Chapter 23 Cassiopeia’s Gambit #3
A cold flicker of betrayal passes behind his eyes, swift and cutting.
I inhale a fortifying breath, spine straightening.
“I was the one who issued the moniker,” I tell him honestly.
“It’s technically frowned upon, but it helped me feel closer to you, connected somehow, giving you a name.
I’m a psychopathologist with ViCAP—or I was, before I went rogue. Databases are my special interest.”
He licks his lips as his gaze sharpens, shadowed by wary curiosity.
“I also specialize in abnormal psychology and maladaptive behaviors,” I add, letting the truth pour free now. “I’ve conducted over forty interviews with violent offenders. You’re number forty-one.”
Orion remains so utterly still beneath me, it’s unnerving.
“Before I came to Stonehurst, I was hunting an existential killer. One who was using a high-level, algorithmic database to locate untraceable offenders. I had a narrow window to find him. And damn—” I curl my fingers over his warm skin, reverent as I touch him, feel him “—he was the most sophisticated offender I had ever encountered.”
“Is that right,” Orion says, a rough groan escaping as my nails graze his skin.
I rock my weight against him, unable to curb a faint smile.
“I found him beautiful,” I confess, “the brilliance of his mind, the artistry of his scenes. From the very first one, I knew he could help me…if only I could find him. Yet that felt impossible.” My palms settle at his hips, thumbs slipping just beneath his waistband, drawing a shiver from his body.
“But then he left me a clue.” My voice softens, intimate. “Which, that wasn’t like him. He was too meticulous, too organized and exacting to make such a careless mistake. But I was so consumed by my obsession—with him, with his algorithm—that I didn’t start to process this fact until recently.”
“Shit,” Orion mutters, breath ragged. “That’s why I couldn’t uncover anything substantial on you. Your background was scrubbed. Thought I was losing my goddamn mind.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Not completely.”
A taunting smile touches his lips. “That feels unprofessional.”
“If you wanted professional, perhaps you shouldn’t have fucked your therapist.”
“I still want to do nothing more.” A slow, devious smile twists his mouth, and he drags his teeth over his bottom lip. “Since you’re up here…” He bucks his hips beneath me. “Why don’t you go ahead and sit on my face, angel.”
A dangerous flutter murmurs through my chest, and I steady my voice.
“Orion. Please hear me. Your quantum algorithm… I’ve never encountered anything remotely like it.
I doubt anyone has. I’m not even sure you fully comprehend what you’ve built.
Its potential, its implications—” I break off, shaking my head. “What it’s capable of.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me what it’s capable of for you,” he says, a turbulent storm rising behind his flinty expression.
Seated astride him, I pull a shaky breath into my tight lungs.
“I’ve spent years curating this identity of Collins Holbrook for one objective.
” I swallow the well of emotion. “Emery Collins. Lyra Rayne. Irene Holbrook. Hollyn Cawthorn.” Each name cuts deep, a blade dragged through an open wound.
“The names of his known victims. Names that not only haunt me, but remind me every day that I can’t stop hunting him. ”
“The man who hurt you,” Orion states.
“The monster who killed me. Who did this”—I touch my chest, tracing the length of the scar that bisects my chest—“he’s untraceable, and lacking a victim count impressive enough to warrant federal resources.
Not considered high priority. But that’s because, I think, he changes his MO.
Not even the most advanced tech within ViCAP can track a perpetrator who shifts signature and motive like he does.
But,” I pause to catch my breath, “I know he’s killed more girls than have been identified. ”
“And you want to catch him, to put him away—”
“No.” The word drops heavy between us. “I want to drive the dullest fucking knife through his heart, watch as he chokes on his own rotten blood. And I want to do it on a theater stage, right under blaring lights. Then I want to wrap his lifeless body in scenery canvas, drag him into the blackest part of the forest, weight him down with dirt and river rocks, and submerge him in the muck. Leaving him there to be forgotten. To decay. To rot. For scavengers to pick his bones until nothing of him remains.”
The gravity of his gaze holds me bound, those lustrous eyes of oceans and galaxies clashing and seeing down to the broken, shameful truth of my vengeance. Heat flushes my skin, forcing me to look away.
“I don’t have to be your opponent,” Orion says, his voice taking on that smooth cadence that melts the hardened parts inside me. “I never did, angel.”
