Chapter 37 #2
He approaches me slowly, like I’m something that might spook.
His eyes — that cold, impossible blue — hold mine.
He’s beautiful in the way old sins are beautiful, all sharp lines and ruined faith, and when he reaches into one of the boxes and lifts something out, he does it like an offering at an altar.
“Ember,” he says softly. His voice always sounds like confession. “My name is Nikolai Drax.”
My chest tightens. He’s never said that to me. Not once.
“It was,” he corrects quietly, like he heard the thought. “Before I fell out of God’s good graces. Before I traded blessing for import routes.” A wry curve touches his mouth, almost a smile. “You can call me Saint. Or Nikolai. You can call me anything and I’ll answer.”
He holds something out. It’s a rosary. But not a church rosary. The beads are matte obsidian, cool and dark and heavy-looking. The chain is gunmetal instead of silver. The cross isn’t a cross at all but a tiny, perfect dagger. There’s a smear of crimson in one groove of the metal. Dried. Old.
“For protection,” he murmurs. “Not salvation. I’m not arrogant enough to offer something I can’t give you.”
My throat goes tight. I lift my hand. He sets the rosary into my palm, then closes my fingers around it with both of his, like sealing a vow.
He leans in, just enough for the words to be for me and me alone. “Little lamb,” he whispers, voice gone rough, “you ever call for me and I will stain the Thames red.”
Heat licks down my spine, and I draw in a ragged breath. Saint steps back, head bowed for a heartbeat like he’s praying to a god who isn’t listening anymore.
Vale is next.
He doesn’t approach reverently. He prowls.
He smirks. He drips sin and confidence and threat.
But when he stops in front of me, it… softens.
Just at the edges. Just enough for me to see it.
“Ember Calloway,” he says, and he says my name like it tastes good in his mouth, “my name is Mateo Valez, and I am, regrettably, the closest thing this group has to charm.”
Saint snorts. Wraith grunts. Ash exhales like a laugh he’s not supposed to have. Rook doesn’t blink.
Mateo — Vale — reaches into his box and pulls out something black.
A blade. It’s not standard. It’s custom made, personally designed.
A handcrafted push dagger, matte black steel, double-edged, built to slip between knuckles and stay there.
The grip is wrapped in dark leather, and etched into the metal, near the base, is a tiny sigil I’ve seen before spray-painted under bridges and on walls.
The Riders’ mark—a single tiny crown.
“You’re going to need this,” he says, like he’s talking about lip balm. He flips it, grip-first, and holds it out to me. “Pointy end goes in whoever’s stupid enough to touch what’s mine.”
The last word is a purr. A challenge. My hand doesn’t shake when I take it. He leans in — close, closer — his mouth near my ear, voice dropping to that sinful whisper that crawls under skin. “I’ll train you on it. You’ll like my methods.”
“Mateo,” Rook says mildly.
Vale grins slow, wicked, unrepentant. “You can call me Vale,” he murmurs, loud enough for all of them. “Everyone else does. But when you need me to make someone scream for you?” His eyes cut to mine, gone dark and sincere in a way that does not match the smile. “You say Mateo.”
There’s something like a promise sitting under my skin now. It’s starting to layer. Saint’s vow. Vale’s threat. It turns warm, coiled, alive.
Wraith comes forward next.
He doesn’t speak yet, but the air changes anyway.
He’s so much bigger up close like this, all mass and ink and quiet danger.
Close, he smells like clean steel and smoke and skin.
His brown eyes go soft around the edges when he looks at me — not weak, never weak.
Soft like hunger made patient. Soft like reverence.
“Ronan,” he rumbles. It’s not an introduction. It’s a statement. A gift. His name, offered like his throat. “My name is Ronan Black,” he says, like a vow. “Wraith, if you’re talking about me to anyone else. Ronan, if it’s just us.”
Ronan.
I feel that in the base of my spine. He pulls something from his box. It’s leather. At first I think it’s a collar, and my pulse spikes so hard I forget to breathe.
It’s not a collar. It’s a holster. Custom leather, soft black, sized to my body—my body—not generic. Slender, close-wearing, meant to sit high against my ribs and vanish under a jacket. Already fitted with a compact matte-black pistol I don’t recognize. Clean. Oiled. Beautiful.
