17. Lumi
SEVENTEEN
LUMI
The studio at Axan Dark smelled the same.
That was the problem. Lumi stepped through the door at noon and the air slammed into her—ink and old paper and the faint residue of last night’s takeout.
The work surface where he’d backed her up against the edge.
The stool where her bare feet had been tucked beneath her.
The panel—their villain’s face, raw and exhausted—still lying where they’d left it.
Her body remembered before her brain caught up. The pressure of his mouth. The growl vibrating against her lips. His thumbs on the strip of bare skin above her waistband.
She shut it down. Locked every sensory memory behind a door and threw the bolt.
Zeir stood by the window. Dark shirt. Sleeves pushed to his elbows. He turned when she entered. His eyes went to her face first, the bruise she’d iced that morning, and the muscle in his jaw pulled tight before he locked the rest of it down.
“I need to show you this.” She pulled out her phone. All business. The only gear that would get her through this room without combusting.
He took the phone. Read the email. Studied the fabricated sketches.
His expression didn’t shift. But his body did—a subtle reorganization, shoulders squaring, spine straightening. The temperature in the room dropped three degrees. Not anger. Colder. The kind of focused fury that dismantled things systematically instead of setting them on fire.
He zoomed in on the linework. Sixty seconds of silence. His eyes tracked from the forged Sable sketches to Lumi’s original panels pinned on the corkboard behind her.
“The line weight is wrong.” His voice was stripped bare.
Clinical. “Harlan draws with a thicker nib. Whoever made these used a .3 technical pen—consistent width, no pressure variation. Harlan’s natural stroke has a swell at the beginning of each line.
” He scrolled. “The shading cross-hatches left to right. Harlan is left-handed. His hatching goes right to left. Someone manufactured these for him.”
Lumi stared. “You identified a forgery in under a minute.”
“I have a good eye.”
“You have a SCARY eye. Are you a detective? Is this publishing company a front?”
“It’s not a front.”
“That’s exactly what someone running a front would say.”
The humor cracked the ice. Not enough to thaw the room, but enough to let her breathe. He handed the phone back.
“No one steals your work and walks away from it. Not while you’re under this roof.” He crossed to his desk. Picked up his phone. “Nyx can trace the email—encrypted routing, image metadata, device signatures. She’ll find who built these. I’ll put Axan Dark’s legal team alongside your brother.”
“You don’t have to—”
“This isn’t optional, Lumi.”
The way he said her name. Low and certain, stripped of professional distance. Not a request. A declaration from a man who’d decided that her fight was now his fight and the decision was already made.
She swallowed. “Keanu will want to coordinate.”
“Give him Kael’s number. They’ll work well together—both of them fight like they’re protecting family.”
The word landed. Family. She held his gaze for a beat too long. He held hers too.
The kiss hung between them—unmentioned, unresolved, taking up all the air in the room. It stayed where it was. Untouched. Unanswered.
“Thank you.” She meant it. The words scraped against her pride, but this was bigger than pride.
He nodded once. “Get your archives organized. Everything dated. Nyx will need the originals for comparison.”
Allies. Not the unnamed thing they’d been last night with paint on their hands and his mouth on hers. Allies with a shared enemy and an investigation to run.
It was easier this way.
Liar.