Chapter 7
TILDA
There are certain sounds your body remembers before your mind does.
A child’s cry. A door slam in the middle of the night. The particular silence that means something has gone wrong.
And Bron’s laugh.
It hits me from across the reception hall like somebody drives a blade of hot glass straight between my ribs.
I go perfectly still.
One second I’m standing near a tall arrangement of silver branches pretending to listen to a sponsor rep explain “cross-platform resilience branding.” The next, the room shears sideways around that laugh—low, rich, warm with wicked amusement, too loud to be polite and too alive to mistake for anyone else.
No.
My first thought is that exhaustion has finally tipped me into hallucination.
My second is worse: of course it’s him.
Because if the universe has one reliable habit, it is this—whenever my life becomes barely survivable, Bron appears like an especially handsome natural disaster to test the structural integrity.
The sponsor rep is still talking.
“—and our audience demographic responds very positively to authenticity, especially if it’s framed aspirationally—”
I turn my head.
Across the Solarium Hall, beyond the wash of light and moving bodies and drifting camera drones, there he is.
Bron.
Black suit. Open collar. Hair tied back. One hand wrapped around a champagne flute like he was born with crystal in his fingers. He’s laughing at something, head tipped slightly, broad shoulders loose and easy in a way that makes violence seem rude and consequences seem optional.
He looks older. Harder around the mouth. A little leaner in the face. But the damage is in the details, because the details are familiar enough to make my pulse turn traitor. The line of his jaw. The tattoos disappearing beneath the collar. The lazy, devastating shape of his smile.
For one blank, terrible second all I can think is: He looks exactly like memory with better tailoring.
Then he turns his head and sees me.
The expression that moves over his face is so nakedly astonished it would almost be funny if I weren’t suddenly trying not to black out from rage.
He stops smiling.
So do I.
The room keeps moving around us. Conversations glide by. Glassware chimes. Somebody near the sponsor wall laughs too loudly. A camera drone hums overhead like an insect. But all of it is background now, washed thin and irrelevant.
Bron stares at me.
I stare back.
My body is already doing infuriating things—heart kicking too hard, skin prickling, every nerve waking up like it got a personal invitation. I hate that. I hate him for that. I hate myself a little for still being made of chemicals and bad luck.
A contestant beside me—some woman from one of the northern colonies with a silver cuff climbing one ear—follows my line of sight.
“Oh,” she says softly. “That looks personal.”
I don’t look at her. “It isn’t.”
She makes a neutral little sound that means liar, and drifts away before I can bite her.
I should leave.
The thought flashes bright and clean.
Just turn around. Walk out. Go back to my room. Lock the door. Skip the rest of the reception and let Bron stand there in his expensive suit wondering whether he imagined me.
God, I want to.
Every instinct I have is screaming for distance. For walls. For oxygen. For one night—just one—where I am not ambushed by the man who made wreckage look like romance and then left me to clean up both.
But the thought barely forms before the practical part of my brain takes it out back and shoots it.
If I leave a mandatory sponsor reception ten minutes after arrival, Brautigaum’s people will notice.
Production will notice. Somebody will tag me as difficult before the games even start, and this machine runs on narratives.
I cannot afford to become the brittle, unstable contestant who storms out of media events.
Not when I need every advantage. Not when Jesse is upstairs asleep under reinforced rails in a crib I secured by sheer force of refusal.
So I stay.
I inhale once through my nose.
Then I set down the untouched glass in my hand, square my shoulders, and decide that if Bron comes over here smiling, I’m going to freeze him to death with eye contact alone.
Apparently he takes that as encouragement.
Because of course he does.
He says something quick to the people around him, hands off his drink, and starts crossing the room toward me.
No hesitation. No visible caution. Just that long, loose, predatory grace he always had, like his body had never once considered a closed door a meaningful concept.
People turn as he passes. A few recognize the energy if not the history.
He smiles once at someone who says his name, then keeps coming.
I can feel nearby attention sharpening.
Wonderful.
He stops in front of me, close enough that I catch the scent of him under the polished room—soap, spice, clean skin, and a note of something darker that jerks loose old memories I did not invite. His eyes flick over my face like he’s checking for damage.
“Tilda,” he says.
Just my name.
Two syllables, and somehow it feels like a hand around my throat.
I lift one brow. “Bron.”
