Chapter 10
Ember
He leaves and the room doesn’t feel the same. The door shuts softly behind him. Not locked, just a soft click when the door closes. Like a sense of finality has swept through the room.
I stare at it anyway.
My whole body’s buzzing — not like adrenaline, or panic. Different. Deeper. Like I walked out of a fight and didn’t realize I was bleeding until the air hit it.
He touched me. Caelum Voss touched me and I let him. That should scare me. It should disgust me. It doesn’t, and that fucking terrifies me.
I exhale too fast and it punches out of me ragged—like a balloon losing its air.
My knees feel weak in a way I hate. I’m still half-pinned against the window like his hand is still there under my jaw, like his thumb is still pressed under my cheekbone.
Like he’s still brushing my hair back behind my ear, as if I’m something breakable he’s already decided not to break.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
I shove off the wall too hard. My legs don’t like it. Too much coil left in the muscles. I’ve been tensed since last night and I can feel it now — a deep ache in my shoulders, the knot at the base of my skull, my jaw clenched so tight it almost hurts to open my mouth.
I pace, because if I sit I’ll start thinking. And if I start thinking, I’ll start shaking.
The room smells like him. That’s almost worse than the touch.
The air still holds that expensive, controlled warmth he carries — clean soap, whiskey, something sharp like pepper and something darker underneath it like smoke.
It’s in the fabric of my shirt where he leaned in.
It’s on my skin where his thumb dragged under my eye.
I scrub at my cheek with the heel of my hand like I can erase it.
And I know… I can’t erase the rest. He said “Ember,” and it did something to me like someone hooked a finger at the base of my spine and pulled.
He said “my disobedience,” and I wanted to claw his face open. He said, “Look at me,” and I did.
And then I told him. God! Fuck! I told him. “He told me to run.” Why did I say those words?
I drop onto the edge of the bed and grab a pillow, crushing it against my stomach, curling around it hard enough to dig my nails into the seam.
Stupid. Reckless. Weak.
I can still hear the way my voice sounded when I said it.
Thin. Cracked. Not smart. Not sharp. Not the girl who forced five criminals to sign a protection contract before breakfast. Just a sister, shaking.
Just a sister who watched them put a toe on Owen’s memory and couldn’t stop herself from snapping.
I don’t break in front of men like him.
I don’t.
I can’t.
And still. When he asked — “What did he tell you?” — I didn’t lie. I should have lied.
Instead I told Caelum Voss, leader of the Masked Riders, wanted and worshipped and feared, that Owen called me the night he died and told me to run.
Run. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t trust anyone in a mask. Pack a bag. Disappear. Go to ground.
That’s not language you use when you’re just in trouble. That’s not “I did a bad run and pissed off the wrong men, cover for me.” That’s not “I owe someone money and I’ll fix it, don’t answer the door.”
That’s protocol. I dig my nails in harder. This is the part that won’t stop rattling around in my skull…
I slipped.
Not just with the running. Not just with Owen. With me. “I’ve been alive without you just fine,” I’d told him, and he’d said, “Is that what you call what you were doing?”
He’s not wrong and I hate it. I know what I’ve been doing the last three years. It wasn’t living. It wasn’t surviving, either, not really. It was holding position. It was keeping one foot in the door and one foot out, waiting for a clean exit signal that never came.
Like a good operative.
My stomach twists, nausea churning in my gut.
I push the pillow away and sit up straight, elbows on my knees, hands in my hair.
My heart’s still pounding way too hard. I try to steady my breathing.
In. Out. In. Out. It’s hard. There’s this tightness in my chest that won’t release.
The kind that makes you feel like you’re not getting enough air even when you are.
“You’re shaking,” Mateo had said in the kitchen. “Does that happen when you’re scared or when you’re turned on?”
I press my palms into my eyes and groan into the dark at the memory. Because it’s both. And admitting that to myself is almost worse than admitting I cracked to Caelum.
Caelum.
Caelum Voss, who looked at me like I belonged in his house and then told me he watches me on video. Over and over. Like I’m a study. A puzzle. A file. Not like I’m prey.
That’s the other thing that has me rattled. The way he looked at me when I told him what Owen said. When I said, “He told me to run,” the whole line of his mouth changed. It wasn’t victory. It wasn’t satisfaction. It wasn’t even smugness.
It was something almost like… anger.
Not at me. At the situation. At the memory, maybe. Or was it at the fact that he can’t control this piece of the story the way he can control everything else?
He said he has nightmares. He said my nightmares aren’t weakness. He said he sees me in his.
