20. Fae
FAE
The lounge is a hive of noise. Voices overlap.
Footsteps pound across the wooden floors.
Doors slam somewhere down the corridor before opening again seconds later.
Atlas’s keyboard clacks from the dining table where cables snake across the surface.
Riggs paces with a phone pressed to his ear at the same time that Victor stands by the window speaking quietly into another line.
Every few seconds someone calls out a name, asks for information, or swears under their breath when something doesn’t work.
The moment I finished explaining Longstaff’s routine at the London house the room exploded into motion. We only have a few hours before he returns for breakfast, and everyone can feel the clock ticking.
After weeks of silence and concrete walls the chaos should feel comforting.
Instead, it makes my stomach turn. A sharp wave of nausea hits and I swallow hard, pressing my hand flat against my stomach as I breathe through it.
It’s not new. The sickness has been creeping up on me all evening in small flashes that leave my mouth dry and my head spinning.
The boys have slipped back into soldier mode.
It happens so quickly it’s unsettling. It’s as though someone has turned a switch on inside the people I know, and they have been folded away out of reach.
The warmth that usually lives in this house, the laughter, and the easy teasing that bounces between them have vanished completely.
In its place is something colder and sharper.
Felix though…he looks awful.
There’s a distance in his eyes that wasn’t there before I went missing.
I can tell there is a part of him that has already stepped somewhere darker than this room and left the rest of his body behind to catch up.
A glass Victor set down beside him earlier sits untouched on the table.
The food Fiona tried to push into his hands has gone cold where it was abandoned.
The only thing he’s done since the chaos started is plan.
Plan how to kill his best friend’s father.
I search his face for something human beneath the anger.
Felix catches the movement and our eyes meet across the room before his gaze drops to the floor like the contact burned him.
It’s the third time it’s happened since I came downstairs.
Every time my eyes find him, he turns his head, pretending to focus on something else, on the map spread across the table, on the phone vibrating near his elbow… on anything except me.
In the moments our eyes do meet, his shine with tears he is refusing to let fall before he turns away again. Guilt twists through my chest. What was he thinking when we were gone? Did he blame himself? Does he still? Do I repulse him now?
Robyn shifts beside me on the sofa and I lean my head gently against her shoulder.
Her warmth presses into my cheek as her fingers reach over to squeeze my hand.
She smells faintly of Felix’s soap. It’s clean and familiar and settles over me like a blanket.
It still feels strange seeing her here instead of chained to cold concrete.
Strange seeing either of us here at all.
“Are you okay?” she whispers.
I nod against her shoulder. “Just tired.”
It isn’t entirely a lie.
My body feels like it belongs to someone else. My ribs ache when I breathe too deeply. The cuts along my back sting whenever I move and the sickness keeps flashing through me without warning. Being surrounded by this much noise and movement after so long in silence makes my head swim.
Across the room Fiona appears in the doorway carrying another tray of food.
She’s done it three times already. Every time someone sets the plates aside untouched, she disappears into the kitchen and comes back with something else.
It is almost as if she believes that when she finds the right meal, everyone will start eating again.
She sets the tray down beside Atlas and fusses with the plates, pushing one toward him before smoothing an invisible crease from the tablecloth.
“Eat something,” she tells him gently.
“I will in a minute.” Atlas doesn’t even look up.
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
He gives a distracted hum that clearly means he hasn’t heard a word she said. There’s something fragile about the way she keeps moving. The way she keeps tidying things that aren’t messy and bringing food nobody wants.
“Fiona,” I say softly and she looks up immediately.
“Yes sweetheart?”
“Come sit down.”
Fiona hesitates. “I just need to—”
“Please.”
Something in my voice must reach her because she stops moving. The tension in her shoulders softens as she sets the cloth down. She walks over and crouches in front of me instead of sitting, and her hands find mine instantly.
“You should be resting,” she says gently.
“I’m sorry.”
I gulp as the words slip out. But it’s true.
I am sorry. For all of it. For the chaos tearing through this house, for the pain sitting behind Roman’s eyes, for the war that has just been dropped on her doorstep.
Her expression softens and the gentleness in it makes my lungs pull tight.
