Chapter 50
Ember
The rain is already inside when we bring them in.
It slips through the torn seams of the roof in thin, steady lines, tapping against the concrete in patient little heartbeats. The warehouse smells like oxidized metal and old oil and London river rot. It’s cold, and the cold lives in the walls. You can taste it.
Perfect place to die.
We’ve cleared everything but what matters. No crates. No pallets. No cover. Just two bolted-down metal chairs under a single hanging work light, flickering every so often like it’s struggling to stay awake.
Two chairs. Two men. Both destined to die.
I walk slowly toward them. I don’t rush. My boots ring out hollow on the concrete, echoing up into the exposed ribs of the ceiling. I’m wearing black, Rook’s shirt layered under my jacket, Wraith’s emerald cold against my throat. My hands don’t shake.
The boys hang back and let me go first.
Wraith is closest to the door, broad and unmovable, arms crossed over his chest. He looks like he’d break the world in half if I asked him to.
Vale leans against a cracked wall with his usual lazy, hungry grin, flipping a blade between his fingers like this is theater and he’s sad the tickets weren’t more expensive.
Saint stands farther off in half-shadow, head slightly bowed, rosary glinting around his wrist, looking like the last prayer you say before you do something you’ll never come back from.
Ash is behind them, in what used to be the loading bay.
He looks carved out of quiet. Observing.
Memorizing. He’s not blinking much. That means it’s costing him to stay where he is and not move.
And Rook? Rook doesn’t take the wall—doesn’t hide in shadow. He stands just behind me and to my left, like I’m center and he’s orbit, sleeves rolled, jaw tight, hands loose at his sides. Blue eyes fixed on me.
Not on Damien. Not on Marcus. Me.
The chairs are set where the worst of the rain doesn’t reach. The edges of the puddles are lapping forward, creeping in, catching the light and throwing it back in broken strips. It means when they look down, they’ll see themselves ruined.
That wasn’t an accident.
Damien is tied down tight — wrists cuffed behind the chair and to the frame, ankles shackled to the legs.
He’s older. Broader through the shoulders.
Bruised. Split lip gone crusted dark. His shirt collar’s torn and there’s dried blood on the side of his throat from where Vale “helped him sit still immediately please and thank you.”
He still looks smug, but he won’t before too long. Marcus is bound beside him, Marcus looks like prey trying to remember how to make himself look like a man.
He’s got rope burn on his wrists from straining. One eye swelling. Sweat on his upper lip. He looks smaller than I remember.
That hits me like a ton of bricks. In my head, he’s always been bigger.
Funny how that works.
Wraith steps forward, reaches around Marcus, and yanks the gag down from his mouth. He doesn’t untie him. Just gives him a voice again. “Speak,” Wraith says, low.
Marcus sucks in air like he’s been drowning. “This— this isn’t necessary,” he blurts immediately, voice cracking at the edges. “Whatever this is, it’s not— you don’t need to do this. We’re all on the same side here. We can talk like— like civilized adults—”
I laugh, though the sound rings hollow, slicing through the air. “We’re not on the same side. We never were,” I tell him.
Marcus flinches like I hit him, eyes flicking over me fast, scanning my face, my mouth, my hair like he’s digging through a mental file. And then he finds it. And when he does… His face goes pale so quickly I almost want to applaud.
“… little Ember?” he whispers.
There it is. Hearing my name in his mouth makes something inside me go cold and electric all at once. I don’t let it show. “Hi, Marcus,” I say softly.
He swallows hard. His eyes dart past me, searching the men behind me, like they’re going to save him. “This is— you shouldn’t be here. You’re— you’re supposed to be—”
“Dead?” I offer.
His mouth snaps shut.
I tilt my head. “Yeah. That would’ve made a lot of things tidier for you, wouldn’t it?”
“Ember,” he tries again, sweeter now, trying to land somewhere between fatherly and professional.
I watch him switch tactics in real time.
“Listen. I don’t know what they’ve told you, but this—this isn’t what you think.
You don’t understand how complicated things were.
How much pressure we were under. You were young, you didn’t have context. You were emotional—”
“I was seventeen,” I say.
It drops like a bell in the room.
He shuts up.
Damien’s shoulders go tight at that. I don’t look at him yet.
“I was seventeen,” I say again, quieter this time. “Do you remember that? I do. I remember the room. I remember the buzzing light. I remember the oily coffee on your desk and the way the carpet smelled like old sweat. I remember my hands shaking. I remember not knowing where to look.”