I look up at him, throat tight.
His voice drops. “You will not go unarmed again,” he says, like he’s swearing to God and himself at the same time. “Ever. Not while I breathe.”
Heat hits the backs of my eyes and threatens to sting. I nod once, because words aren’t safe.
He doesn’t ask permission. He steps in behind me, slow, giving me time to stop him.
I don’t. His hands are big and steady as he settles the holster against me, tightens the strap under my arm, adjusts the lay of the leather so it sits flush under my jacket.
The weight of the gun against my ribs is a shock of reality, of finality. Of belonging.
When he’s done, he leans close enough that his mouth just barely grazes the edge of my jaw, his breath warm. “Little fox,” he whispers, so quiet it’s almost a growl, “I’ll tear out throats for you. Say the word.”
He steps back, and I struggle to breathe.
Ash approaches next.
He doesn’t smile, but the air around him changes in a way none of the others can manage.
There’s always been a hum to him — something obsessive, electric, coiled so tight you can hear it if you get close enough.
He’s close enough now. “Ember,” he says, and hearing my name in his voice does something bright and aching to my chest. “My name is Lysander Quinn.”
Lysander. It fits him. Too pretty to be safe. It feels like he’s handing me a blade and letting me press it to his throat.
He doesn’t offer me a weapon. He doesn’t offer me something devotional. He reaches into his box and pulls out something different.
A book.
Leather-bound, thick, black, edges gilt in dark metal. No title on the cover. Not store-bought. Handmade. The strap around it is locked. Literally locked. There’s a tiny biometric pad where the clasp meets. My eyes widen. “What is it?”
“Proof,” he says.
My mouth goes dry. “Of what?”
“That you’re not wrong,” he says softly. “About Owen. About Damien. About all of it.”
Everything in me goes still. His green eyes flick up to meet mine, and for once there’s nothing clinical or detached in them. It’s not dissection. It’s loyalty.
“I document everything,” he says quietly. “Even them. Especially them. Meetings. Shipments. Names. Routes. Payments that shouldn’t exist. People who shouldn’t know each other knowing each other. It’s all in here.”
My heart is in my throat.
“And you’re giving it to me?” I whisper.
“I already backed it up,” he says, like of course, like obviously. “This one’s yours.”
My voice cracks. “You trust me with that?”
His jaw tightens, and for a second, I watch something raw move over his face. “No,” he says, almost a whisper. “I need you to have that.”
Need, not trust. God.
He presses the book into my hands, and for a second his fingers stay there, overlapping mine. His thumb brushes once along my knuckles. It’s barely anything. It feels like everything.
Then he steps back and takes his place amongst the rest. My hands are full now — Saint’s rosary, Vale’s blade, Wraith’s holster pressed warm to my side, Ash’s book weighted down in my arms — and my heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
Rook hasn’t moved. He’s been watching silently the whole time. Like a king holding court.
When he steps toward me, the others shift. Not away. Around. Like closing a circle. Like sealing an oath. He doesn’t go to the table. He already has his offering in his hands.
It’s a black box.
Not big. Matte, with gold filigree carved into the lid in curling vinework. His sigil — the crown — glints for a heartbeat in the firelight.
My fingers tighten around everything I’m already holding.
“Caelum,” I say softly.
His eyes flicker, just once. I don’t think I’ve ever said his first name like that. Soft. Devotional. Mine.
He steps in close enough that I can feel the heat from his chest through my jacket.
“This is the last piece,” he says, voice quiet, almost intimate. “After this, there is no walking it back. Not for you. Not for us. Do you understand?”
My mouth is dry. “Yes.”
“Say it,” he murmurs.
“I understand.”
He studies my face for one long, slow beat. Then he nods, satisfied, and opens the box.
For a heartbeat I forget to breathe. It’s a mask. Not one of theirs. Not a copy. Nothing I’ve seen before on any wall.
It’s beautiful and wrong at once. It’s carved in deep, almost liquid black — not glossy, not matte, something in between with a faint iridescent sheen like beetle wings.
The shape fits over the upper half of the face, sweeping high over the brows in sharp, branching arcs like antlers or thorns.
