15 Back to Blackmoore
The Guild lounge was mercifully empty.
I just needed silence after the day. Walking the halls without Tex is still hard, and it feels wrong. Jace is always there. Waiting.
But I just need to breathe. Adjust.
Dim with golden lamplight and deep leather chairs, the lounge has the kind of hush that wraps around you.
I’ve been avoiding people all day, and this was the first place I found that didn’t make me want to claw my skin off.
I curl deeper into the armchair by the fire, knees tucked to my chest, book open on my lap but unread. The first true quiet I’ve found.
I don’t hear the door open. Don’t sense him at all until he speaks.
“Interesting choice of hiding spot.” The voice slithers across the room.
My head snaps up, and immediately, every muscle in my body fills with tension.
He stands just inside the lounge, holding the door open behind him.
The flames from the fireplace cast flickering shadows across his features.
He’s dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, not a single thread out of place.
His eyes land on me with a cool disinterest, like he’s appraising someone far beneath him.
He sets every instinct in my body on edge as he closes the door with a soft click and steps closer.
“Don’t get up,” he says mildly. “I prefer to speak with people when they’re comfortable.”
I stand anyway.
“Suit yourself.” He smiles faintly. Recognition flickers in my brain.
“Gideon.” My voice comes out stronger than I feel.
His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Ah. Glad to know my reputation precedes me. We’ve never had the pleasure of a one-on-one chat before. A tête-à-tête, as the French say.” He extends a hand as if it were a social event.
I don’t move. Don’t take his hand. His smile widens a fraction—something about it twisted.
“I thought it was time to rectify that,” he adds, as if I haven’t already put that together.
I manage a nod. “That was on purpose. It doesn’t need to be rectified.”
“Doesn’t it?” His tone is almost amused, “You see, I make it my business to get to know all the players on the chessboard, Isobel Ashthorne. Daughter of Lucian. The girl who came back from the dead just to interrupt the game that was already in progress.” There it is.
The veiled threat. The reminder that I’m not supposed to be here.
That he saw me as a piece in a game I haven’t agreed to play.
“I’m not a player, I’m not playing anything.” My fingers curl at my sides.
“No,” Gideon murmurs, stepping closer. “You’re not playing, you’re being played. You think you’re rewriting your destiny, don’t you? Making a place for yourself in this world. But the truth is... you’re filler. A variable. A placeholder in a larger story.”
He circles me once, his footsteps measured. Hunting. I hate how calm he is. How quiet his danger is. The kind of danger that doesn’t need to raise its voice to slit your throat.
I bristle. “What do you want?”
He makes a soft tsk noise. “So hostile. No wonder Jace is so... interested.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
He strolls past one armchair, pausing to flick an imaginary speck of lint from his sleeve.
“You’re quite the distraction, you know. My son is usually focused. Mind sharp. Uncompromising. Then—suddenly—he’s skipping meetings with me. Missing calls. Ignoring texts. Mourning friends.”
He says the word like he can’t fathom it exists. My stomach flips.
“Lucian will chew you up and spit you out the second you stop being useful. My son will move on the second he remembers who he is. And the Guild? The Guild doesn’t care who bleeds as long as the power stays intact.”
I swallow roughly. “If you think I’m scared of you—”
He laughs then. It’s an empty sound.
“Oh, darling,” he says, “you should be.”
He stops in front of me again, examining me like I’m a mouse in a lab.
“I expected more from you in this setting,” he says finally, tilting his head in a way that Jace does when he’s analyzing something.
“More polished. More edge. More… something. For all the drama surrounding your name, I thought Lucian’s spawn would be formidable or intimidating perhaps.
What are you instead? Just a girl clinging to the men around her to stay afloat. ”
“I don’t need anyone to save me.”
“Oh, that’s precious.” His tone is sarcastic.
I say nothing.
His smile returns. “See? That’s the problem. You think silence is strength. But in this world? Silence is submission.”
He steps back, adjusting the cuff of his sleeve. “Tell me, Isobel—do you believe you belong here?”