My bottom lip trembles before I can stop it, overwhelmed by the quiet love she seems to offer so easily.
“Oh sweetheart,” she murmurs.
Her fingers squeeze mine before she lifts one hand to brush a loose strand of hair away from my face.
“One day you’ll be a mum, and when that happens, you’ll understand something,” she pauses. “There is never a choice between your children’s happiness and your partner. My husband made his choice. And I’ve made mine.”
Her gaze drifts across the room to Roman before returning to us.
A soft smile touches her lips and she squeezes my hand.
Then she looks between Robyn and me where we’re huddled together on the sofa and leans forward, gently cupping Robyn’s cheek.
Her thumb brushes lightly over the fading bruises there.
Tears gather in her eyes, but her smile only deepens.
“I don’t regret it.”
Emotion rises up my throat as my hand drifts down again, pressing gently against my stomach.
I think being trapped in that room turned the future into something distant I didn’t have to face.
Something that belonged to a version of me that might not even make it out.
But now it’s here, sitting under my hand whether I’m ready for it or not.
I swallow hard because for weeks my body only knew survival.
It only knew fear that sank so deep it stopped feeling temporary.
There was no space for anything beyond the next hour, the next breath, the next second except keeping Robyn alive.
But now there’s this.
A life.
A future.
My eyes blur as I glance toward Fiona again, trying to hold onto the strength in her voice when she spoke about Roman.
The certainty. The love so large that she never even paused to question where her loyalty belonged and I shiver.
I just realise something I hadn’t let myself think about until now; if someone ever hurt this child…
if someone ever chained them to a wall or made them feel the kind of terror that still wakes me up in the middle of the night…
I would burn the entire world down to get them back.
Suddenly Fiona’s choice doesn’t feel shocking at all.
It feels inevitable.
Riggs claps his hands loudly beside the kitchen, the sharp crack makes Robyn jump. Felix’s head snaps up and the look he fires across the room is sharp enough to cut glass. Riggs just winks back at him and ignores it.
“Well, this is depressing as hell,” he announces to the room.
Victor shoots him a flat glare but Riggs pushes himself away from the doorframe with exaggerated enthusiasm.
“Anyone fancy playing a game?” he continues brightly. “Charades? Pictionary? Interpretive dance?”
“You’re an idiot,” Atlas mutters without looking up from his laptop.
Riggs grins wider. “Thank you.”
A small laugh escapes Robyn beside me and the tension in the room loosens just a fraction.
The sound is soft and a little shaky but it still warms me.
I realise how much I missed the careless way she used to laugh at the boys when they were being ridiculous, the way it used to fill whatever room we were in until the rest of us couldn’t help joining in.
For weeks the only sounds around us were chains, shouting and the dull echo of concrete walls.
Hearing her laugh again feels like something precious returning to the world.
Across the room Felix’s attention flicks to her, the hard edges in his face eases as he watches her.
Riggs notices too. His grin turns sly as a spark of mischief lightens in his eyes and he straightens, clearly pleased with himself for pulling that sound out of her.
A phone rings again, but the sharp “fuck” that follows cuts straight through the room.
Everything stops.
Roman is staring down at his phone before he looks at Fiona and the colour slowly drains from his face.
“It’s my dad.”
Beside me Robyn lets out a small, broken whimper.
A quick look passes between us and a quiet note settles in the back of my mind to speak to her alone about what happened in that cellar.
Roman lifts the phone before pressing the button for the speakerphone and setting it down on the table between us.
“Roman,” Longstaff’s voice spills through the lounge and ice shoots straight down my spine.
Roman’s gaze stays fixed on the phone like it’s a poisonous animal that’s just crawled onto the table.
“Father,” he replies tightly.
“Hello, son,” Longstaff purrs. “I hear you have something of mine.”
Roman’s fingers curl slowly against the edge of the table, “Fae isn’t yours, she’s mine.”
A quiet chuckle drifts through the speaker.
“I’m not talking about Fae, son. Where’s your mother? I’ve been trying to reach her.”
“I don’t have her.”
“You think I don’t have eyes on my woman at all times?”