27. Unauthorized Access #2
“We’re going,” Riot insisted. “Tonight. Right now. We’re not waiting for morning, we’re not waiting for permission, we’re going. Okay?”
“Really?” The word came out small. Fragile.
“Really.” Riot pressed his forehead against Cass’s. “Get cleaned up. I’ll handle supplies.”
Cass nodded against him. The door in his mind was still there, still rattling, but it was closed now. He didn’t have to look at what was behind it. He just had to get to Honey.
The heat was gone, he noticed distantly as Riot helped him stand.
That desperate ache that had lived in his body for days had faded to almost nothing.
He was still warm—warmer than normal—but the wetness had almost stopped, the cramping had stopped, the hollow need that had driven him into Riot’s arms over and over had finally quieted.
First heats were supposed to be short, right?
He vaguely remembered someone saying that.
Or was it something he wished for? And his body had been through so much.
It made sense that it would burn out quickly.
He didn’t question it, mostly because he didn’t have room in his head to question anything except getting to Honey before the door in her mind started to form.
Cass found paper in the drawer of Lilac’s nightstand. A stub of pencil, worn down to almost nothing. His hands were still shaking as he sat on the edge of the bed, trying to think of what to write.
Miss Lilac, I’m coming back for this, he wrote. The letters were shaky, uneven. Please keep it safe. Thank you for your kindness.
He stared at the words. They didn’t feel like enough. Nothing felt like enough.
P.S. Riot picked flowers from your fence for my hair. I’ll plant new seeds when I get back.
He folded the note carefully and set it under the circlet, the silver weighing down the paper like a promise he felt foolish making.
Across the room, Riot was moving, shoving things into a pack and checking weapons Cass hadn’t even known he had. His jaw was set, his movements sharp, and every few seconds his eyes would flick to Cass with an expression that made something twist in Cass’s chest.
Cass looked away. He couldn’t bear the weight of that gaze right now.
He’d hit Riot. The red mark on his cheekbone was already darkening into a bruise, visible even in the dim light. And before that—his nails raking across Riot’s chest in the bathroom, breaking skin, drawing blood.
He kept hurting Riot.
Brother Matthias once explained why some people attracted suffering through their negative spiritual energy. Some souls were so unbalanced that they poisoned everything they touched by proximity alone.
But maybe he had been right. Maybe that was what was wrong with Cass—not something broken that could be fixed, but something fundamentally rotten. A wrongness at his core that leaked out and infected everyone around him.
Riot had been fine before Cass stumbled into his life.
He’d had a home. A community. People who cared about him, who understood him, who weren’t afraid of him even when his eyes glowed gold.
Now the whole Collective probably thought Riot had lost his mind, tricked by an Elysian, led astray by a missionary who couldn’t even complete the mission he’d been sent to do.
He’d ruined his relationship with Honey—his one real friend, his soul-family, the person who’d known him longest—by being unable to love her the way the Elders demanded.
He’d ruined his standing by failing Chrysalis, by being too deficient to accept the help they’d tried to give him.
He’d ruined Brother Matthias’s sessions by vomiting and crying and never quite achieving the purity they kept promising was just around the corner.
And now he was ruining Riot.
Cass watched him move—the economy of motion, the quiet competence, the way he handled the pack and the weapons like extensions of his own body.
Everything about Riot was capable. Strong.
Certain. Even with the Berserker lurking underneath, even with the damage Gensyn had done, Riot knew who he was and what he could do.
Cass didn’t know anything. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t plan. He couldn’t even explain what had happened behind the door in his mind without falling apart. All he could do was cry and shake and need things—need comfort, need reassurance, need someone to hold his hand through the dark.
Pathetic, something whispered in his head. It sounded like Brother Matthias. It sounded like the Elders. It sounded like himself.
Weak. Broken. A weight around everyone’s neck.
“Cass.” Riot’s voice cut through the spiral. “You need to get dressed.”
Lilac left clothes for him at some point—a tank top of soft gray cotton; a thin jacket with a hood; pants with a drawstring waist because he was too thin for anything with a proper closure. The clothes of someone who didn’t quite fit anywhere.
