Chapter 27
Kieran
Someone was knocking on my door.
I dragged myself out of bed grumbling, shoving on a pair of sweats, not bothering with a shirt. I hadn’t slept all night. Every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was Seph’s face when she pushed my help away.
I have to get through to her.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Ash, did you forget your damn key again?” I muttered as I unbolted the lock. “For fucks sake—”
I stopped dead.
“Seph?”
She stood in the doorway—baggy sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, long white hair loose around her face, gloved hands twisting together in nervous knots.
She looked small.
And breakable.
And nothing like the girl who’d pushed me away yesterday.
“Um,” she said, then winced. “Hi, Kier… K.”
The correction hit like a nail through my ribs.
“Hi,” I managed. “Do you—need something?”
She glanced past me into the room, eyes scanning corners like she was checking for danger. Or maybe just checking for him.
“Ash isn’t here?” she asked quietly.
“No. He gets dosed in the mornings,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “Helps him not lose it so much in the afternoons.”
“Oh.” Her brows pinched. “They… dose him?”
“Yeah. He can be a bit… much.”
For a moment she didn’t say anything. Her gaze flicked upward, meeting mine.
And then she looked away.
“Right,” she murmured. “Okay.”
I felt the shift—the way she folded in on herself, the way she braced like she expected me to demand something from her.
“Seph,” I said gently. “What’s wrong?”
She swallowed. Hard.
“I’m actually—”
She hesitated, fingers picking at the cuff of her glove.
“I was looking for Dev.”
Every part of me went still.
“Oh,” I said, too fast, too clipped. “Right. Okay.”
She winced again, like she’d felt the edge in my voice.
“It’s not—” she started, voice small. “It’s nothing bad. I just… need to talk to him. About something he said yesterday.”
My throat tightened. “He’s asleep.”
“Oh.” She nodded, stepping back like maybe she should leave. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Seph.”
I opened the door wider.
“You can come in and wait.”
She froze in the hallway, eyes flicking up to mine with a mixture of guilt, exhaustion, and something else. Something like apology.
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
God.
Like I would ever say no.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “Come in.”
She stepped past me—carefully, like she didn’t want to brush against my skin—and the faintest hint of cold air followed her, a reminder of the woods, of her bruised cheek, of everything she wasn’t telling me.
I shut the door behind her.
And the ache in my chest twisted—quiet, deep, and sharp—because she hadn’t come for me.
But she still came to my door.
And that felt like something I wasn’t allowed to want.
She walked to my couch slowly. The leather creaked under her weight — sleek, dark, and noticeably bigger than the one in her dorm. Our suite was larger too, one of the old wings the Institute actually bothered to maintain. The kind they reserved for students with names that mattered.
Across from the couch sat the remains of my flat-screen: a jagged spray of glass where Ash’s last temper tantrum had sent it crashing to the floor.
The stack of games beneath it still stood perfectly neat, like they didn’t realise the world above them had ended.
In the corner, our small kitchen hummed quietly — outdated but working, which was more than Seph could say for hers.
She trailed her fingers over the back of the couch like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to touch it.
“Your place is much bigger than mine,” she murmured.
“Dev’s family has money,” I said. “Plus I inherited some from my dad.”
“Lucky you.”
She sat primly — too primly — like she was afraid of leaving a mark.
“Do you want a drink? Coffee?”
“Um… no. No thanks.” She pushed her hair behind her ear, only for it to fall back. And that was when I saw it — a faint shadow on her cheekbone.
A bruise.
My chest tightened. “What happened to your face?”
Her cheeks flushed. She immediately let her hair fall forward like a curtain. “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“Well I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Is it from the monster?”
“Um. Yeah. Most likely.”
She was lying.
I knew she was lying.
Something about the way her eyes darted — the way her fingers curled in her sleeves — told me she was hiding something.
“Seph?” I asked quietly. “If someone is hurting you I need to know. Tell me.”
“Kieran.” Her voice was quiet, warning. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I stepped closer, heat crawling up my spine. “Don’t notice when you walk into my room looking like someone took a swing at you? Don’t ask who the fuck touched you?”
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t look at me.
I forced myself to exhale slowly.
Not to scare her.
Not to shake her more than she already was.
“Seph,” I said again, softer but still rough around the edges. “I’m not trying to interrogate you. I just—”
I bit the inside of my cheek, jaw clenching.
“—I need the truth. Not because I want to control you. Because I really do give a damn.”
She still didn’t answer.
Instead:
“So… have you been here? The whole time?” she asked abruptly, like she needed to change the subject. Hard.
Suspicion prickled the back of my neck.
“No. I came here about a year and a half ago.”
“Oh.” She nodded, eyes tracing the edge of the coffee table. “And before?”
“I was… I was in the city. In Edgewater.”
Her voice lowered. Careful. Too careful.
“With Sable?”
I hesitated. Longer than I should have.
Her gaze flicked up, watching every micro-reaction like a hawk.
“Yes. Sometimes,” I said finally. “I saw her sometimes.”
Her throat bobbed.
My ribcage tightened.
And for the first time since she walked through my door, I realised—
She hadn’t come here for comfort.
She’d come for answers.
Or truth.
Or a wound she needed to prod.
