Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Cassiel sits silently across the room, his hands folded loosely in his lap, his gaze fixed on her.
On Lillien. She’s curled on my bed, motionless, her dark hair spilling like ink across my pillow.
Her breathing is even, steady, untouched by the storm that changed her.
The aftermath of transformation always looks like this—serene, deceptively calm.
But beneath the stillness, something monstrous is stirring.
She hasn’t moved since Cassiel wrapped her in silence and care, crouching beside the bed with a washcloth in hand, wiping the sweat from her brow like she was porcelain—cracked, not yet shattered.
I watched him move, slow and reverent, like he was performing some sacred rite.
As if cleaning her would preserve her innocence.
As if she hadn’t already been torn apart and rebuilt into something new. Something ours.
She is fragile. For now. But that won’t last.
Behind me, Bastion stretches with a long groan, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders like a soldier coming down from battle. “I need a fucking fight,” he mutters, flexing his fingers. “All that pussy made me soft.”
Cassiel says nothing, and I don't bother acknowledging the comment either. Bastion’s always loud after he’s quiet too long, like his body doesn’t know what to do with stillness. He yanks his hoodie from the back of the chair and heads for the door without another word.
“I’ll be back before sunrise. If she wakes up possessed or something, call me.”
The door slams behind him. The sound echoes, hard and final, like a gavel dropped in judgment.
I move closer, arms crossed as I study her face. She still looks human. That illusion won’t last either. Her soul’s been rewritten. Her body will catch up.
Cassiel rises from his seat and joins me at the edge of the bed. “She’ll wake soon,” he says quietly. “I left clothes for her.”
“Good.” I don’t tear my eyes away. “We need to be gone before she does.”
His head snaps toward me, disbelief flickering in his eyes. “What?”
“She needs to wake up alone,” I repeat, sharper this time. “Figure it out on her own. Feel it without us here to coddle her.”
“She’s newly transformed,” he argues, stepping closer. “She’ll be disoriented. She’ll need support.”
I laugh, the sound low and dry. “She doesn’t need hand-holding, Cass. She needs to stand on her own legs. She needs to fight to remember who she is now.”
His jaw sets, a muscle ticking. He doesn’t like it. But he doesn’t challenge me again, either. Because he knows I’m right.
“She won’t be alone. Not really,” I add, glancing at her again. “We’re bonded now. If anything happens, I’ll know. I’ll come.”
Cassiel exhales slowly, tension still bleeding from every line of his posture. But he turns and walks away, pausing only once at the door before disappearing into the hall.
I wait until I’m sure they’re both gone. Then I step outside, slipping into the darkness. The woods welcome me easily. The night folds around my shoulders, and I scale the low branches of a nearby oak, finding a perch with a clear line of sight to the window.
I settle in, silent as a blade unsheathed.
And I wait.
Because when she wakes up, the real story begins.
When she wakes, it’s slow. Not groggy, not confused—just gradual, like the way dusk folds into night.
Her lashes lift one at a time. She blinks at the ceiling, at the room around her.
At nothing in particular. For a moment, her eyes are vacant.
But then—there it is. The flicker. A thread catching fire.
Awareness sliding back into her gaze like it never really left.
I see the exact second memory returns. Not all of it. Just enough.
She stretches. Her body arches like a cat, languid and fluid and too graceful for someone who only just clawed her way back into a body not quite hers anymore.
Then she rises and moves toward the pile of clothes Cassiel left for her, and I study the way she dresses—no hesitation, no trembling hands, no cracked mirror of fear.
There’s no panic. No screaming. No tears.
Fascinating.
Instead, she roams.
She walks the halls like a ghost haunting her own life, peering into rooms, brushing her fingertips over walls and door frames like she’s cataloguing what was left behind.
She doesn’t call out for us. Doesn’t speak at all.
But I know she’s looking. I can feel the quiet in her chest turn into something heavier.
Disappointment. Maybe even abandonment.
Good.
Let her feel it. Let her stew in it. Let her wonder if we meant it, if we used her. Let her ache a little for the ones who remade her. It will teach her something. Make her sharper. Hungrier. Stronger.