My heart stutters as I return my gaze to his. I don’t tell him that I realized exactly this while he held me close in the ocean, my dark adapting to his. That maybe I could have found a way to trust him. That in some terrible, beautiful way, our cracks match.
That I realized only too late we’re not two different species.
“Right,” I say, bitterness edging my voice. “And at what point was I supposed to trust you with this, Orion? Before or after you made me your thirteenth constellation?”
A muscle ticks in his jaw, a brief flicker of guilt surfacing before his features lock into a stony mask.
An ache pulses in the charged air between us, thrumming with notes of his own past, painfully sliced into a before and after.
And mine, fractured violently between victim and survivor.
He dared to make me a victim again, and that betrayal ignites a fresh surge of anger.
“I had a before and after, too,” I tell him as I trail the tips of my fingers over the taut ridges of his abdomen, tenderly outlining the swirls of ink.
“I’m not the girl I once was. To become what I am, to get this far, I’ve done things I can’t take back.
One step too far is still too far, and if I don’t finish this, then every sacrifice made becomes meaningless. ”
Orion’s throat works on a strained swallow, the dark tide behind his eyes breaking like a relentless wave finally crashing, receding.
He doesn’t press for more, doesn’t attempt to deny the painful heart of my confession. When he speaks, his voice is subdued, hollowed by defeat. “Just tell me what I need to do, Collins. Tell me what you need of me.”
“You’ve already given it to me,” I say truthfully. “To find him, I needed a predictive modeling system. One advanced enough to track him now. I can’t wait for him to make a mistake.”
“Make me understand why.”
“I’m an endangered species.”
“What does that—”
“I’m dying.”
The words detonate on impact, shattering the tenuous space between us with the force of a cosmic collision.
“No.” Orion’s denial is immediate. “That’s not possible—”
“—despite all your data points, I assure you it is—”
“I saved you.” His voice breaks, an ocean of stubborn refusal cresting behind his fierce gaze. “I altered your outcome. Your heart stopped, but I brought you back—”
A bleak, callous laugh slips free. “You can’t revive a dead girl,” I say, incredulous. “All you did was bring back the same pain, the same struggle, the same unrelenting hunger for revenge. You didn’t rewrite my fate, Orion. You only postponed the inevitable.”
He studies me for an endless moment, the tendons of his wrists flexed, a defeat so profound sharpening his beautiful features it wounds. “How long.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I turn my face aside, unable to bear the agony carved into his features when I say, “Not long enough.”
“How. Long,” he demands, restrained fury resonating like a tremor beneath each word.
I force my gaze back to his, meeting the swell of violence there. “A year,” I manage. “Maybe two. Possibly only months.” My shoulders rise in a helpless shrug. “According to their timeline, my clock already ran out. I’m on borrowed time.”
His silence infuses the air. At least he’s intelligent enough not to ask the obvious, tired questions. There are no surgeries left. No matches. No alternative treatments. I’ve exhausted all viable options.
Mercifully, he doesn’t make me say it.
“Then why are you still here,” he asks, the vehemence in his voice roughened to gravel. “If you came here for one purpose, why didn’t you just leave once you got it, Collins?”
I nod slowly, gaze falling to the printouts tucked at his side. “That was always the plan, to vanish before you ever realized anything. It would’ve made this easier. Knowing nothing about me. Believing I just disappeared. Then I realized something for myself.”
I lift a page, holding it before him. “I told you that I didn’t understand how you could’ve made such a blatant mistake at Bethany Beach.
Not until I was here, able to observe you.
You were never reckless, Orion. Fearless, yes—but too cautious to leave evidence behind.
And your impulsive behavior…it didn’t align.
It’s as if with each ritual, each kill, you’ve been losing pieces of yourself.
At first, I thought psychological decompensation, but—”
I angle the printout into his line of sight. A structural MRI with the clearance report attached. The workup Banner requested two years ago—the version that was altered. The proof, undeniable.
“I honestly thought you swapped the paperwork in your file yourself,” I continue, measuring his reaction.
“That you feared any evidence of deterioration after your wreck would jeopardize your research—your grants, your credibility. An institution wouldn’t risk backing a researcher whose cognitive function was deteriorating.
It would call into question the integrity of your work. ”
Orion remains silent, the intensity of his gaze unnerving. Not once does he glance at the damning evidence between us. Then, with a controlled breath, he says, “Go on.”