He lets out a disbelieving breath that almost turns into a laugh. “I genuinely thought I’d lost my mind for a second.”
“What a medical breakthrough that would be.”
That startles a grin out of him. A real one. Reflexive. Dangerous.
God, I hate that I remember exactly what that grin feels like against my neck.
He shakes his head slightly, still looking at me like I’ve just stepped out of a locked room in his past. “What are you doing here?”
I let the silence sit long enough to be rude.
Then I say, “Attending the mandatory reception. Same as everyone else.”
His grin widens a fraction, because apparently he’s already deciding this is banter instead of a warning. “Right. Fair. I just meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
His gaze drops briefly to my dress, then back to my face. “You look…”
He trails off.
I hope he’s searching for a word and swallowing it.
Instead he says, softly, “You look like you.”
That annoys me far more than a compliment would have. Because it’s not slick. Not easy. Too close to real.
I fold my arms. “Did you need something?”
That lands. His expression shifts by a degree.
“Well,” he says, with that infuriating warmth still threaded through his voice, “I was hoping to say hello without getting stabbed.”
“You’re very optimistic.”
“I’m thrilled to see you, Til.”
The nickname lands like a slap.
My face goes cold.
His mistake registers instantly. He straightens, just a little. “Right. No. Sorry.”
I hold his gaze. “Do not call me that.”
“Understood.”
For one brief, shining moment I think maybe he’ll finally hear the tone I’m using and react like a sane person would when confronted by the embodiment of unresolved consequences.
Instead he smiles again, slower this time, careful around the edges.
“Still terrifying,” he says. “Good. I’d hate to find out time had made you boring.”
I laugh once, sharp as broken glass. “And I’d hate to find out time had made you self-aware, but apparently we’re both adjusting.”
A nearby contestant coughs into his drink to cover a laugh.
Bron glances sideways, notices the attention gathering around us, and instead of backing off like any reasonable adult, seems to relax into it.
Of course he does.
He was born under a spotlight or hatched in one or whatever exactly happened to make him like this. Give Bron an audience and his pulse probably settles.
He leans one shoulder against the edge of the nearby table, all easy elegance. “All right. Message received. You’re furious.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Fury requires energy.”
“Ouch.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover.”
He tips his head, studying me. Not in the gross obvious way some men do, but in that focused, dangerous way he always had, like attention from him is a form of touch. “You really didn’t know I’d be here.”
“No. I did not receive the advance warning bulletin for former mistakes.”
That gets another involuntary flicker from the people closest to us. I can feel them pretending not to listen.
Bron exhales through his nose, almost laughing. “Gods, I missed you.”
My stomach turns over so violently I want to slap him.
Instead I say, “That is not an appropriate thing to say to me.”
His eyes sharpen. “It’s true.”
“And irrelevant.”
“Tilda—”
“No.”
The word comes out low and flat enough that it cuts him off.
For half a breath we just look at each other.
The music in the hall swells around us, some lush orchestral nonsense with too much percussion. Waitstaff drift by with silver trays. A drone arcs overhead, pauses, then keeps moving when it doesn’t get immediate drama. Shame. Give it ten more seconds.
Bron’s voice is quieter when he speaks again. “I’m not trying to start a fight.”
“That’s fortunate. I’m not dressed for one.”
“Liar. You could start a war in that dress.”
I stare at him.
He blinks, maybe realizing he said that out loud.
Then one side of his mouth kicks up. “Sorry. That one got away from me.”
“Yes,” I say. “Much like every useful impulse you’ve ever had.”
Dax—because I heard someone call him that earlier—materializes at Bron’s shoulder with a fresh drink in hand and a grin he is making almost no effort to hide.
“Well,” he says to the room at large, “this is electric.”
Bron doesn’t look away from me. “Dax, go be social somewhere else.”
Dax raises both hands. “I’m just saying, if this is how you greet old friends, I need better stories.”
“We are not friends,” I say.
Dax’s brows go up. “Noted.”
Another contestant edges closer—Sonya, I think, the woman from across my hall. Her gaze flicks between Bron and me with frank professional interest.
She says to me, “You want a rescue?”
Before I can answer, Bron says, “That depends. Is the rescue from me or for me?”
Sonya snorts. “I haven’t decided.”
“I’m fine,” I say, even though my pulse is trying to punch through my sternum. “Thank you.”