Vines curl across the cheekbones, delicate and lethal all at once, each one edged in dark green so deep it’s almost black until the light hits it and it blooms emerald.
It isn’t sweet or soft. It looks like the face of something old that lives in the dark part of the forest and demands sacrifice. Like a queen of something that isn’t human.
A dryad, my mind supplies. A fae monarch. A forest god with blood on her mouth. Rook holds it like he’s holding a relic. My voice comes out a whisper. “That’s mine?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Why does it look like that?”
He smiles, slow and devastating. “Because we made it for you.”
My breath stutters. “We?”
“All of us,” Saint says.
“Argued for hours,” Vale adds brightly.
“Days,” Wraith rumbles.
“Seven days, three prototypes, two blown tempers, and one incident involving a bandsaw that I’m not discussing,” Ash mutters.
Rook ignores them. His eyes stay on me. “We chose it,” he says, “because it looks like what you are. Not soft. Not clean. Not some pretty thing in a glass box. Something that grows out of ruin and tears down whatever tries to tame it.”
Heat floods my chest. My throat. My face.
I swallow. “It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
“It’s terrifying,” Vale corrects, which he makes sound like praise.
“It’s you,” Wraith says.
Rook lifts the mask — slow, patient — and raises it toward my face. He pauses just before it touches me. “Last chance,” he says quietly.
I meet his eyes. And for the first time in my entire life, I don’t hesitate. “I’m yours,” I tell him. My voice doesn’t shake. “All of yours. You don’t get to make me choose who I love.”
The room goes absolutely still. Something raw flashes behind his eyes. Relief. Possession. Hunger. Reverence.
“I know,” Caelum murmurs.
Then he settles the mask over my face. It fits perfectly—like it was carved from me.
The world narrows, and light shifts. The flicker of the candles goes sharp through the eye slits. The air tastes like smoke and iron and rain. The weight of it changes the way my spine sits—not bowed, not braced. Straight. Aligned.
I exhale slowly, and without being told, without prompting, without drama, they move.
Wraith drops first. Then Saint. Then Vale, slow and theatrical, like kneeling is obscene and he’s doing it anyway because it turns him on. Then Ash, jaw tight, gaze upturned, eyes on me like I’m something he’ll burn the world down to archive. And finally — Caelum.
He kneels, and bows his head.
To me.
My chest cracks.
For a second I can’t breathe, because somewhere between the warehouse and this room, between the first day they took me and tonight, something shifted that I cannot take back and don’t want to.
This is not captivity. This is coronation. A vow. They look at me and there’s no lie in it. No manipulation. No leverage.
They’re not making me theirs. They’re offering themselves to me. I feel the weight of it, and I don’t run from it. I let it curl into me, settle in bone and blood.
“Why?” I ask. My voice sounds different behind the mask. Darker. Older. “Why me?”
Caelum looks up. His eyes are that impossible blue, and they’re not guarded for once. They’re honest. He gives me the truth like a blade he trusts me with. “Because,” he says softly, “we were already burning. You’re the only thing that made it a purpose instead of an ending.”
My throat tightens, tears leaking at the corner of my eyes.
“Because you’re the first thing we haven’t wanted to break,” Saint adds quietly.
“Because you make us worse,” Vale purrs, grin sharp, “and that’s fun.”
“Because I sleep now,” Ash says, voice barely above a whisper. “And I didn’t before you.”
Ronan’s voice is last. It rumbles up from somewhere in his chest, low and absolute. “Because you’re ours, little fox. And anyone who tries to take you from us dies slow.”
It’s hard to believe, but I feel steady for the first time in years. I lift my chin. “Good,” I say. “Because I’m not running.”
I reach up and touch the mask, fingers grazing the carved dark thorns, and feel it settle fully into place — not just the mask, but what it means.
“I’m yours,” I say again, and this time I let it echo. I let myself feel every word. “All of yours. And when we go after Damien, you don’t hold me back.”
Caelum rises. He steps in close, and when he says it, it’s not a promise.
It’s a sentence.
“Red,” he says, voice reverent and ruthless in the same breath, “we’re not holding you back.”
A slow smile curves his mouth, dangerous and so full of pride it steals my breath. “We’re unleashing you.”