Marcus licks his lips. “You were new. You didn’t understand chain of command, and you had… attachment issues. I was trying to keep you from getting flagged as unstable. If I hadn’t stepped in, they would’ve pulled you from rotation. I was protecting you.”
Protecting me.
God. The fucking wanker.
I smile. It doesn’t fit right on my face. It feels too feral, too unhinged.
“Protecting me,” I echo.
“Yes.”
“When I told you not to put your hands on me,” I say calmly, “you told me I was dramatic. When I told you I didn’t feel safe, you said, grow up, it's part of the job. When I said I was scared, you told me to remember who feeds you. When I said no, you said I needed to be smart, love, because this is how it works here.”
His face spasms. “That’s not—”
“When I said I’d tell Owen,” I continue, voice steady, “you smiled at me. Do you remember that part? You smiled. And you said, ‘You don’t want to make trouble for your brother. He’s already under review.’”
Marcus goes from pale to gray.
“Ember—”
“You don’t get to rewrite history,” I tell him quietly. “Not anymore. You don’t get to sit there tied to a chair in a warehouse where you’re about to die, and tell me my memory is defective.”
His breath comes faster, desperate now. “I would never—”
“Why,” I ask, “do men like you think that makes you clean?”
He stops. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Behind me, I hear a sound from Vale that’s almost a laugh, except it’s too full of teeth. Saint murmurs something under his breath in that ruined prayer tone of his. It sounds like a benediction and a curse twisted together.
Marcus’s eyes are wide now. His pulse is visible in his throat, stuttering.
“Listen to me,” he breathes. “Ember. Listen to me. You’re angry.
I understand that. I do. You’re angry because Owen— because what happened to your brother— but I didn’t sign off on that. That wasn’t me. You can’t pin that on—”
“Oh,” I whisper, and something in me laughs, honest and cold. “Oh, Marcus. You’re still so sure you’re not in this.”
He freezes.
“Owen spent five years thinking he failed me,” I say softly.
“Five. Years. You know that? Five years walking around with that guilt in his bones like shrapnel. Five years tearing himself apart because he thought he hadn’t protected me.
Five years not sleeping. Five years drinking like poison was a cure.
Five years thinking that if he’d just been faster, smarter, colder, I would’ve been okay, that I wouldn’t—”
My throat tightens. I don’t let it stop me.
“Five years,” I continue, “until he died with that in his mouth instead of peace. You did that. You let that happen. You watched me disappear and him unravel and you said nothing because it was easier for you. You didn’t have to touch me. You killed me anyway.”
Marcus shakes his head frantically. “No—no, I didn’t kill anyone. You’re alive. You’re fine—”
“I am not fine,” I say, and it comes out almost gentle. “Look at me.” I reach out and take his chin in my hand. His skin is clammy under my fingers.
“Look,” I whisper. “Look at what you built. Look at what you left behind in the dark and thought would rot quietly.”
He looks. And I watch the realization land in his eyes. For the first time, he finally understands he’s not walking out of this room.
Good.
“I’m not going to beg you,” I say. “I’m not going to ask you why. I don’t care why. I’m not going to scream. You don’t get to make me scream ever again. I’m not going to cry for you. I’m not going to carry this for you anymore. This isn’t about you.”
He’s shaking, breath stuttering with every passing second.
“This,” I say, and my voice goes quiet enough that even the rain seems to lean in for it, “is about me.”
I let him go. And just like that, I feel it — that click. That internal shift. The last thread of something old snapping clean.
I used to think the moment I broke was the night I first walked into a handler’s office shaking and was told to “be smart.” Or when Owen stopped looking me in the eye. Or even the moment he died and I believed, for three fucking years, that it was my fault.
I was wrong.
This is the break—the line. This is where I stop being something they did to me, and start being something I chose.
Rook places a knife in my hand, and I glance at up him briefly, grateful for the way he gives me agency. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. It’s the action that matters most.
I lean closer to Marcus and cut with careful precision, taking my time—making it go even slower. His screams are delicious in my ears, sending a wave of euphoria through me. I slice in every spot meant to disable but not bleed out quickly. “Please, Ember!” he cries.
I ignore him, continuing with my carefully planned revenge. I take and take until he slumps over, passing out before the fun has even really begun. Such a waste.
“Well, that’s… disappointing,” Vale mutters under his breath, and my head darts toward the sound. I turn, taking them all in.