Chapter 7
Ember
Idon’t sleep. I drift. That is not the same thing.
My body drops in and out in shallow, jerked edges.
Every time I start to slide under, I jolt awake again, heart sprinting, sure there’s a hand on my throat.
My brain keeps replaying the room in loops.
Curtain. Window. Door. Chair. Escape angles.
Him in the chair opposite me, voice quiet, eyes too steady.
Owen didn’t die because of what he knew. He died because of what he did.
Liar.
No.
Maybe not.
And that’s the worst part. It would be easier if Caelum Voss — Rook — had just lied. Monsters should lie. It’s cleaner.
By the time the dark outside the curtains turns into weak gray, my mouth tastes like old metal, my muscles ache from staying ready, and my eyes burn.
My body wants sleep.
My anger won’t let it.
Neither will the house.
Old buildings talk. This one hums. I can feel it through the floorboards and the walls and in the air itself.
A wardrobe door closing somewhere far down the hall.
Footsteps at 4 a.m., heavy and unhurried, not even pretending to hide.
Voices under my floor at some point — low, a rumble and a smoother reply.
Water through pipes. A door that sounds like iron on iron.
Someone laughing, low. Someone swearing in Spanish. Then quiet again.
They shift in cycles. Like wolves changing patrol, or priests preparing ritual. Like a machine that never fully powers down.
At some point my eyes do finally close. And when they open again, he’s in the doorway.
Not Caelum. The other one. The one who looks like he could snap me in two with his bare hands and use my bones as a toothpick.
Wraith.
He doesn’t knock either.
The door just clicks and swings and his body fills the frame — broad shoulders, dark shirt, forearms crossed. He doesn’t wear the mask this morning. That makes something cold and volatile go off in my stomach.
Last night, he was a skull with a voice.
Now he’s a man.
And he is… unfair.
Massive. Built like a wall built a second wall.
Dark brown hair shaved close at the sides, longer and rougher on top.
Jaw cut in hard angles. Mouth plush in a way that makes no sense on a face that severe.
Bronze ring through his bottom lip. A glint of metal in his eyebrow, another threaded along the edge of his ear.
Tattoos climb up his throat and spill over his collarbones in black and gunmetal gray, script and animal and scar patterns layered until it’s impossible to tell where ink ends and scar tissue begins.
His eyes are what get me. They aren’t cold.
Deep brown. Warm, steady, almost gentle. Eyes like he’s already forgiven you for whatever you’re about to do to him, and he’ll break the world anyway to keep you from having to do it.
It’s infuriating.
“Morning, little fox,” he rumbles.
My voice is still gravel when I answer. “You drug me and then call me a cute little nickname?” I scoff. “That is psycho behavior.”
At the corner of his mouth, something almost like a smile. “Didn’t drug you this time.”
“You say that like I should thank you,” I snap, rolling my eyes for dramatic effect.
“Didn’t say that, either.”
It’s a dance. I know a dance when I hear one. He’s not here to hurt me. He’s here to move me.
I push myself up from the bed, every muscle protesting low and mean.
My joints feel tight. My throat feels raw.
My shirt is rumpled and twisted from a night of bad sleep.
I tug it straight and push my hair back with shaky fingers.
The room smells like me again instead of cedar and bourbon. That feels like a small victory.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Breakfast.”
“Not hungry.”
His brows go up slowly, arms crossing over that massive chest in disbelief at my attitude. “Didn’t ask if you were hungry.”
I stare at him.
He shifts his weight and hooks two fingers into one of the belt loops of his jeans, casual, loose, like he’s leaning in a doorway of any normal flat, not standing in a controlled perimeter holding a stolen girl. His voice stays quiet when he adds, “King wants you downstairs.”
My stomach tightens. He means Caelum. He won’t say Caelum. He says King. They all do. But I heard the way he said it last night in the hall.
King wants her secure. King said. King’s orders.
That’s not a nickname. That’s a language.
“Is it just him?” I ask. “Or is this going to be a… group activity?”
That almost-smile ticks up again.
“All five,” he says, grinning from ear to ear.
My pulse stutters. I try to hide it, but those damn warm brown eyes flicker like they caught it anyway.
All fucking five.
So this is what I am, then… a situation, not a person. Worth assembling the men who run the city’s underbelly before noon.
Wraith’s gaze flicks down my body, then back up. It doesn’t feel like Rook’s kind of look — hungry, invasive. It feels like inventory. Assessing bruises. Noting if I’m steady on my feet yet.
