Chapter 49
Ember
Ihaven’t slept lately.
I close my eyes. I drift. My body rests because it has to, but my mind just… paces.
The manor feels different now. Heavier. Like the walls know there’s blood under them. Like the air knows there’s a man screaming in the dark two floors below and another one about to replace him.
It’s been three days since we took Damien.
Three days of questions. Three days of answers. Three days of me walking into that room and asking, “Who cleared Owen’s extraction route?” and “Who signed the order?” and “Who paid you to keep their secrets?”
Three days of him trying to posture, to pretend he has nothing to give us, and Wraith reminding him what happens when he does.
Three days of Saint sitting across from him, voice soft and patient, asking him what it felt like the first time he lied to a child.
Three days of Ash carving through his contradictions with surgical precision.
Three days of Vale in the corner, smiling like he’s hoping Damien lies so he has an excuse.
And Rook. Rook just listens. He doesn’t have to do anything else. His silence is worse than Vale’s grin.
No one has laid into him more than necessary—not what they’re truly capable of. Not yet.
That was my rule. I thought I wanted the slow burn, to watch the light slowly leave his eyes.
Turns out I don’t, a slow death feels like rot.
I’m standing in Rook’s office when the sun’s not quite up yet. The whole room is gray-blue, not lit yet, the only glow coming in from the massive windows that overlook the back lawn. London is a smear beyond the trees, blurred with early mist.
The office smells like him. Warm wood. Expensive whiskey. Clean spice. Gun oil.
He’s at his desk, forearms braced on the dark surface, head bowed like he’s praying to the map in front of him. He’s still in yesterday’s shirt. The sleeves are rolled. The top two buttons are undone. There’s a faint bruise at his jaw that I didn’t see last night, and his knuckles are split.
I don’t ask. “You’re avoiding me,” I say instead, letting the words hang between us like a live wire.
His head lifts slowly, blue eyes cutting to me, and it hits me in the chest like it always does. He looks carved and tired and wired all at once, and when he looks at me, something in him shifts. Softens. Goes almost gentle.
It almost makes me angrier.
“I’m not avoiding you,” he says.
“Then answer me,” I counter.
A beat passes, he clenches his jaw and says, “No.”
My hands curl at my sides, nails bruising my skin. “Rook—”
“No,” he says again, sharper.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “He’s still alive.”
“Yes.”
“For what.”
“For what we still need.”
“We’ve squeezed him.”
“Not enough.”
I laugh. It’s not pretty. “Not enough for who, him or you?”
His jaw ticks.
There it is.
I take a step closer. Then another. The floorboards are old, dark, varnished to a shine.
I can see my reflection in them when I look down.
Bare feet. Ink climbing my arms. One of Rook’s shirts hanging off my frame, the hem hitting high on my thighs.
Sleep-rumpled hair. Mouth already set in a line I know makes him crazy.
I look like I rolled out of his bed.
I didn’t.
But I look like I did.
He knows it.
I use it.
“Every time I go in there,” I say, voice low, “he talks. He gives names. He gives routes. He gives dates. He gives numbers. He gives whatever we ask. He’s already told you about Russo.
About the corridor. About the money that moved hands.
About who moved it. He’s told you why Owen was labeled compromised.
He’s told you they called me leverage. He’s told you they blackmailed him with losing clearances, and he lapped it up like cream.
He’s told you he’s not sorry.” Rook just watches me, but I keep going.
“He’s told you Marcus was ‘good’ at ‘conditioning’ young assets.
He’s told you he filed all that under morale development.
He’s told you he can get you files if you ‘just let him near a terminal’ because he still thinks you’re idiots. ”
My throat goes tight on that.
“I’ve listened to him talk about me like I’m a report,” I whisper.
“I’ve listened to him call Owen sloppy. I’ve listened to him say Owen was a liability for loving me more than he loved the job.
I’ve listened and I’ve smiled and I’ve smiled and I’ve smiled and I have not killed him yet. All because you asked me to hold.”
My voice breaks on that last part, just a hair.
Rook notices. Of course he does. “And now I’m done,” I say.
Rook exhales slowly. His gaze drifts down my throat, lingers at the edge of the shirt I stole out of his closet, flicks to my bare legs, then back to my face. He’s not doing it to be distracting — though, God, it is. He’s doing it because he studies everything. Even me.
Especially me.
“You think I’m keeping him breathing because I enjoy it,” he says.