And she wasn’t done yet.
“I saw Warden Wild this morning.”
“Oh?” I sat carefully across from her, every sense sharpening.
“She wants me to stay away from you guys. Apparently you’re bad influences.”
I huffed a laugh. “She’s not wrong. But… will you?”
“She threatened to release my name to the general public.”
I froze.
“What?”
Seph just shook her head like she expected my reaction and was already tired of it. “She knows a lot of people hate my father. I don’t blame them.”
Anger slid under my skin like a blade. “I can’t believe that bitch would threaten you like that.”
“I can.” Her voice didn’t crack — but something small in it did. “It doesn’t surprise me. From the moment I got here they’ve been trying to make me bow to their whims.”
Her hands twisted together — tight, restless, almost trembling — and she kept her gaze fixed on the wall behind me, not on my face.
“I guess they don’t realise that truthfully…” She let out a brittle little breath. “I don’t even care.”
“Seph.”
She finally looked at me.
And gods — she wasn’t just tired.
She was done.
“What can they do to me, K?” she asked, voice soft and hollow. “What’s the worst that can happen? I get hurt? I lose my friends?”
She let out a laugh—sharp, brittle, the kind people make when they’re standing on the edge of something they refuse to name.
Her hands twisted in her sleeves like she was trying to wring the feeling out of her fingers. Her eyes were haunted in a way exhaustion couldn’t explain.
“It doesn’t matter what that bitch says,” I said, the words slipping out rougher than I meant. “We will protect you. I will. No one will dare mess with you, I promise.”
Down the hall I heard Dev rattling around in his room — drawers opening, something clattering. He was going to come out any second, and for the first time in a long time, I wished he’d stay put.
Just for a moment.
“Thanks, K.”
She smiled — small, sad, the kind that twisted something deep beneath my ribs.
“But I don’t need a big brother.”
Gods.
She had no idea what that did to me.
I was aching to pull her into my arms.
To tell her the truth.
To stop pretending I didn’t feel the way I felt.
Why can’t I just be honest with her?
“I’m not your brother, Seph—”
“You’re my friend?” she interrupted gently.
I swallowed. Hard.
Her eyes were too open, too trusting, too bruised from a lifetime of betrayal.
“I never stopped being your friend,” I said quietly.
But that wasn’t the whole truth.
Not even close.
And the way she looked at me — soft, grateful, completely unaware of the wildfire she stirred in me — made it ten times harder to speak the words burning up my throat.
I opened my mouth—
And Dev’s door creaked.
Footsteps approached.
And the truth I almost said died on my tongue.
Because whatever this was…
whatever we were edging toward…
was not something I could spill in the middle of our living room with an audience about to walk in.
Not when she looked this fragile.
Not when I felt this raw.
“Seph, I’m coming!” Dev called from his room. “Be there in a sec.”
Seph startled slightly — just a tiny flinch of her shoulders — like she’d forgotten there was a world outside this conversation. Outside this room. Outside the mess in her chest and the mess in mine.
Her gaze dropped to her hands.
The sleeves of her sweatshirt were pulled down over her fingers again, twisting, hiding, protecting.
I exhaled slowly, trying to push down the frustration curling hot under my ribs.
“Dev’ll be happy to see you,” I said, softer than before.
“You think? I’ve never noticed Dev being happy about anything. Now Ash—”
“You’ve certainly won his affections.” I laughed despite myself.
She rolled her eyes. “Did Dev tell you Ash left me a raw chicken?”
I choked. “A what?”
“A whole one. Just… sitting by my door like some kind of offering to the gods of salmonella.”
“Well, that’s—”
“Sweet?” she supplied.
She actually smiled — small, warm, almost shy — as she thought about him.
“He is sweet. Probably the kindest, most honest person I’ve ever met in my life.”
It wasn’t a dig.
It wasn’t meant to hurt.
But gods, it still landed like one — a quiet little sting right under my ribs.
Because she didn’t look at me like that.
Hadn’t in a long time.
I cleared my throat, trying to swallow the sudden tightness at the back of it.
“Yeah,” I said lightly, though it scraped coming out. “Ash is… something.”
Her smile lingered a moment longer before fading into uncertainty, her hands twisting in her sleeves again.
And just like that, I hated myself for minding at all.
She was hurting.
And I was sitting here jealous of a raw chicken.
Dev stepped out of his room wearing a soft white shirt and black slacks, his hair neatly combed like he’d been awake for hours already. When he saw Seph, something in him eased — his posture, his jaw, even the tension he wore like armour.
“Hey,” he said, voice oddly gentle. “You ready?”
Seph stood immediately, shoulders straightening as if she’d been waiting for the question.
“Yup. Whenever you are.”
“Good.” Dev glanced at me — brief, sharp — and for a flicker of a second his eyes darkened. He was still pissed. Still holding yesterday like a blade pointed at my ribs.
“I’ll catch you later, K,” he said flatly.
“Uh… yeah. Sure. Sounds good.”
Seph gave me one last look — small, uncertain, unreadable — before turning toward the door. Dev opened it for her, the two of them stepping out into the hall like they were already a unit, already moving in a rhythm I wasn’t part of anymore.
The door clicked shut behind them.
And just like that, the room felt too big.