“Yes.” I lift my chin. Faking bravado I don’t necessarily feel in his presence.
“Conviction,” he says. “That’s good. You’ll need it.”
I don’t respond. Just stare him down, refusing to let him out of my sight.
“Well. This has been enlightening.” He walks to the door, his voice casual now. “I do hope you and Jace enjoy your little romance. While it lasts.”
He opens the door, pauses, and looks over his shoulder one last time. Danger glinting in his eyes. “But when it ends? And it will end—don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Click.
And I’m left standing there, heart racing, like I’d just sparred with the devil and survived—barely.
My conversation with Gideon, if you can even call it that, left me feeling unsettled. Adding on to the knowledge that Daniel seems to have an idea of who’s important to me.
I pause outside my room, raising a brow at the two figures leaning against the hallway wall. I recognize them from the first forest party I had gone to with Dakota. The one where the boys hijacked the slide show, and well, we all remember the rest.
Felix straightens immediately, smoothing his designer jacket like he’s about to walk a red carpet. His dark auburn hair is pushed back. Tall and broad-shouldered, he looks like he just stepped out of a catalog—if the model in question has a trust fund and a superiority complex.
Kellan, in contrast, stays against the wall like he’s in a 2000s music video.
He looks like controlled chaos—black hoodie with black nail polish chipped at the corners, a silver hoop in his brow, and tattoos curling down one forearm just barely visible beneath the sleeves of his shredded hoodie.
His blond hair sticks out in a tousled, too-cool-to-care kind of way.
I frown. “What are you two doing outside my room?”
Felix flashes his ring with exaggerated flair. “Official Guild business, darling. Nothing to be alarmed about.”
Kellan gives me a lazy salute. “More like glorified babysitting.”
“Who needs babysitters?” Maeve asks, coming up beside me, her brows knitting.
Felix nods toward her. “You.”
Maeve blinks. “Wait. These are mine?”
“We’re people,” Kellan scoffs.
Felix gives a mock bow. “At your service, sunshine.”
“Lucian sent them,” I say with a sigh. “I asked him to assign someone to keep an eye on you when I can’t. I just… didn’t expect them.” I can’t bear the idea of anything happening to her. That would surely break me in a way that I wouldn’t recover.
Kellan shrugs. “We’re charming.”
Maeve gives them a flat look. “One of you looks like he owns a yacht, and the other looks like he’d try to burn it down.”
Felix smirks. “I do own a yacht.”
“Figures.” Maeve rolls her eyes.
“God help us all,” I mutter.
Kellan tilts his head. “Think of us as the dream team. One part uptight trust fund legacy,”—he jabs a thumb at Felix—”one part chaotic neutral with Guild credentials and a minor vendetta against the bourgeoisie.”
“You are the bourgeoisie,” Felix replies.
Kellan shrugs. “We all contain multitudes.”
“Look,” Felix says, adjusting his cuffs, “I don’t particularly enjoy playing bodyguard. But orders are orders, and Lucian made it very clear that if anything happens to her, he’s not the one who’ll kill me. You are.”
He wasn’t wrong. I would definitely kill him.
Kellan leans more heavily against the wall, stretching with the kind of languid, lazy grace that says he could go from nap to knife fight in under five seconds. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’re just invisible shadows with knives and bad attitudes.”
Maeve folds her arms. “I want a panic whistle. Preferably one that injects a tranquilizer into the nearest Guild babysitter.”
“You get a tracker,” I laugh. “Don’t push it.”
Kellan raises his brows. “I already hacked into her class schedule. We’re very committed.”
Maeve throws up her hands. “Great. I have a spoiled rich boy and a hoodie gremlin for bodyguards.”
“It’s a buddy cop movie waiting to happen,” Kellan chuckles. “One of us dies in Act Two. Probably me.”
Despite everything, I find myself smiling.
Maeve catches it too. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Just a little,” I say. I can’t help the shit-eating grin that spreads across my face as I look at her expression.