Chapter 22 | Kincade
Time passed in fragments. Stretching into forever.
Her breathing stayed steady. She pulled her feet up and clutched her knees to her chest, folding in on herself. Resting her chin there. Her mind moving through a thousand different thoughts as she tried—and failed—to shut them down.
I stayed at the window. Peering through the edge of the curtain at the street bathed in early evening light. Wondering what the fuck we were going to do next.
I couldn’t move us even if I wanted to.
Silas said three days. It had been two already. Three days and then if he hadn’t sent a message on the burner phone, move.
They weren’t looking for me. They were looking for her.
Hell, both of us.
The building had survived three fires, a riot, and a century of neglect. No one ever looked twice at it which was why Silas had chosen it.
Movement on the street caught my attention. An elongated shadow.
My hand went to the blade at my side without thought. Too late, I realized the movement behind me wasn’t fear.
I never reached it.
The world slammed sideways.
My back hit the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth. The knife was gone before I registered the loss. Wrenched free with perfect precision. Cold steel kissed my throat as her forearm locked me in place. Not crushing. Exactly enough.
Too fast.
Her eyes were blown wide, pupils flared like she was staring down the barrel of something only she could see. Power hummed in the air, sharp and contained. Not wild. Controlled.
Trained.
And then—as suddenly—she froze.
Her fingers flexed once—tightening. Then loosening.
Like she’d found something and let it go.
The pressure vanished. She stumbled back like she’d been burned, hands lifting away from me as if they weren’t hers. The blade clattered to the floor between us.
“I—” Her breath hitched. “I didn’t—”
She stared at her hands. They were shaking.
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.
I didn’t move. Didn’t reach for the weapon. Didn’t close the distance.
Because I knew that hold.
I’d taught it once. A lifetime ago. To soldiers who didn’t hesitate. To men built for execution, not mercy.
She hadn’t chosen that.
She’d reacted.
The hold was textbook. Brotherhood training, third-year combat protocols. But the speed—the precision—that was calibrated. Targeted. She hadn’t learned to disarm any opponent.
She’d learned to disarm me.
That’s what they’d done in that hospital room. Built it into her.
I took a single step toward her. Slow. Careful.
Her shoulders flinched. Not from fear of me. From fear of herself.
“They did this,” I said.
Her eyes lifted to mine. Wet. Furious. Still Anna.
“They didn’t finish,” she said. “I stopped it before they could.”
But we both knew better. Stopped didn’t mean undone.
I’d gotten her out. Too late.
Time didn’t move normally after that.
It stretched. Thinned. Broke apart into pieces I couldn’t track. Minutes that felt like hours. Hours that collapsed into nothing. I watched the street until the light shifted and the shadows lengthened, until the city outside slid from afternoon into evening.
She didn’t sleep.
She didn’t pace. Didn’t speak. Didn’t cry.
She stayed where she was, like movement itself might trigger something she couldn’t control.
I gave her space. More than the room allowed. Kept my distance under the pretense of vigilance, though my attention never left her. Every breath. Every shift of weight. Every small, contained movement cataloged and measured.
This wasn’t shock.
It was restraint.
The kind that cuts deeper the longer you hold it.
At some point she sat again, folding in on herself as if bracing for impact that never came.
She sat on the worn sofa, her legs crisscrossed in front of her. Hands on her knees. Back ramrod straight. Her face was pale. She avoided me. And in a small place like this, that was damn near impossible.
I’d been going over it in my mind. The way she snapped. The way she pushed me against the wall as if she had all the strength in the world. And the only reason she did was because I didn’t expect it. The knife at my throat. Her arm pressed against me.
A warrior move.
Not something she would instinctively know to do.
Something she was trained to do.
Or something that was planted in her mind.
Either way, it turned her from the woman I knew to a woman I didn’t.
I took a step toward her to check her pulse. Her face was so pale, the bandages on her cheek stood out like a neon brand.
I reached for her wrist. Slow. Deliberate. Two fingers landing on the fluttering pulse at her wrist.
For a moment, she was fine. Then her head tipped up. Her eyes changed. No longer the violet. Her pupils had dilated again. I realized too late what she was going to do.
She leapt to her feet. Her wrist rolled inward, trapping my fingers against her pulse point. She stepped into me, weight dropping, elbow cutting across my center.
The blade flashed between us—too close—not aimed. A reflex.
A line of heat bit into my arm as she redirected my grip. Not a strike. Not intentional. Collateral.
I didn’t react. Didn’t tighten. Didn’t counter.
A Watcher disarm—clean, efficient. No one learns that by chance. Not that fast.
But they hadn’t taught her. They’d planted it in her. Dark and deadly.
I let myself go with the motion. Didn’t break the hold. Because if I did, she’d complete it.
Her grip faltered.
She froze.
Breath hitching. Fingers loosening as awareness bled back into her eyes. The blade slipped from her hand and hit the floor between us with a dull thud.
Then she pitched forward, crying out, grabbing her head. Dropping to her knees.
“It hurts!” The words ripped from her.
“Make it stop,” she cried, clutching her head. “I can’t—”
What the fuck—
She launched herself at me. But this time it was different. It was her—not what they’d turned her into.
“Your…hands…!” She gasped, reaching for me.
I froze.
Her hands landed on mine, her fingers digging into my palms. The bite of her nails. Her breathing was ragged. Raspy. Like she couldn’t pull enough air into her lungs.