“Don’t you?” I ask, and his head jerks, the movement so fast and sharp it’s honestly beautiful. That’s the thing with Caelum Voss — when the mask slips, even a fraction, you see what you should run from.
“You think I like hearing him say your name,” he says softly.
My mouth goes dry.
“Ember,” he says, even softer. “You think I like watching you sit in that chair across from him, so fucking calm, and ask him what he did to you when you were still innocent. You think I like listening to him answer you like it’s procedure.
You think I like holding myself back while he talks about putting his hands on you and telling you to be quiet for the good of the corridor? ”
Heat floods my face, fast.
“No,” I say through my teeth. “I think you’re addicted.” His eyes flash. “To control,” I push.
Silence splinters between us. “You want every little piece,” I say.
“You want every name, every route, every number so you can build your war properly and burn it clean. I get it. I do. I even respect it. But he’s running out of pieces I care about, Rook.
The longer you keep him alive for what you want, the longer I’m sitting here breathing the same air as the man who signed Owen’s death and told me to just ‘handle it’ when I was a kid.
” My throat tightens around the next words. “I’m tired.”
That lands. Something in his expression fractures. Not visibly, not for most people. But I’ve learned him. I know the fine grain under the polished veneer. His shoulders drop half an inch. “Tired how,” he asks quietly.
“Inside,” I say.
He goes very, very still. He doesn’t like that answer.
“Ember,” he says then. My name comes out low. Rough. Like he’s got gravel caught in his throat. “If I give you revenge too fast and not enough leverage to hold to your chest, I’m failing you.”
“I’m not asking you to give me more leverage,” I snap. “I’m asking you to stop telling me to sit pretty while you grind this out like a business negotiation.”
“It’s not a business negotiation,” he growls.
“Yes, Rook, it is. You’re playing him against himself. You’re dragging it out, and calculating optimal pressure over maximum yield.”
His mouth twitches, humorless. “And that’s a bad thing, strategy?”
“That’s not what I said,” I hiss. “Don’t twist my words just because you don’t like what you’re hearing.”
He leans back in his chair then, slow, palms flat against the desk like he needs something solid under his hands. His gaze drags over me. He’s angry, and trying not to show it. He’s also aroused. He’s trying not to show that either.
I know him well enough now to see both.
“Here’s what you’re really saying,” he murmurs. “You’re saying you want me to put a bullet in his head, drag his body out to the woods, and be done with it so you can breathe again.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
We stare at each other. His eyes flare. “You expect me to tell you no,” he says, voice dropping.
“I expect you to tell me ‘not yet’ like I’m a child being told to wait my turn,” I spit.
“Which is interesting, because in every other room in this house you’re happy to call me queen.
But down there? Down there you turn into committee.
‘We just need a little more, Red.’ ‘He’s about to break, Red.
’ ‘Give us one more day, Red.’ Meanwhile I’m the one sitting in front of him pretending I’m okay every time he opens his mouth and reminds me I was collateral when I was seventeen. ”
Rook’s hands curl into fists on the desk. “Ember—”
“I am not collateral,” I snarl.
His jaw flexes once. “I know,” he grinds out.
“Say it.”
His eyes snap to mine. “You are not collateral.”
“Again.”
“You are not collateral,” he says, this time sharper and filled with anger. Not at me, at Damien and Marcus for breaking me.
My throat burns, and I swallow thickly. “And Owen was never sloppy,” I whisper. “I need you to admit that.”
For a long beat, he doesn’t speak. His voice is quiet when it finally comes. “Owen wasn’t sloppy.”
“And he wasn’t compromised.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “He wasn’t compromised.”
“He wasn’t dirty.”
“He wasn’t dirty,” Rook says, voice low with fury. “He was doing what we’re doing now. Protecting you.”
My breath stutters. There. There it is.
That’s all I fucking wanted.
I wanted him to say it out loud. I wanted someone other than me to say it out loud, because then it would really be real.
Truth. Blind fucking truth that no one else can deny.
Something in my ribs loosens so fast it almost hurts.
I exhale shakily. “You don’t get to pull me out of bed in the middle of the night and call me ‘my disobedience’ and slide me into your world and fit a crown on my head,” I murmur.
“You don’t get to tell me you’re mine and I’m yours and that I belong to all of you and I don’t ever have to run again…
and then put me on the other side of the glass when it counts. That’s not how this works, Rook.”
That’s the deepest truth, and both of us know it. He stares at me like he wants to devour me. “I want him dead,” I whisper.