“You walk, or I carry,” he says. “Your call.”
“I’ll walk,” I mutter.
“Good girl.”
The words land somewhere they shouldn’t. I hate that. I hate him for that. I hate my body for reacting at all. “Say that again and I’ll claw your eyes out,” I snarl, snapping my teeth at him for effect.
His eyes darken. Just a fraction—like he likes it. “There she is.”
He steps back to let me pass. He doesn’t touch me.
That, I wasn’t expecting.
He doesn’t grab my arm. He doesn’t shove me out first to prove I’m controlled. He just moves out of the doorway and waits.
I stand. My legs are not completely happy about that. A small wave of dizziness rolls through me, but I breathe and keep my face smooth. I don’t give him the satisfaction of wobbling.
When I reach him, his hand lifts — slow, obvious, telegraphed before it ever gets near me. He doesn’t lay it on me. He hovers it at the small of my back like he’s bracketing me there, body a shield between me and whatever waits in the hall.
The message is clear.
If I run, I’ll meet his body first. If someone else tries something, they’ll meet his body first. Partner and prey. I hate how right that feels.
The townhouse hall is brighter in daylight, and I get my first clean look at it.
High ceilings, original molding, pale paint, runner rug along polished wood floors.
The windows along the landing throw in that washed-out London morning light — gray-blue, thin, damp.
The air smells like coffee and toasted bread and something savory, like pan-seared meat.
They’re cooking? Of course they are.
Everything about this place is a weaponized illusion. You’re safe. You’re taken care of. We’re civilized men. Sit. Obey. Be grateful you weren’t dumped in the Thames.
We move down the stairs. Wraith stays close, one step behind, so if I bolt forward he can catch me. He doesn’t chain me. He is the chain.
“House rules,” he says quietly as we descend. “You don’t reach for anybody’s weapon. You don’t run your mouth just to see who’ll snap first. You don’t lie.”
I snort softly. “Interesting, coming from criminals.”
“We’re many things,” Wraith says, shooting me a hard look. “Stupid isn’t one.”
When we reach the main floor, he guides me through a short hall lined with old framed photographs — black-and-white shots of London docks and motorbikes in a row, one custom built that stands taller than the rest, a cathedral lit at night, some underground tunnel lit only by the bloom of a cigarette.
None of the pictures show faces clearly.
Then he opens a door and the smell hits me full.
Coffee, dark and bitter. Toast. Sautéed peppers. Bacon. Heat, butter, salt. My stomach betrays me and tightens like I haven’t eaten in a day.
Wraith’s mouth does that almost-smile thing again, like he heard my body before I did. Then he steps aside and lets me walk in on my own.
It’s not what I thought it’d be. I expected a long table, all intimidation and distance, men thrown across from me like a board of directors at war. Instead, it’s… domestic.
Not soft, no. Nothing in this place is soft. But it’s lived-in.
The dining room is large and bright, old fireplace along one wall, mantle crowded with half-burned candles and a glass bowl of spare keys and knives.
The table is solid wood, scarred by years of use.
Mismatched chairs. Sun bleeding gray through tall windows.
The room hums in a quiet way — controlled, coiled.
And they’re all here.
Rook is at the head of the table, of course.
He doesn’t have to posture. He just exists there, and the room orbits.
No mask this time. He’s clean this morning — black shirt, cuffs open, throat bare.
Dark hair neat. Blue eyes sharp and alert like he hasn’t slept at all and doesn’t need to. He doesn’t pretend to eat.
His gaze lands on me first. Stays.
To his right, Ash sits with a plate he hasn’t touched and a laptop open in front of him.
He’s the only one who looks like he belongs in daylight.
Ginger hair, slightly mussed like he’s been dragging his hand through it for hours.
Tall, broad-shouldered. A ring in his brow, a small hoop in his lip, a silver bar through the top of his ear. Green eyes, watchful and too awake.
There’s a stillness to him that’s wrong. It’s not calm. It’s absence. Like he’s partially not here, already half in whatever file, feed, or feed of me he was looking at before I walked in. I feel his eyes on my posture. The way I hold my weight. The way I blink. He’s logging me.
To Rook’s left sits Vale.
I know it’s Vale before anyone says his name. Photographs pale in comparison… to all of them. The flashback of the file I was fed all those years ago flits across my mind. The handler, the file I wasn’t ever supposed to see. I shut it down, scanning his body again.