Chapter One: The Reception

The wedding was beige.

Not the color—though there was plenty of that, champagne tablecloths and blush roses drooping in the August heat. No, the whole affair was beige in spirit. Polite and performative. The kind of event where everyone gave a smile that didn't reach their eyes.

Devane arrived late on purpose. But she cringe still sighting the event becoming even more vibrant than it should for something that was 30minutes to coming to an end.

The motorcycle's growl cut through the string quartet like a blade through silk. She killed the engine at the venue's iron gates and took her time walking up the gravel drive, helmet tucked under one arm, boots crunching with deliberate slowness.

Heads turned. Conversations stuttered and whispers spread throughout the decorated yard. She felt their stares and met none of them.

Let them look.

She'd worn black. Not for mourning—she wasn't that sentimental—but because it required zero thought and less effort. Black jeans, black boots, a black button-down with the sleeves rolled to her elbows.

The only color was the silver chain at her throat and the faint, faded scar cutting through her left eyebrow. Her hair was a mess, as always. She'd run a hand through it in lieu of a brush. It worked for her. It always had.

The garden venue sprawled before her, all fairy lights and flower arrangements and people she didn't know holding glasses of Prosecco.

Her father stood near the altar-turned-DJ-booth, laughing at something his new wife had said. He looked happy. Lighter. Like the past twenty years of blood and bad decisions had been steamed out of him.

Devane's eyes stared ahead coldly.

She found a pillar to lean against, pulled a cigarette from her pocket, and lit it. Someone gasped and her lips tugged up in a sly smirk.

The smoking was a test. If anyone was brave enough to tell the groom's gang-leader daughter to put it out, she'd consider respecting them.

But no one did. They just turned around whispered for some minutes then continued chatting cheerfully.

°°°°°

Across the garden, Clarisse was counting.

Twenty-three cherries in the punch bowl. Fourteen roses in the centerpiece. Six minutes since Aunt Helena last looked at her with that tight, expectant smile.

Counting kept her grounded. Numbers were safe. Numbers didn't expect her to be happy or grateful or full.

The wedding had been excruciating. Not because she didn't love her aunt—she did, in the abstract way she loved people who meant well but saw only the surface of her.

But weddings meant food. Cake. Champagne toasts. A three-course dinner she'd spent the last week mentally preparing for, and then mentally punishing herself for, and then mentally preparing for again.

She'd eaten half the starter. A bite of the main. None of the cake.

Now she stood at the edge of the dance floor, a glass of water in her hand, watching strangers celebrate a union she couldn't quite believe in.

Her dress was pale pink, chosen by her aunt. It floated around her knees. She felt like a fraud in it, a skeleton draped in chiffon, waiting for someone to notice she wasn't really there.

Then the motorcycle roared.

Clarisse felt the sound in her chest before she understood what it was. A deep, mechanical growl that vibrated through the carefully curated romance of the evening. She turned, along with everyone else, and saw a figure walking up the gravel path.

Tall. Dark. Moving like she owned the ground she stepped on.

The woman—girl? She couldn't have been more than a few years older than Clarisse—stopped near the entrance, surveying the crowd with the flat disinterest of a predator who'd wandered into a petting zoo. Her eyes were shockingly blue, even from this distance. Icy. Unimpressed.

Clarisse's stomach clenched. With Something she didn't have a name for.

She watched the stranger lean against a pillar and light a cigarette, a thin ribbon of smoke curling into the fairy lights. The defiance of it. The sheer, unapologetic presence of her.

She took up space in a way Clarisse had never allowed herself to. Her body was lean and muscular, her stance wide, her jaw sharp. She was everything Clarisse had trained herself not to be.

Loud. Demanding. Seen. Dark.

Clarisse realized she was staring and looked away. Her heart was beating too fast. She took a sip of water to give her hands something to do.

When she looked back, the stranger was looking directly at her.

Blue eyes, locked on hers. Expression unreadable. Smoke trailing from the cigarette held lazily between two fingers.

Clarisse's breath caught in her throat.

The moment stretched, thin and strange, until Aunt Helena materialized at her elbow.

