels like a net.
There’s a second buzz. Another message stacks under the first.
He’s not who you think. He’s controlling the story. You’re a pawn, Aurora. Reply yes if you want out. We can move you today. Quietly.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. I know this is manipulation.
I know I’m the easiest version of myself to manipulate right now: overtired, overstimulated, unable to trust the part of me that wants more of him and not sure I should trust the part that wants to run.
I lock the phone and jam it into my pocket like the act can seal whatever leak has sprung in my life.
Footsteps sound on the gravel behind me. I know before I turn that it’s not Cassian.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” Reid’s voice is all easy warmth at this hour. He comes out of the mist with two paper cups and a hood pulled over his hair. He’s wearing a gray sweatshirt, dark joggers, and sneakers. He offers me a cup. “I bribed the kitchen. It’s actually drinkable.”
I take it without thinking. The lid is warm against my palm. Steam blooms up and disappears. I pretend the heat is why my hands shake.
“You’re up early,” I say.
“So are you.” He looks at me properly, not the quick scan for threats he gives everyone else. His eyes catch on the bandage on my hand, move past it like he’s not going to comment unless invited. “Big night in the studio?”
I don’t flinch. He notices anyway. “Sorry,” he adds quickly, palms up. “That sounded nosy. I meant the art. Navarro said you were working through something.”
Working through something. Sure. I huff a breath that’s not a laugh and not an answer.
Reid sips his coffee. “Cassian keeps you in the dark more than he should.” He says it like a confession on someone else’s behalf, gentle, protectively critical. “He means well, but he was born believing secrets are oxygen.”
“Did you two come out of the same factory?” I ask before I can filter it.
He grins. It looks genuine on him, which is its own magic trick. “Different assembly lines. He got the knife set. I got the spoons.”
I want to smile. I don’t. The phone in my pocket feels like it’s gained weight. I shift to keep it from knocking against my leg.
“If you ever want to talk to someone who won’t run you through the Cassian Ward Guilt-and-Glory machine,” Reid says lightly, “my door, my phone, my texts are open. I won’t tell him unless you want me to.”
“Appreciated,” I say, and the word tastes like an unripe fruit—almost sweet, mostly bitter.
He blows across the lid of his cup, gaze sliding to the path behind me. “We’ve got a site visit today,” he says, like he just remembered. “Nothing dramatic. A donor property that’s converting to a small intake clinic out by the coast. Cass wants to take a look before we start the build-out.”
“Cassian told me nothing about it.” It comes out flat. The part of me that wants him to be perfect is offended; the part that has learned he can’t be is not surprised.
“He’s been… preoccupied.” Reid’s tone makes it a joke and a kindness. “I was going to suggest he bring you.” He shrugs. “Might help to see what the Sanctuaries look like before they’re Sanctuaries.”
I watch him over the rim of the cup. “Would it be safe?”
“Safer than staying on the grounds with your own brain chewing on itself,” he says, then winces like he went too far and can’t take it back. “Kidding. Mostly. We’d go low-profile. No logos or calling attention to anything. I’d be there. He’d be there. In and out.”
There’s a moment where I picture it too perfectly: the drive along the coast, windows cracked to let salt air in, Cassian in the driver’s seat, Reid behind us tapping something into his tablet that looks like logistics and feels like order.
A shell of a building with potential standing on a bluff, empty rooms waiting for paint and plants and people.
Me in those rooms, taking measurements with my eyes.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, because it is both the truth and a way to avoid giving away the decision I can feel forming.
“Do,” he says. He checks his watch. “I should grab the ten-minute check-in with the crew. Want me to walk you back?”
“No.” I lift the cup. “I’m going to finish this out here.”
Reid nods. His gaze flicks toward the small dome camera mounted a few feet down the path on the garden wall.
The lens is fogged with mist. The tiniest motor sound hums and the camera tilts a fraction, like a sleepy eye adjusting.
He gives a small smile and looks back at me. “Text me if you need anything.”
He says it like a friend and leaves. When he’s far enough that I can’t pretend to read his posture like a language, I exhale hard and fast. My palms are damp around the cup lid.
The coffee inside has gone from hot to tolerable. I drink, not for taste but to give my hands something to do. The caffeine hits quick.
A leaf drops off the hedge into the path and skitters. I jump like it’s a footstep.
Enough.
I can’t keep bouncing between certainty and panic like a ball in the world’s worst game.
If Cassian won’t tell me everything, I need to start seeing things for myself.
Out there. On a site that isn’t curated for me, in rooms that don’t already know me by name.
He’s not going to like that I want to go.
Good. I’m tired of asking permission from men who think protecting me means hiding me.
Mist curls around my boots. My phone warms in my pocket like a small animal. I put my hands in my lap to keep from taking it out and yank my own thread.
I brush mist off my thighs and turn toward the main building. If I’m walking into a trap, I at least want to choose the door.