"HE IS COMING"

"The cruelest people are not the ones who hurt you. They are the ones who watch and decide it is not their problem."

KIVA

She held out her hand, palm up, like this was already settled, like I had already agreed, like the outcome of this moment had never really been in question.

And maybe, in this house, it never had been.

I stared at her open hand and handed it over to her

" Please Give it back."

My voice shook. I hated that it shook. I had tried so hard, for so long, to keep my voice level in this house, to not give them the satisfaction of hearing what they did to me, and now here I was, shaking over a ring in my own sister's hand.

Paige stood in the middle of the living room with the chandelier light falling across her like she had positioned herself there on purpose, which she probably had, because Paige always knew where the light was best. She was turning the ring between her fingers slowly, studying it the way you study something you're deciding whether or not to want.

My ring.

My engagement ring.

The one Fabian had slid onto my finger less than two hours ago in a library practice room while I cried embarrassingly and he looked at me like I was the best thing he had seen in a long time. The one I had kissed under the streetlights on the walk home like an absolute fool who had forgotten, just for one evening, what her life actually looked like.

Paige smirked.

"Where did you get this?"

I swallowed. "It's mine."

She let out a short, sharp laugh. Not amused. Dismissive. The kind of laugh that is designed to make the other person feel small.

"Yours."

"Yes."

She looked at the ring again. Then at me. Something moved across her face in quick succession, disbelief first, then amusement, then something deeper and uglier underneath both of them. Something she would never call jealousy out loud but that I had learned to recognise years ago because I had watched it often enough.

"Oh, that's funny," she said.

Before I could step back she grabbed my wrist. Hard. Her fingers closed around it and she yanked me toward her and the sudden movement sent a spike of pain up my arm.

"Tell me the truth."

"I am telling you the truth."

"You're lying."

"I'm not."

"Then who gave it to you?" Her grip tightened. "You stole it, didn't you."

"I didn't steal anything."

"Then who gave it to you?"

I froze.

It was involuntary. The hesitation was only a second, maybe less, but Paige had spent her entire life watching my face and she caught it immediately. I watched her expression change as the pieces connected, watched something light up behind her eyes that I wished I could extinguish.

"Oh," she said slowly.

She let go of my wrist.

The smile that spread across her face was slow and deliberate, the kind that meant she had found something she intended to use.

"Oh, this is good."

She turned toward the staircase before I could say anything.

"Mom!"

Her voice rang through the house, loud and carrying, the voice she used when she wanted maximum effect.

"Dad! Giovanni!"

I closed my eyes.

Please. Not tonight. Please just let me have tonight.

The footsteps came almost immediately, which meant everyone had still been awake, which meant the evening was not yet done with me.

My mother appeared at the top of the stairs first, still in her dinner clothes, reading glasses pushed up on her head. My father behind her, unhurried, wearing the expression he wore when he expected the interruption to be Paige's drama and was already mildly annoyed about it. Giovanni came last, jacket off now, looking like someone had pulled him away from something he considered more important than anything happening in this room.

"What now?" Giovanni said.

Paige held the ring up between two fingers like she was presenting evidence.

"I caught Kiva stealing."

"I didn't steal anything." The words came out fast. "Paige, stop it, tell them the truth—"

Nobody looked at me.

That was the thing that always got me, even after all these years of knowing better. Not the cruelty of it, I had made a kind of peace with the cruelty, but the way nobody looked. My mother glanced at the ring and then away. My father's expression barely shifted. Giovanni's jaw tightened in the way it did when he was deciding how much energy to spend on something.

Not one of them looked at my face to see what was actually there.

"I swear I didn't steal it," I said. "It was given to me. It's mine."

Paige slid the ring onto her own finger.

It fit.

She held her hand out and turned it under the chandelier light, admiring it the way she admired everything she decided she wanted, with the easy ownership of someone who had never had to fight for anything.

"Looks better on me anyway," she said.

"Paige, give it back."

She ignored me completely. Kept turning her hand. "Prettier than I expected, actually. Whoever bought this has decent taste."

"Give it back." I stepped forward. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "It belongs to me."

The room went quiet.

Not comfortable quiet. The other kind. The kind that meant something had shifted, that someone had done something unexpected and the room was recalibrating around it. I didn't argue in this house. I didn't push back. I had learned a very long time ago that pushing back only ever made things worse, gave them something to grab onto, gave Giovanni an excuse he was going to use anyway. I kept my head down and I got through it and I preserved what I could and that was the system.

But this was Fabian's ring.

This was the only thing in my entire life that had ever been purely, completely mine, and I was not going to stand here quietly and let her keep it.

Paige looked at me with something almost like surprise. Then genuine anger flickered through her expression, quick and hot, because I wasn't backing down and she wasn't used to that from me.

