LOGINHey loves 🖤 I owe you an apology. It's been almost two weeks since I updated, and I'm so sorry for the silence. Life got messy, but I'm back now and not going anywhere. To make it up to you — double updates today. Updates restart from here, so no need to worry. We're in this together. One thing though. It's been quiet in the comments lately and sometimes I wonder if anyone's still reading. It can get a little discouraging not knowing if the chapters are landing. So please, don't hesitate to scream at me. Drop your theories. Tell me you love a character. Tell me you hate one. I read everything and I love responding even more. Thank you for still being here. Thank you for your patience. Now let's get back to it 🖤 — Remi
EMBER’S POVI sit beside his bed. Knox sits beside me. His hand finds mine, and his thumb traces circles on my knuckles. The motion is slow, rhythmic, and grounding in a way that I need more than I’m willing to admit.In that room, I tell Knox everything. The arrows, the plan, Queenie going for the gun, the man who grabbed her, firing the shot, Harrison’s men breaching the house. Harrison walking past me like I was nothing.Maurice in the doorway. The speech. The knife. The gunshot. Gale dying chained to a pipe. Harrison’s last words. The trigger pull.I tell it flatly, in order, like I’m reading it off a list, because the emotions are too big to attach to the words right now, and the mechanical delivery is the only way I can get through the sequence without breaking again.Knox listens without interrupting. When I finish, the silence is the kind that absorbs rather than demands.“The flash drive is neutralised,” he says, and I can hear in his voice that he’s giving me something good
EMBER’S POV“He’s alive,” I say into his chest. “Surgery went well. He’s in a coma, but he’s alive.”“I knew he would. You gave him his miracle.” His mouth is in my hair, and his voice is the low, rough, private register that he uses only when we’re alone or close enough to alone that the distinction doesn’t matter. “How are you?”“I’m standing. That’s about all I’ve got right now.”“That’s enough.” He pulls back just far enough to look at my face, and his eyes do the thing they always do, which is scan me for damage. He actively treats every shadow under my eyes and every tremble in my lip as a critical threat. “Have you eaten?”“Knox, I am not eating hospital cafeteria food while my father is in a coma.”“You’re eating something. Your hands are shaking, and your face is the colour of the wall. I’m not having this argument with you because I’ll win and you know it.”“You’re insufferable.”“And yet here you are. In my arms. Voluntarily.” The ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth
EMBER’S POV“But if I’d—”“If you’d WHAT? Figured out on the spot how to control a power that nobody alive seems to understand? Come on, Ember. You shot a man. You fought trained soldiers. You gave Maurice and me a plan that almost worked. You did everything a human being could do in that situation and then some. The fact that you ALSO have a supernatural wolf inside you that operates on its own schedule doesn’t make the things you DID count for less.”I lower my hands from my eyes and look at her.“We need help,” I say. “Someone who understands what Sapphire is and how she works and why she responds to some things and not others. Because I can’t keep walking into rooms with this thing inside me and not knowing whether she’ll save lives or burn the building down or sit there doing nothing while people die.”“Do we know anyone who—”“No. That’s the problem. Nathaniel has theories, but Nathaniel’s theories are what got us here in the first place. The woman with the crest and the twin gi
EMBER’S POVThe hospital smells like every hospital I’ve ever been in, which is too many hospitals for a woman my age.Antiseptic and recycled air and the faint, sweet undertone of something floral that the ventilation system pumps through the corridors to mask the fact that people come here to find out whether their lives are about to change for the worse.Maurice went into surgery two hours ago. I wait in a terrible, beige room filled with violently uncomfortable chairs.The television in the corner plays a cooking show on mute.I watch a woman silently chop onions, acutely aware that a team of strangers is cutting open my father’s chest in a sealed room nearby.Queenie sits right beside me.She has gripped my hand continuously since the ambulance ride, maintaining a desperate, unrelenting hold.She uses this physical anchor to actively block out reality, knowing that releasing her grip forces her to finally process the trauma of the last four hours.Which I know she is not ready fo
KNOX’S POV“The council has every right to—”“The council has every right to explain how Harrison Crawford showed up here with six armed men while YOUR surveillance team sat parked down the road and did nothing.” I let that land and watch it hit. “Your men were here, James. They watched Harrison arrive. They watched him open fire on this house. And they sat in their vehicles while he murdered his own son, shot a civilian, and put a bullet in his own head. So before you start asking ME questions, you might want to prepare some answers of your own.”James doesn’t flinch. The advisors behind him do.“I’m certain the timing can be explained—”“I’m sure it can. But here’s what I can’t explain.” I step closer. “How did Harrison know to come HERE? This address. This house. Middle of nowhere, unmarked, unremarkable. He didn’t stumble across it, James. He came with coordinates, a plan, and a team. Somebody pointed him straight at this door.” I tilt my head. “Who do you think that was?”The sil
KNOX’S POVThe guards look at me. I’m standing in the storage room doorway, my mouth open, because the man I just offered freedom to is requesting a cage.“Logan. I just offered you safe passage. You can LEAVE.”“I don’t want your safe passage,” he says, staring straight ahead at the doorway. “I don’t want your mercy or your guilt or your freedom. Burn my company to the ground and strip my accounts. I want nothing. I just want a cell. I want four walls and a floor, because nothing is exactly what I have left. I would rather sit inside that truth than play pretend under a new identity.”The guards are still looking at me, waiting for confirmation.I nod. Because what else can I do? You can’t force a man to accept freedom when prison is the only structure his grief will fit inside.They cuff him. He gives up his wrists with patient, empty cooperation. The arrest means absolutely nothing to him.The only sentence that matters was already delivered by a bullet in that storage room.Nathan
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
EMBER’S POVThe crowd murmurs agreement, curiosity rippling through the room.Knox extends his hand toward me.“Ember. Come here.”Every eye in the ballroom turns to me.My legs feel like they’re made of water. My heart is trying to escape through my ribcage.But Knox is waiting, his hand outstretc
EMBER’S POVThe mattress dips sometime after three in the morning.I’ve been lying here for hours, staring at the ceiling, my mind running circles around the photo of Queenie still burning a hole in my phone.Sleep feels impossible. Every time I close my eyes, I see Rayana bleeding on the marble. S
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







