Chapter 36 | Anna
The morning came, and I still felt as though I would never be the same.
I lay in the bed alone, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I would ever be able to go home. And the irony was, I hadn’t even started thinking of the manor as home until recently. Until everything had gone to hell and I’d been resurrected from the dead.
Walker Manor was a place of stability for me. A place where I never had to question my safety. Even when demons breached its walls.
Now that illusion was gone.
I thought of everyone there and tried to fit the pieces together. Piers, the old butler, was the only full-time staff I’d kept after my uncle died. I’d dismissed the rest. The cleaning service came twice a week. Gardeners maintained the grounds because the estate was too large for me alone.
Grace. Ophelia. My mother.
Darius came and went. Sariel hadn’t appeared in months. Killian and Astrid stayed to the forest, never crossing the boundary.
I knew it wasn’t any of them. They had nothing to gain. They lived with me, after all. They knew me, my habits, my life.
That was what unsettled me most.
Not the idea of surveillance but the idea of access.
Someone had been inside my home. Taking pictures. Watching. Mapping my life. And part of me didn’t want to know what else they’d done.
I heard movement in the small kitchen. He was awake and likely hadn’t slept all night. Vigilance was his middle name. He’d push himself to the brink of exhaustion if he thought it would keep me alive and breathing.
I shoved the blankets aside and stood, aware of how foreign the room felt—sterile, borrowed, temporary. I’d left my clothes in a pile on the floor the night before, changed into knit shorts and a tank without remembering.
When I reached the balcony doors, I paused.
They were still open.
The morning breeze fluttered, filling the room with that salty air. In the distance, Istanbul was coming alive as dawn broke across the sky. I closed my eyes to inhale the scent of the city but could only smell him.
I sensed him before I heard him. Moving in stealth mode. He was so good at that. Then a mug of my favorite caffeine addiction appeared in front of me. I took it from him as his arm wrapped around my waist and then he dropped a kiss on my neck.
Was this our life now? Safe houses. Borrowed rooms. Cities we didn’t belong to. Waiting for the world to let us breathe again.
I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“You didn’t sleep,” I said.
He didn’t answer at first.
After a moment, “You did. That’s all that matters.”
I wanted to argue. The old me would have. This version of me understood why I shouldn’t.
We stood like that, not moving. My eyes fixed on the city beyond the balcony. His hand on the flat plane of my abdomen. Me leaning back against him. His heartbeat steady against my back. My hands curled around the warm mug. The steam rising from the taupe liquid. As if this was a normal morning.
But it wasn’t.
Yesterday, I killed a man.
Yesterday, I learned the violation went deeper than I ever imagined.
They—the Knights, the Brotherhood—had taken so much from me. My choice, my dream walking, my home and—for a heartbeat—him. But I’d found a way to overcome that.
Perhaps there was a way to overcome my sense of loss for the manor.
I didn’t know yet.
“Can we ever go home?” I heard the words before my mind said don’t say that.
He was quiet for a long moment. Then, “Yes.”
Not because it would be easy. Not because it would be soon.
Because he would make it so.
I knew that deep in my bones. I knew he’d tear through every obstacle to make it happen. As I knew he’d find a way to get my mother to me, to give me that moment where I could ask her what it was like for her.
What she’d felt.
What she’d survived.
“I contacted Silas last night,” he said.
I stiffened, my hand tightening around the mug. “You did?”
“I asked him to send someone he trusts to do a full sweep of the manor. To speak to Ophelia only.”
I nodded. Ophelia. He trusted her. So, did I. And it was better if neither Grace nor my mother were involved.
“Good,” I said. “When will we know?”
“Soon.”
The worst possible answer. He released me, disappeared into the bathroom. Moments later, the shower.
A few weeks ago, I might have been angry. But today, I was relieved. I’d asked him, last night, to handle it. And he was doing that—handling it. And I was grateful.
There was no call that day.
Or the next.
Or at least, if there was information from Silas, he wasn’t sharing it with me yet. I was, shockingly, okay with that. I let him handle it because the alternative was thinking too hard about what Silas might find at the manor.
I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about a catalogue of devices—listening or watching—scattered throughout sacred, private rooms. I didn’t want to inventory those stolen moments. I didn’t want to think about what they heard or saw or knew.