He dressed mechanically. The tank top hung loose on his shoulders, the armholes gaping to show the scars on his chest. The jacket swallowed him, sleeves falling past his wrists. When he pulled the drawstring tight on the pants, he had to wrap the excess cord around before it would stay.
He looked like a child playing dress-up.
This is who Riot is risking his life for. This... nothing.
Riot appeared beside him, a pack slung over one shoulder, and his eyes tracked over Cass’s borrowed clothes with something that might have been pain. Or pity. Cass couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
“Ready?” Riot asked.
Cass nodded.
They slipped out of the bedroom, through the destroyed living room, past the dent in the wall and the books and all the evidence of what they’d done here.
Riot moved like a shadow, barely making a sound.
Cass tried to copy him and mostly failed, his bare feet too loud on the hardwood, his breathing too ragged, everything about him too much and not enough at the same time.
The front door creaked when Riot opened it. Cold night air rushed in, sharp and clean after the warmth of the house.
Cass stepped onto the porch.
And stopped.
The sky was huge above him. Stars scattered across black velvet, more than he’d ever seen in Springfield Gardens’s carefully controlled atmosphere dome.
The Collective sprawled out in the darkness—low buildings, wild gardens, paths winding between structures that looked like they’d grown rather than been built.
It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing Cass had ever seen.
And he was leaving it. He was making Riot leave it, because everything he touched turned rotten eventually.
He thought about the circlet on the dresser. The note underneath it. I’m coming back, he’d written, like he had any guarantee that his negative energy wouldn’t poison this place too, given enough time.
And Honey was waiting for him. Honey was counting on him. What could Cass actually do to save her?
He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t plan. He couldn’t even walk across a room without making too much noise.
“Cass?” Riot’s voice was soft. “What’s wrong?”
The tears came before Cass could stop them.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. The words felt like shards of glass in his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.” Cass wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly cold despite the jacket. “You were—you had a life here, Riot. You had people. You had a home. And I just—I showed up and I ruined it, I ruin everything, that’s what I do—”
“Cass—”
“Brother Matthias was right.” The words tumbled out, ugly and true.
“I’m spiritually deficient. I have negative energy and it poisons everything around me.
I couldn’t love Honey the right way and I couldn’t finish Chrysalis and I couldn’t even do my mission, I was supposed to bring people back and instead I just—” He gestured helplessly at himself.
“I just needed things. All the time. And you kept giving them to me and now you’re—”
His voice cracked.
“Now you’re leaving your home because of me. And your grandma is angry at you because of me—”
“My grandma?””And I hit you, Riot, I hit you and I’ve never hurt anyone before and now I keep hurting you, over and over, and you’re so—”
He couldn’t breathe. The spiral was pulling him down like dark water closing over his head.
“You’re so good,” he whispered. “Everyone said you were scary but you’re not, you’re good, you held my hair back and you picked me flowers and you bought me something beautiful when you didn’t even know if I’d—and I don’t deserve any of it, I don’t deserve you, I’m just—I’m just a stupid missionary who can’t do anything right and I don’t understand why you’re—”
He was sobbing now. Real, ugly sobs that shook his whole body.
“I don’t understand why someone like you would want someone like me. I’m not smart. I’m not strong. I’m not anything. And I keep needing and needing and needing and everyone around me gets hurt and I can’t—I can’t stop, I don’t know how to stop, I don’t know how to be anything except—”
Broken.
A burden.
Wrong.
He couldn’t even finish the sentence. He just stood there on Lilac’s porch, wrapped in borrowed clothes that didn’t fit, crying like the pathetic thing he was while the stars wheeled overhead and everything he’d ever believed about himself finally collapsed into rubble at his feet.
He was ache in the shape of a body.
Riot grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him like he was trying to swallow any more words before they could finish, like he was drowning and Cass was air, like the world was ending and this was the only thing that mattered.
Cass tasted salt and felt wetness on his cheeks that wasn’t his own.
When Riot pulled back, his eyes were shining. Gold flickered in them, dim but present, and they were wet. His face was twisted with something that looked like pain—like Cass’s words had hurt him, like watching Cass fall apart had broken something in his chest.
Even now, Cass was hurting him. Even now, his negative energy was—
“Stop,” Riot whispered, kissing him again. “Stop thinking whatever you’re thinking. I can see it on your face. Stop.”