"Give. It. Back," I said.

She pulled the ring off her finger.

"You want it?"

"Yes."

"Come get it then."

And she threw it.

Not at me. Across the room. The ring hit the marble floor and bounced, the diamond catching the chandelier light once in a bright cold flash before it skidded and settled.

I didn't think. I dropped to my knees and reached for it.

The heel came down on my hand before my fingers closed around it.

The pain was immediate and total. Sharp and spreading all at once, through my fingers, up my wrist, a sound came out of me that I hadn't planned, somewhere between a gasp and a cry.

Paige's full weight pressed down.

"Oops," she said.

"Paige—" My voice cracked. "Please—"

"Please what?"

The heel twisted.

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek and the tears came anyway, the kind that don't ask permission, that just arrive because the body has reached a threshold and has stopped listening to what you want.

My mother looked at the window.

My father looked at his hand.

Giovanni crossed his arms and watched with his jaw set and the expression he wore when something inconvenient was happening and he was waiting for it to be over.

Nobody moved.

Nobody said a word.

That was the part that would stay with me longer than the pain in my hand. Not the heel. Not Paige's voice or the ring bouncing across the floor or any of the loud and visible parts of it. The stillness of the three people standing in that room who could have said something and chose, each of them, separately and completely, not to. My mother who had looked away. My father who found the middle distance more interesting. Giovanni who watched like it was something happening on a screen.

It was the watching that broke something in me.

Not loudly. Not in a way anyone would have been able to point to. Just a quiet internal fracture, the kind that doesn't make a sound.

Paige finally stepped back.

I pulled my hand against my chest and held it there, curled against my sternum, and breathed through the throbbing. The ring was a few inches away. I reached for it with my other hand.

Paige got there first.

She crouched and picked it up and held it between two fingers, dangling it, studying it with her head tilted like she was making a decision she had already made.

"It's fake," she said.

My head came up. "What?"

"The diamond." She turned it under the light. "No one is spending real money on you, Kiva. Be realistic."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it?" She looked at me, genuinely, directly, like she was doing me a favour. "Think about what you are. Think about who would actually spend this kind of money on an omega nobody's ever heard of. In what world does that make sense?"

My throat had closed completely.

She looked at the ring one more time.

Then she turned to the kitchen doorway and dropped it into the bin.

The metallic sound it made as it hit the bottom was small and final.

"There," she said. "If you want it so badly, dig it out."

I stared at the bin.

I could see the edge of the ring just visible above the coffee grounds and the dinner scraps from earlier, the diamond dulled by the dim light, sitting among things that had been used up and thrown away.

Something inside me went very, very still.

I had let myself believe it tonight. That was the thing. I had walked home from that library with my cheeks aching from smiling and I had kissed the ring under the streetlights and I had thought, for the first time in as long as I could remember, that maybe things were actually going to change. That maybe I was going to get to have something good. That maybe being chosen by someone meant the choosing would stick.

And in the space of twenty minutes Paige had found it and taken it and stepped on my hand and thrown it in the bin, and not one person in this room had done anything except wait for it to be finished.

"That's enough."

Giovanni's voice. Flat and final.

I looked up with something stupid and small still flickering in my chest, some reflexive, irrational hope that had no business being there after everything.

He was pointing at me.

"Clean this mess up."

The hope went out.

I opened my mouth. I didn't even know what I was going to say, probably nothing, probably I was going to just nod and start cleaning because that was what I always did, that was the whole system, and then—

The front door opened.

Not knocked. Opened. Hard and fast, the way it only opened when someone was in a hurry or frightened or both.

Everyone turned.

One of the household servants stood in the doorway, still wearing his outdoor jacket, breathing like he had run from the gate. His face was a colour I had never seen on him before, all the blood gone out of it, leaving something pale and tight.

"Sir." He was looking at my father.

My father frowned. "What is it?"

The servant's eyes moved around the room once, like he was checking who was present, like what he was about to say was the kind of thing that changed who was in the room by the simple act of being said.

"He is coming," he said.

"Who?" my father said.

"The Decaulion." The servant's voice dropped slightly, the way voices do around certain names. "He is coming to inspect all the gates. And from the information we have received—" He stopped. Steadied himself. "He may be starting with us."

My father's wine glass slipped from his fingers.

It hit the marble floor and shattered, red spreading outward across the white stone, and nobody looked at it. Nobody moved toward it. Nobody said a word about the mess.

Because the ring in the bin didn't matter anymore.

Because the argument didn't matter.

Because nothing in this room, nothing that had happened in the last hour, nothing that had felt so enormous and so permanent five minutes ago, mattered at all.

Only one name did.

And it had just been spoken aloud in my father's house.