INICIAR SESIÓNEMBER’S POV“Hey. Hey.” He’s across the room, catching me in his arms before the first sob even breaks. His large hands cup the back of my head, pressing my face into his chest as his entire body curves over me. “No, no, no. Ember. Baby, look at me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”He pulls back just enough to look at my face. He looks genuinely stricken. All the wicked delight is gone, replaced by a man who has just realised his joke landed wrong.“Rafael. Fuck, you thought he found us.” He drags a shaking hand through his hair. “I’m an idiot. I just wanted to get you out of your head; I didn’t even think about how you would react to the alarm. I’m so sorry—”“It’s not that—” I try to say, but he is already spiralling.Seeing a man this lethal completely lose his composure just because I shed a tear is so shocking that it stops my crying halfway.“I was trying to make up for yesterday.” The words come out in a rush, and he actually stumbles over them, which I have never once heard Knox Volk
EMBER’S POVHundreds of soft, gold candles climb the walls in little glass holders. Overhead, string lights are looped through the vines like something pulled straight from a dream.In the centre of the space sits a low table set for two, decorated with actual flowers. Peonies. My favourite. A detail I mentioned exactly once, in passing, on a plane.Soft music plays from somewhere out of sight. A bottle of something is chilling in a bucket. A plush blanket is spread across the floor like the world’s most decadent picnic.The whole room glows with a warm, intimate beauty.I stand there, completely frozen, staring at the single least dangerous room I have ever been shoved into in my life.And standing around the edges of it, beaming at me, are Marjorie and Hale.And they are laughing.Marjorie has both hands pressed over her mouth and tears in her eyes from how hard she’s laughing.Hale is clapping, actually clapping, delighted as a child at a birthday party.And Knox — I turn around, a
EMBER’S POV“Get up. Get up, Ember, we have to go, now—”Knox’s voice is wrong.That’s the first thing I understand, before I understand anything else, before my eyes are even properly open.His voice is wrong. Knox does not sound like this.Knox sounds like a man who has never once in his life had to hurry, a man the world rearranges itself around, and right now he sounds like the floor is on fire, and his hands are on my shoulders shaking me out of the deepest sleep I’ve had since Alaska.“What—” I’m already being hauled upright, the blankets ripped back, cold air slamming into me. “What’s happening, what’s—”“No time.” He’s got a shirt over my head before I can find the armholes myself, dragging it down, his face above me carved out of pure panic, the gold already bleeding at the edges of his eyes. “Something’s wrong with the perimeter. The east alarms went off, and then the feed cut. Security can’t raise the gate team. I need you moving. I need you with me. Can you walk?”The east
EMBER’S POVI shuffle back without meaning to, staring at the room now, really seeing it — the sheeted furniture, the clouded vanity mirror, the record player in the corner, all of it kept and dusted — and then I snap my eyes back to Hale.“What the hell are you doing bringing me here?” My voice shakes. “Does Knox know you come in here? Are you even allowed to be in this room?”Hale tilts her head, slow, almost amused.“I’m allowed everywhere in this house.” Light, like it’s obvious. “You forget — I’m the lady of the house.” A small pause, a smaller smile. “Well. Not anymore, I suppose. But you catch my drift.” Her head tips the other way. “Is something wrong?”My heart is slamming now, and the questions spill out faster than I can hold them.“How do you know about this?” I push myself up off the floor, ignoring the spin. “This meditation, this — this thing you taught me, the way down into — what is your connection to any of it? How do you know how to do this?” I look at her, really l
EMBER’S POVIt hits the oldest wound I have, the one that says you are nothing on your own, you have always been nothing on your own, you survive only by attaching yourself to someone stronger.And the fact that it’s true- the fact that the only reason I’m not dead in that storage room is that Knox reached through the bond and pulled me back- makes it so much worse.“That’s not fair,” I say, and my voice shakes.“Fair.” She laughs, and it’s a terrible sound, all edges. “You are the second person in my lifetime to say that word to me, through that same trembling little mouth. I have no use for fair. I have use for STRONG. Harden your mind. Harden your body. Stop reaching for me with your grief and your panic and your bleeding-heart need to save every dying thing you trip over. Become a vessel worth the wine, and perhaps — PERHAPS — I will consider pouring myself into you for something other than your own survival. Until then? Stop calling. I am tired of being summoned by a girl who wee
EMBER’S POV“It’s not — they’re not—”“They are commoners,” she says, and the word drips. “That is precisely what they are. I am not a balm, Ember. I am not a kindness you dispense. I am the Silver Wolf. My power is an art, the highest there is, elegant and old and earned across a thousand generations, and it is not — it has never been — meant to be SPENT on prolonging the lives of the weak. The weak die. That is the function of weakness. You keep trying to make me an instrument of mercy, and I keep telling you I am not built for it, and you keep not LISTENING.”It’s Hale’s words.It’s Hale’s words coming out of the beast in my own chest: the weak die, that is the function of weakness, and the horror of that runs through me cold and sick.That the proud thing inside me, and the dangerous woman by the fire believe the exact same thing about the world, and I am alone in believing otherwise.“Then you’re wrong,” I snap. “Both of you. You and her, you’re wrong. I’m not going to stop helpi
KNOX’S POVHe blinks, the picture of innocence. “I’m not sure I understand. I explained the purpose quite clearly at the beginning of the evening. Conflict resolution. Closure. An opportunity for all parties to—”“Bullshit.”The word is deadpan, and I see Logan’s head snap up, see Gale’s sobbing st
EMBER’S POVI slump back into my seat unconsciously, not realizing how rigidly I’d been holding myself until the tension drains away.Knox lifts our entwined hands to his lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles, his eyes on me.It slows the tightening in my chest. Loosens the knot that Harrison’s qu
EMBER’S POV“Because I saw you on the news.” His voice cracks again. “During a press conference. I saw you standing up there, speaking to the camera, saying five words they have haunted me every night. You are dead to me. And though it wasn’t directed at me, I felt it so much. I felt it down to my
EMBER’S POVMy mother stands in the doorway, draped in designer everything as always.A silk dress in garish emerald that probably cost more than she can actually afford. Jewelry dripping from her neck, her ears, her wrists, every piece fighting for attention.Hair and makeup done to perfection, no