"Clarisse, darling, there you are!" Her aunt's voice was bright with champagne and satisfaction. "Come, come—there's someone you absolutely must meet. Richard's daughter just arrived."

Richard's daughter.

The words took a moment to register. When they did, Clarisse's blood went cold.

Her aunt was already pulling her across the lawn, her grip insistent and cheerful, oblivious to the way Clarisse's feet had turned to lead. The stranger—Richard's daughter—watched them approach. She didn't smile. She took a long drag of her cigarette, exhaled slowly, and pushed herself off the pillar.

Up close, she was even more intimidating. Taller. Sharper. Her eyes had the kind of cold that came from seeing things Clarisse could only imagine. The scar through her eyebrow was old and white. There was another, fresher cut on her knuckles.

"Devane," Aunt Helena said, her voice warm and entirely too casual, "I'd like you to meet my niece. Clarisse."

The blue eyes flicked to Clarisse's face. Down. Up again. A clinical assessment, quick and dismissive. Like Clarisse was a piece of furniture that had been pointed out.

"Clarisse," Devane repeated. Her voice was low, rough at the edges. Smoke and gravel. She didn't offer a hand. "That a name or a disease?"

Aunt Helena laughed nervously. Clarisse felt heat rise to her cheeks—anger or embarrassment, she couldn't tell.

"It's French," she heard herself say. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "It means 'bright.'"

Devane's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like the idea of one, considered and rejected.

"Right," she said. "Well, Bright. Try not to get in my way."

She dropped the cigarette, crushed it under her boot, and walked past them toward the bar. The scent of smoke and leather and something sharper—gasoline, maybe, or danger—lingered in the air where she'd stood.

Clarisse exhaled.

Her aunt was already chattering again, something about how Devane was "a little rough around the edges" but "really quite special once you got to know her." Clarisse wasn't listening.

She was watching Devane's back disappear into the crowd, a strange, unwelcome feeling unfurling in her chest. It felt like recognition. Like the first few notes of a song she'd heard before, long ago, in a dream she couldn't quite remember.

She crushed the feeling down.

Not for you, she told herself. Not ever for you.

But her heart was still beating too fast.

---

Later that night, alone in her new bedroom—a guest room in Richard's sprawling house, still smelling of cardboard boxes and unfamiliar detergent—Clarisse touched her wrist.

Not enough.

She glared down at it. The bone jutted, but not sharply enough. The skin was still too soft, too yielding. How was she supposed to make it to finals if she still had this much weight? The thought coiled in her stomach, cold and familiar. Failure. Always failure.

She sighed, a ragged, defeated sound, and pushed herself off the bed.

The hallway was dark. Most of the lights in the house had been turned off, only the corner lamps left on—pools of dim gold that did more to deepen the shadows than chase them away. The carpet swallowed her footsteps. The silence swallowed everything else.

She stepped into the kitchen and flicked the switch.

"Ahh! Fuck."

Clarisse stared, wide-eyed, at the figure in front of her.

It was her. Devane.

The curse died in Clarisse's throat as her eyes adjusted—as she really looked. The fear didn't fade, but it shifted. Twisted into something sharper. Concern, maybe. Or a terrible, unwanted fascination.

Devane was covered in soot and blood. Streaks of black smeared across her bare shoulders, her arms, the hard plane of her stomach. She was wearing only a sports bra and the baggy pants from earlier, the waistband hanging low on her hips. A cut ran along her ribs, still wet. Bruises bloomed at her collarbone like dark flowers.

And she was crouched in the corner of the kitchen, back against the cabinets, eating chips straight from the bag like she wasn't bleeding. Like she wasn't painted in evidence of violence. Her phone was propped against her knee, and she scrolled with one thumb, utterly indifferent.

When Clarisse screamed, Devane raised her head slowly.

Her blue eyes dragged up Clarisse's body—ankles to neck, a slow, unhurried inventory. Like she was reading a menu she hadn't decided was worth ordering from. Then, just as deliberately, they dropped back to her phone.

"You done?" Devane's voice was flat. Bored. She crunched a chip.