Chapter 17 You Don’t Get To Say That #2
“Don’t.” She forced the word out, hating how weak it sounded. “You don’t get to say that to me anymore.”
His hand stilled against her skin. “Li—”
“No.” She pulled back, rolling away and coming to her feet in one fluid motion. She needed space. She needed distance. “You pushed me away, Callum. You looked me in the eye and told me what we had meant nothing. That I meant nothing.”
“You know that wasn’t true. You know me well enough to know I never meant a single word of it.” His voice had gone rough around the edges. “You know why I had to say those things.”
“Do I?” She snatched her fallen staff from the mat. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you made a choice. And it wasn’t me.”
Callum rose more slowly, his movements lacking their usual fluid grace. “It wasn’t that simple.”
“It never is with you.” She turned away, returning her staff to the rack with more force than necessary, and willed her voice not to show the emotion exploding in her chest. “Nothing is ever simple with you, Callum. Everything’s a game, a calculation, moves on some board I can’t even see.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” She spun back to face him, her voice finally catching and cracking. “Was it fair to make me fall in love with you, to let me believe we had a future, then discard me like one of your business arrangements that outlived its usefulness?”
The words seared the air, molten and unforgiving. They were too honest, too raw. Lira regretted them immediately, her chest aching, a scorch of shame unraveling as she watched the way his body stiffened like she’d stabbed him.
She never lost control like this. Never let her emotions dictate her words.
But Callum had always been the exception, the fault line, the one who slipped past her barricades and unsettled the most guarded corners of her heart.
The one that always found the parts of herself she kept hidden from everyone else.
He took a step toward her, hands open at his sides in a gesture that might have been surrender or supplication. “Lira, please. Let me—”
“I have errands to run,” she cut him off, retreating behind formality like armor. “Thank you for the match.”
Callum flinched at the coldness in her words. “You think I wanted to disappear? That it was easy for me to walk away?”
“You did it anyway.” Her voice was a whisper now, the fight in it gone with only the pain left.
She moved toward her discarded shoes, slipping them back on as she pushed her arms into her jacket and hoisted her duffel bag over her head.
“Please—”
She didn’t let him finish. “I can’t, Callum. My heart can’t.”
He stared back at her for a long moment as her chest heaved against the onslaught. She watched Callum’s throat work as he swallowed, like he was trying to push down the three words she had been waiting five years to hear.
Greyson stood at the kitchen counter, one hand wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee, the other clutched around his tablet.
The morning light cut sharp angles through the apartment windows, catching on the obsidian surface of his mask where it rested beside him.
Sleep had eluded him most of the night, his mind caught in an endless loop of sounds he shouldn’t have heard, couldn’t stop hearing.
The soft moans from her room. The rustle of sheets.
Slowly he lifted the mug to his lips, and the coffee scalded his tongue. He welcomed the pain, anything to focus on besides the memory of those sounds.
Execution orders filled his screen—names, dates, crimes, all neatly categorized in columns that reduced human lives to data points.
He swiped to the next file. Lucy Teller, age twenty-four.
Cardinal resident caught stealing shoes for her younger sister.
Parents deceased. Execution scheduled for Thursday.
Sister will be relocated to the Boundary clinics.
His finger hovered over the approval button, a hesitation that would have been unthinkable months ago.
Just sign it. That’s all you have to do. Sign it, and move on. Don’t think about whether her sister will die without her. Don’t think about anything except following orders.
Routine. He needed routine. The familiar cold detachment of his work might silence the whispers in his head that felt dangerously close to curiosity about the woman sleeping down the hall. His would-be killer and now, by some cosmic joke, his fucking bride-to-be.
The soft pad of bare feet on marble pulled him from his thoughts.
He didn’t look up, kept his eyes fixed on the tablet as if the words there held him captive.
But his body betrayed him, attuned to her presence like a tuning fork to its perfect pitch.
The air shifted as she stepped into the kitchen, carrying her scent—something clean but with an edge, like rain on metal.
He forced his expression into something neutral.
“Is there coffee?” Her voice was rough with sleep, lower than its usual sharp cadence.
Greyson finally lifted his eyes from the tablet and his carefully constructed mask of indifference shattered.