Something had shifted between the two of us. A different level of trust. He trusted me not to freak out on him, and I trusted him to take care of the thing he was taking care of. Balance.
But I was also restless. The apartment complex was no fortress.
No isolated safe house tucked away from the world.
It breathed around us. Lived around us. I heard doors open and close down the corridor.
Muffled voices. A burst of laughter. The clink of dishes.
The lingering scent of someone’s dinner drifting through the air.
People living their ordinary lives only feet away while horror pressed in on mine.
The next morning, as I stood on the balcony, I happened to look over the railing and saw a tidy, charming courtyard below. Cobblestoned. Potted plants, green and lush and well cared for, dotted the perimeter.
“There’s a courtyard,” I announced as if this was newsworthy.
“Yes,” he said, never looking up from whatever he was doing. Like he knew it was there all along.
I glanced back. He was staring at those damn floor plans again. Committing them to memory.
“I’m going down there.”
I started for the door as he looked up, about to question me. Then, “All right.”
He didn’t stop what he was doing to come with me. He let me go.
I headed down the stairs, found my way to the little courtyard.
It wasn’t much bigger than a ten-by-ten square.
There was a five-foot cinderblock wall that blocked out the view of the street and cars.
But if I stood on tiptoe, I could see the Marmara Sea in the distance.
Smell the salty air mixed with that blend of otherworld spices and the faint scent of the city itself.
And there were vendors selling their wares. A few food carts.
What a strange city this was.
I’d traveled hunting the relics, but I’d never stayed in one place long enough to stop and listen to the heartbeat of a place. We’d been stuck in this particular safe house for a couple of weeks.
I was weary.
Weary of the running, the hiding, the wondering if I would ever get to return home.
I turned back to the courtyard, glanced up to see the balcony we shared overlooking the place. And it gave me a sense of comfort to know he was right above my head.
The space was small, but it was enough to let me move, to stretch my muscles. So, I did.
Anything to stop imagining what Silas was finding. Burning off all the dread. Exhausting myself so I didn’t fall apart. Because that was next.
We existed in a strange suspension. The waiting was the worst thing of all.
The next morning, he disappeared to prowl the streets—was he replenishing our stash of whiskey?—and I stayed behind. I stood in the center of the small living room across from the open balcony doors—this was my favorite thing—and decided to try yoga.
I’d seen Ophelia do it a few times, but I didn’t know the poses like she did. The names, yes. But not the how. I thought if I could… make it up it would quiet my mind.
When he returned, he found me lying in the middle of the floor. Arms resting by my side. Staring at the ceiling.
“What are you doing?” He peered down at me with confusion and amusement.
“Yoga,” I said.
His brows drew together. “That doesn’t look like yoga.”
“I call this pose I’m bored senseless,” I said.
His mouthed curved for only a brief moment before he managed to contain it. Then he held his hand down to me.
“Come on.”
I grabbed it as he hoisted me to my feet. He held a brown paper bag in his other arm.
“What’s that?”
“For later.” He placed it on the small kitchen table then crossed the room and closed and locked the balcony doors. “Let’s go.”
“You’re letting me out of my prison?”
“It’s not a prison.”
“It feels like it.”
“We’re going for a walk,” he said, ignoring my grousing. He nudged me out the front door, closed and locked it.
He was efficient. I liked that. Then he took me by the hand, led me down the stairs, and into the city.
The street greeted us with noise and motion.
Voices overlapping in languages I didn’t know, the hiss of traffic, the clatter of dishes from a café tucked into the corner of the block.
The air smelled like bread and exhaust and spice, warm and alive in a way that made it impossible to forget the world was still turning.
We walked without a destination. Past shop windows crowded with hanging lamps and textiles. Past fruit vendors calling out prices, children darting between adults, an old man perched on a low stool sipping tea like he had nowhere else to be. Life unfolded around us, unbothered by what we carried.
Kincade kept our pace steady, his hand firm around mine. I focused on the press of his fingers, the rhythm of our steps, the simple act of moving forward together. For a few blocks, the weight in my chest eased.
It wasn’t freedom.
But it was something.
The phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it quickly, then put it back.
“Was that—?” I started.
“He’s still working on it.”
Part of me thought he already knew something but only partial information and if that was the case, he wasn’t sharing. For the best.