But then—she pauses.
Just outside Cassiel’s door.
Her head turns ever so slightly. The muscles in her jaw tighten. Her lips part like she’s about to say something and then doesn’t. She stares for too long. Lingers.
And a splinter of heat stabs through me. Ugly and fast. Does she want him?
The question slams into me, leaving its teeth behind.
My spine locks, every nerve pulled taut.
She saw him, didn’t she? Saw the way he touched her.
So gentle. So reverent. Like she was some holy thing he’d spent eternity praying for.
The way he wiped her brow. The way he smoothed the sweat from her collarbone like he was born to serve her.
What if she liked that? What if she prefers softness? Kindness? What if she chooses him? My teeth grind, pressure mounting until I swear I feel enamel crack.
The bond between us—still so new, so raw—flares like a blade drawn too fast from its sheath. It scorches down my back, over my shoulders, searing through the muscles like wildfire.
She’s mine.
It doesn’t matter if it’s irrational. Doesn’t matter if it makes me sound feral or fucked in the head. I’ll own it. If she moans his name in the dark, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.
Eventually, she drifts outside.
Bare feet skim the dew-damp grass; her borrowed shorts clinging to her thighs.
She doesn’t move with purpose, not exactly—but she doesn’t wander either.
It’s like her body remembers even if her mind hasn’t caught up.
I follow from a distance, careful not to break a twig or shift the wind. She doesn’t sense me.
Not yet.
She retraces her path through the woods, steps finding the old rhythm. Her shoulders straighten when she recognizes the edge of campus. She’s looking for something. And when she drops to her knees, fingers scrabbling through the leaves and underbrush, I already know.
The phone. Her last thread to the old world.
And when her fingers close around the dirt-slick device, when her thumb brushes the cracked screen and it lights up like it still belongs to her—I feel her relief.
She still believes this can anchor her.
She thinks technology, texts, school calendars, and dorm rooms will tether her to who she used to be. But none of that matters now. The old world won’t come for her. It couldn’t even if it tried.
The life she knew is ash, already scattered. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Then—voices. Faint at first, like laughter bouncing off brick. I recognize one before I even register the words.
Shawn.
I go still.
He’s close. Close enough that she could find him by accident. His voice cuts through the trees, unmistakable in its arrogance. Mocking. Loud and lazy, like someone who’s never been hunted. His friends bark out an ugly laughter, clearly drunk on their own cruelty.
She hears them a moment later.
I watch the way she stills, eyes narrowing. She doesn’t run. Doesn’t call out. She presses herself into shadow, body folding low like instinct has already begun its rewiring.
I don’t interfere.
Gods, I want to. I want to tear him open. Paint the forest floor in the red smear of his spine. Snap his jaw for even talking about her. For the way he treated her. For daring to exist in the same hour she was born again.
But this moment isn’t mine. It’s hers.
So I wait. And I watch.
She creeps forward, behind the building, toward their voices. She crouches, her breath quiet, her limbs steady. She doesn’t blink.
And then—I see it. The shift.
Her expression calcifies. Her posture sharpens. There’s a quiet fury simmering beneath her skin, and it is delicious. It spreads like poison blooming in still water.
Predator. That’s what she is now. She just doesn’t know it. Or maybe she’s realizing it.
She touches her mouth absently. Her fingers graze her teeth—and they’re sharper. Her nails are longer too. Barely. But it’s enough to draw blood if she wanted.
And she wants.
Shawn keeps running his mouth. He laughs about what she “owed” him. He jokes about what she probably did after the bonfire. His friends echo him like the hollow cowards they are.
And she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t scream or shrink. She listens. And then—she leaves.
Not in defeat. No, no. There’s a promise in the way she walks. A vow written into every slow, deliberate step as she turns back toward campus, fists clenched, eyes hard.
She’s going to burn him. And when she does… I’ll be waiting. I’ll be watching. Because she’s not our victim anymore.
She’s our vengeance. Our little demon.
Becoming.