Chapter Five
GAbrIAL
SHE SAT at the far end of the table in the white dress I’d told her to wear, the color pulling a quiet glow from her skin the way I liked.
Her hair was styled exactly to my preference—good girl—but it didn’t move the way it should.
There was a piece missing in her shoulders, in the way her stillness sat on her like a garment she’d chosen instead of been given.
And when I praised her, she didn’t immediately bow her head.
Zara’s glass sat too close to the edge of her plate. Sable reached for it without looking at me, sliding it inward as if for the child’s sake. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was the first move in something else.
It’s never the big gestures that betray a person. It’s the smallest shifts, the fraction of space they steal back, the angle of a hand when you move the knife closer, the way they stand a breath off from where they were told.
My gaze drifted to the balcony doors at the far end of the room. The curtains there swayed, just barely, as though touched a moment too long ago for any draft to explain it.
“You moved the chair,” I said, conversational, as if I hadn’t already measured the distance between its legs and the mark on the floor.
She kept her eyes on Zara. “I wanted a better view of the garden.”
A better view. The garden was always in view. And if she’d wanted it closer, she could have asked me.
I let my eyes rest on her a heartbeat longer, not enough to be called staring, but enough for her to feel the weight of it. “Always good to know where the walls are,” I murmured.
Malik began reciting something he’d learned that day, his voice even, measured. I nodded, but my mind stayed with the curtain’s movement, the shifted chair, the fraction of distance between Sable and obedience.
I would let her think I believed her.
People confess more when they think you’ve stopped listening.
I turned back to Malik, but in my blood there was already a warning forming its edges into something sharper. I wouldn’t call it a plan. Not yet. Plans make promises. Warnings only ask you to listen.
And I was listening now. I was listening to everything.
***
THAT NIGHT, THE intercom light steadied, its faint hum filling the bones of the room. I let my finger rest on the button a beat longer than necessary before pressing it. The pause was intentional, enough time for her to feel me before she heard me.
“Sable,” I said, soft, coaxing. She always came faster when my voice sounded like a promise instead of a summons. “Come.”
I pictured the way she’d rise—slow, careful—closing the door behind her like she could trap her fear on the other side. She thought I didn’t notice the change in her steps on the nights she’d done something to make me watch her closer.
Tonight, her steps would be different.
The balcony curtain had been disturbed earlier. A ripple, subtle enough most wouldn’t see, but nothing in my house moves without my leave. Someone had been there. And she’d been close enough for a whisper.
I didn’t need proof yet. Proof was for the weak.
I needed truth, and truth always comes if you press the right place.
Tonight, I’d wouldn’t press hard—that would come later.
She was mine—my creation, my flame—and no one touched what was mine.
She came, head bowed, robe whispering across the stone. The candles were already lit, twelve in their perfect circle, the black candle at the center like a pupil watching her.
She knelt without hesitation. Perfect. But perfection is a mask, and I like pulling masks off.
“Look at me.”
Her chin lifted slower than I preferred. Eyes the color of wild honey met mine, eyes that had learned to hide but hadn’t yet learned they couldn’t hide from me.
I circled behind her, letting silence grow heavy enough to bow the spine. “Do you believe the fire in you belongs to me?”
“Yes, Gabrial.” Quiet. Smooth. Practiced.
I smiled where she couldn’t see it. “Prove it.”
I held out the ash bowl, not to mark her, but to see if she would take it. Her hesitation was small, the width of a breath, but I felt it. She cupped the bowl in both hands.
“Pour it.”
Her fingers trembled as she scattered the ash over the black candle, snuffing it out in a single gray breath. The air between us cooled.
“Again,” I said, striking a match, relighting the wick.
She obeyed. Snuffed it again.
I made her repeat the ritual until her hands were steady, until obedience stopped being a thing she performed and became the shape of her will.
Kneeling beside her, I brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek. “If you ever hide your flame from me, I will see it. I will take it back. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Gabrial.”
“Come,” I said, rising. “I’m not finished with you tonight.”
And I wouldn’t be finished tomorrow, or the day after, not until I knew who’d been close enough to speak to her through that curtain.
The chair would still be there in the morning, its legs one inch off the mark I’d left in the floor.
It would wait for me.
So would she.