She tipped her head back. Looked up at me. Her skin was coated in sweat. Her cheeks damp. Her features contorted in pain.
And then she collapsed.
I wasn’t fast enough to catch her.
I dropped to my knees. Felt for her pulse. It was there. Beating too fast. Her face was pale. Her shirt damp.
She was alive. But something deep inside her had been tampered with.
What the fuck happened in that hospital?
I thought I knew. Didn’t want to accept it. Didn’t want to acknowledge they would do that to her.
But wouldn’t they?
I ran through both attacks in my mind. Searching for the pattern.
The first time, I’d moved too fast at the window. Quick. Precise. Combat-ready.
The second time, I’d reached for her wrist. Two fingers. Checking her pulse.
Different actions. Same result.
What was the constant?
Me.
My proximity. My touch. The way I moved when I was near her.
In the cell, she told me the Brotherhood handed her over to the Knights.
They’re going to use me like they did her.
Her words echoed back to me.
A cold realization settled in my chest. They’d altered her. But not to become a super dream walker, like her mother. To become something else. Something more dangerous. Something lethal.
To me.
The Knights weaponized her against me. Likely on the orders of the Brotherhood. Sebastian’s orders.
I rose, grabbed the thin blanket off the back of the sofa and draped it over her legs.
And waited.
We couldn’t stay here. We had to get out. Silas or no. I had to find a way out of this safe house and move us to the next. Walker Manor wasn’t an option, either.
I realized then my shirt was damp with blood. She’d nicked me with the knife. I picked it up from the floor, tossed it on the coffee table like it was full of poison. Blood smeared across the blade. Mine. By her hand.
But not her fault.
As I cleaned the wound and dressed it—hands steady through practice, not calm—I sensed the presence.
Angelic.
Cashiel.
The Seraphim angel who was once Edward Walker.
His wings spread out behind him. Snowy white threaded with gold. Shimmering in the pale light of the room.
Kneeling beside her. Looking her over. Not touching her. Then his bright blue eyes lifted to mine. We looked at each other a long moment in the silence.
He took a deep breath, expelled it. Eyed the bandage on my arm. Then understanding flickered in his gaze.
“I tried to help,” he said, his voice low. Quiet. “I’m not sure I succeeded.”
My brows drew together. “What do you mean?”
“I was there. In the room with her. When they started.”
Heated fury coiled low and hot in my gut. “You were there. Why didn’t you—”
“I could not. You know that as well as I.”
I clenched my jaw. Tight.
“I gave her something, though,” he continued. “An anchor.”
I looked from him to her. Watched the slow rise and fall of her chest. “What sort of anchor?”
“She chose it,” he said.
I glanced down at my palms still riddled with crescent imprints from her nails. “My hands.”
“Yes.”
She chose me.
Anchored herself to me in the worst moment of her life. Because she knew what they were going to do to her. She knew they were going to turn her against me.
“Her nervous system is fighting itself,” Cashiel said. “The programming trying to complete what her will is refusing. That’s the pain, the conflict. The pain will come when she resists the programming. Every time her will fights their wiring, it will hurt.”
My gaze flickered up to his. Calm. Unshaken. Like he was stating a law of gravity.
“How did they do it?” I asked. “They didn’t crack her head open.”
Because she’d told me when she found the Knights in Antarctica, they’d drilled into the victims’ heads. Lobotomized some of them.
Cashiel shook his head. “They didn’t need to.”
“Then what?”
His eyes dropped briefly to her. To the way she lay too still on the floor, breath shallow but steady.
“They went in through what was already there,” he said. “The nervous system. Existing pathways the body already uses. Tiny instruments. Light and pressure. Guided along the spine and up into the brainstem.”
My hands curled into fists before I realized it.
“No scars,” he continued. “No damage you’d recognize at a glance. Just… alteration. They mapped her responses first, then rewrote the reflex. Taught her body what to do before her mind can intervene.”
A slow, vicious heat spread through my chest. Not rage. Something older.
“They tested the baseline,” Cashiel added. “Measured what she’d do under threat, proved she could hurt anyone. But the real work—” His gaze hardened. “They calibrated her triggers to you. Your movements. Your presence. The way you breathe when you’re close to her.”
My stomach turned to lead. They’d altered her. And they’d used me to do it.
“They made her the most dangerous to the one person she’d never willingly harm,” he finished.
Because no matter what choice we made, the Brotherhood won. I didn’t need to ask why. I knew why.
“Together, you’re dangerous,” Cashiel said. “Separate, you’re controlled.”
I exhaled through my teeth. “So, the Brotherhood gets what they want and the Knights get her.”
Her. A weapon.
Me. The trigger they planned for.
He nodded. Once.
“What they did to her,” Cashiel said softly, “was not strategy. It was desecration.”
His gaze lingered on her. “And it left scars no blade can reach. She needs you now. More than ever. You’re the only one who can pull her back to herself.”
My mouth turned dry.
His gaze moved from her back to me. Glinting with something hard.
Cashiel’s wings rustled softly. “I can do nothing more for her. But you—” He met my gaze. “You can do everything. Be the man she chose. Not the warrior standing guard.”
Then he was gone.
I’d buried that man centuries ago. When the world had taken everything from me.
And the world was trying to do that again.
But I could be that man again.
For her.