“I can’t—”
“I want you because you’re you.” Riot’s hands were still on his face, thumbs brushing away tears that kept falling. “You want to know? I’ll tell you.”
Cass tried to shake his head, tried to pull away, but Riot held him steady.
“I want you because you’re the only person I’ve ever met who couldn’t lie if his life depended on it.
” Riot’s voice was low and fierce. “I want you because when you ask questions, you actually want to know the answers. I want you because you saw me—really saw me, Berserker and all—and you didn’t run. ”
“That’s not—”
“I want you because you picked up a stranger’s bleeding hand and tried to help, even when you were bleeding too.
” Riot’s eyes were burning now, gold flickering like flames.
“I want you because you sewed your best friend’s picture into your clothes.
I want you because when you found out someone you trusted lied, you didn’t give up—you decided to save someone. ”
Cass’s breath hitched.
“You laugh like you’ve never heard anything funny before and you’re just discovering that laughter exists.
” Riot’s voice cracked. “You looked at a piece of silver you didn’t even recognize and your whole face lit up like I’d given you the sun.
You’re kind, Cass. Genuinely, actually kind, in a world that beats kindness out of people.
And I don’t know how you held onto it—after everything they did to you, I don’t know how you’re still good—but you are. You are.”
Cass was shaking. The tears wouldn’t stop, but something in his chest was shifting—the rubble rearranging itself into something that almost felt like a foundation.
“You’re not broken,” Riot said quietly. “You’re not a burden. You’re Cass. And I—”
He stopped. Swallowed. His eyes were so bright, gold swimming in tears.
“I love—”
“Well, isn’t this romantic.”
They both froze.
Sage was sitting on the porch railing, her pack at her feet and her rifle across her lap, watching them with an expression that was equal parts amusement and wariness. Her moss-green hair caught the starlight, and her eyes moved between them calmly.
“How long have you been there?” Riot demanded.
“Long enough.” Sage slid off the railing, shouldering her pack in one smooth motion. “You two done? Because we’re burning moonlight.”
“Granny Lu said you couldn’t come.”
“Granny Lu says a lot of things.” Sage’s voice was flat, but there was steel underneath. “I’m coming anyway.”
Riot’s jaw tightened. “She’ll be furious.”
“She’ll get over it. Or she won’t. Either way, I’m coming.” Sage’s eyes moved to Cass, then back to Riot. “What’s the drama? He looks like someone ran over his puppy and then backed up to make sure.”
Cass’s face burned. He turned away, swiping at his eyes with the sleeve of Lilac’s too-big jacket, trying to pull himself together. His stomach was doing strange things—swoopy, fluttery, still spinning from the kiss and the words.
Behind him, he heard Riot move closer to Sage and the low murmur of Riot’s voice, too quiet to make out individual words. The tone was flat. Urgent. Angry underneath.
He caught fragments. —behind a door— and —Chrysalis wasn’t— and —going to kill him—
Sage took in a sharp breath.
“Fuck.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but Cass heard it anyway and flinched.
“Yeah,” Riot said quietly.
When Sage spoke again, her voice was different. Harder. More focused. “Okay. We’re taking two cars.”
“Two cars?” Riot sounded confused. “Why would we—”
“In case we need to split up. In case things go sideways. In case we need to get someone out fast while the others run interference.” She paused. “Trust me. Two cars.”
Cass turned back to face them. Sage was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read—not the amusement from before, not the impatience. Something closer to recognition. Like she was seeing him for the first time and didn’t like what she saw.
No. That wasn’t right. Like she was seeing him for the first time and was angry about what she saw.
“You good to move?” she asked.
Cass nodded. He didn’t trust his voice, but he could move. He could put one foot in front of the other. That was all he had to do right now—just keep moving.
Riot’s hand found his, fingers intertwining, squeezing once.
“We’ll finish that conversation later,” Riot said quietly. “I promise.”
Cass squeezed back. The words were still there, hovering between them like a precipice they were both standing on but hadn’t quite fallen off.
Later. They’d finish it later.
And somewhere in the wreckage of Cass’s chest, underneath the fear and the shame and the door that wouldn’t stop rattling—
Something that felt like hope flickered to life.