That must have been a manipulation. A psychological play. Maybe even a controlled confession to soften me up.
Except I know when someone’s trying to work me on purpose. I was trained to know. You clock tone, breath cadence, blink rate, micro-adjustment in posture, eye-contact timing. Lies are patterns.
What he gave me wasn’t polished. It was too direct. Too fast.
He said it like a man answering a question already asked. That shouldn’t make my throat tight. It does anyway. “Stop it,” I whisper to myself. “Stop.”
I rub the heel of my hand hard against my sternum like I can grind the feeling out of my chest. It doesn’t move. Because here’s the ugly truth I don’t want to name…
He is dangerous, and I am drawn to him. Not for the reason they all think. Not because he’s pretty. He is. It’s offensive. Not because he’s power-drunk. Not because he could tear London in half with one order.
Because he listens.
That’s the part that scares me.
I’ve been around men who talked big my whole life.
Foster homes. Corners. Owen’s circles before things went deep.
Dealers who thought they were kings because they ran a block.
Cops with too much swagger and not enough patience.
Men like to talk. Like to fill a room so you forget you exist inside it.
Caelum doesn’t do that.
He watches. He waits for you to show your throat. And when you do, he doesn’t rip it out. He puts his hand there and says, “Look at me.”
My breath stutters again. I hate that I can still feel his thumb where he wiped my tears. I also hate that there were tears for him to wipe.
My eyes burn again just thinking about it, and I get angry at myself fast, like slamming a door. I stand up and move, because staying still is a trap and I know better.
The cameras in the corners tick faintly. Always watching.
Ash’s domain.
I glance up at one, just long enough to make sure it catches the look I want it to — tired, small, harmless. I even yawn for effect. Then I turn my back, give them nothing else.
They think I’m broken. Let them. They’d already torn this room apart when they brought me here. I know they did. They checked the floorboards, the mattress, the seams, every piece of furniture. If the drive had been here, they’d have it by now.
It isn’t.
I was careful.
The night before I was captured, I knew what I was walking into. I’d already moved the drive out of the flat and into a dead drop only one person in the city besides me knows how to access — and he’s not talking, because he’s buried under a name that doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s still there. Secure. Invisible.
They can watch all they want. They won’t find it.
I don’t have to touch it to know exactly where it is. Beneath brick, rain, and a layer of wet, London grime, locked in a junction box that looks like it hasn’t worked since Thatcher. My heartbeat steadies a little just remembering it.
They think they have me boxed in. They don’t. They never did.
I turn the tap on in the bathroom and splash my face. The shock of cold water snaps the fog out of my head. I dry off with the towel, meet my reflection.
Copper hair, tangled. Ice-blue eyes rimmed red. Mouth still split, faint shadow of his thumbprint fading near my jaw.
I look like hell. But I’m breathing. I can do something with that. “Get it together,” I whisper. “No shaking. No crying. No slipping.”
No giving anything else to Caelum Voss unless I decide he gets to have it.
No telling him what I am.
Agent.
That word finally sits all the way in my head, and I feel, for the first time since his hand left my face, like I can breathe.
Owen and I weren’t street kids who got lucky. We weren’t just survivors.
We were placed. We were trained. We had purpose.
They thought we were disposable. Thought he died and I’d go quietly. They thought wrong.
I drop the towel and lift my chin. The girl in the mirror lifts hers back. Copper-red hair, ice-blue eyes, freckles across her nose, inked vines and bones up her arms, silver glint in her nose ring. I look like London chewed me up and spit me back out for round two.
Good.
Round two is where I usually win.
“Get it together,” I tell her quietly. “No shaking. No crying. No slipping.”
No giving anything else to Caelum Voss unless I decide he gets to have it.
No telling him what I am.
Agent.
That word finally sits all the way in my head, and I feel, for the first time since his hand left my face, like I can breathe. Owen and I weren’t street kids who got lucky. We weren’t just survivors.
We were placed, and trained. We had purpose.
They thought we were disposable. They thought he died and I’d go quietly. They thought wrong.
I take one last breath, slow and deep. Let it out.
My heartbeat steadies. My hands go still. I square my shoulders, walk back out into the bedroom, and sit on the edge of the bed — not curled, not small, not crushed. Upright. Waiting. Composed.
Let the Masked Riders think they rattled me. Let Caelum think I cracked. Let Mateo think I’m still shaking for him. Let Wraith think I’m something to guard. Let Saint think I’m something to save. Let Ash think he’s already mapped me.
None of them are prepared for what I really am.
And none of them are ready for what happens if they aim wrong.