She stood framed in the hallway entrance, auburn hair tumbling loose around her shoulders, sleep-mussed and wild in a way that made his fingers twitch with the urge to run through it. Her inked and battered legs seemed endless beneath the hem of a black T-shirt that hung to mid-thigh.
His T-shirt.
The same one he’d been looking for yesterday. Something primal and possessive flared in his chest at the sight of her in his clothes before he ruthlessly smothered it.
His eyes traveled up her body without his permission—over the curves the shirt couldn’t quite disguise, the dip of her waist, the graceful line of her throat where fading bruises still marked her skin. When he reached her face, her eyes were narrowed, watching him watch her.
“What?” she snapped.
Greyson cleared his throat, forcing his gaze back to the tablet. “Nothing,” he said, voice deliberately flat. Then, because he truly couldn’t help himself, added, “Though I wasn’t aware my clothing was communal property.”
Her face blanched, glancing down at the shirt as if seeing it for the first time. “This is yours?”
“Well, it’s certainly not yours.” He took another sip of coffee, using the mug to hide the quirk of his lips. “And unless there is another person living in this apartment I didn’t approve of, yes, it’s mine.”
“Chapman brought it,” she said, tugging at the hem with sudden discomfort. “If I’d known it belonged to you, I’d have set it on fire.”
“I’m sure.” He watched as she crossed to the coffeepot, his shirt riding higher on her thighs with each step. “Try not to burn anything this time.”
“Try not to be such a fucking asshole this early,” she countered, reaching for a mug from the cabinet. “Though I suppose that’s like asking water not to be wet.”
Something about the domesticity of the moment struck him as absurd. The Daggermouth assassin in his kitchen, wearing his clothes, pouring coffee like this was normal. Like he hadn’t stood outside her door last night, hand on the knob, one push away from a colossal mistake.
“You were loud last night.” The words left him without thought.
The regret was immediate.
Her hand froze on the coffeepot, her back going rigid. “What?”
“In your room.” He kept his voice deliberately neutral. “The walls are thin.”
She turned slowly, her face a careful blank he couldn’t read. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?” He raised an eyebrow. “My mistake then.”
A flush crept up her neck, staining her cheeks with color as her eyes darted away from his. Confirmation, if he’d needed it. “You’re a fucking creep,” she muttered, turning back to pour her coffee.
“Says the woman who spent half the night moaning loud enough to wake the neighbors.”
“You don’t have any neighbors.” The coffeepot slammed down with enough force to slosh liquid onto the counter. “And at least I know how to satisfy myself,” she hissed. “When was the last time someone touched you for free?”
Annoyance flared in Greyson’s chest. He didn’t have the luxury or romantic attachments. He opened his mouth to fire back whatever equally cutting barb popped into his head when a sharp knock sounded at the door.
They both snapped their heads toward the sound, bodies tensing in unison. Greyson’s hand moved automatically to his mask, fingers curling around the cold metal. Their eyes met across the kitchen, a rare moment of unified concern.
No one was expected. No one knew the surveillance had been deactivated. His father’s men?
Greyson set his mug down slowly, sliding the mask over his face. “Stay here,” he murmured, already turning toward the entryway.
He moved to the door, steps silent, and checked the peephole. The tension drained from his shoulders as he recognized the rose gold mask on the other side.
“It’s Lira,” he said, unlocking the door and pulling it open.
His sister breezed past him into the apartment, carrying a large bag and radiating that particular energy that always seemed to fill any space she occupied.
She stopped short in the entryway, her eyes taking in the scene before her—Greyson in nothing but sweatpants and a half-zipped jacket, mask hastily donned; Shadera in nothing but his oversized shirt, hair loose around her shoulders.
“Am I interrupting?” Lira asked, her voice rich with implication.
“No,” Greyson answered too quickly. “We were just having coffee.”
“I can see that.” Her gaze swept over them again, lingering on Shadera’s bare legs and his partially dressed state. “Among other things, apparently.”
Shadera shifted her weight, crossing her arms over her chest. The movement only served to emphasize how little she was wearing, the hem of his shirt riding higher on her thighs. Greyson forced his eyes away.
“Lira, this is Shadera Kael, my live-in assassin,” he said, gesturing between them with a casual wave. “The woman I’m now marrying, thanks to your brilliant plan.”