The House That Breathes

Liana Pov

I didn’t sleep.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, counting the seconds between my breaths like it might anchor me to something real. The house hummed around me—not with voices or whispers, but with systems. Electricity. Cameras. Control.

This wasn’t silence.

This was surveillance.

Every sound felt intentional. Every absence of sound felt planned.

I turned my head slowly, testing the room again. The door was solid. No handle on the inside. The window was high, narrow, reinforced glass. The kind designed to let light in but keep bodies out.

Or in.

My shoulder pulsed.

Not painfully. Not urgently.

Aware.

The Mark had never felt like this in the compound. There, it had been a thing to fear, to feed, to suppress. Here, it felt… alert. As if it had opened an eye.

I pressed my fingers to it, breath hitching.

“Stop,” I whispered. I didn’t know if I was talking to myself or to whatever lived beneath my skin.

The warmth didn’t fade.

It answered.

I pushed off the bed and stood, barefoot on cold wood. The floor didn’t creak. Nothing in this place betrayed movement unless it was meant to. I crossed to the mirror again.

The girl staring back at me looked sharper than the one who’d been dragged into the SUV.

Still pale. Still hollow-eyed.

But no longer folded inward.

Cassian’s coat lay draped over the chair. Heavy. Dark. It smelled faintly of smoke and something clean, something expensive. I didn’t touch it.

I refused to wrap myself in him.

A soft sound made me turn.

Not a click this time.

A presence.

The door was still closed, but I knew—knew—that someone stood on the other side. Not a guard. Not Marco.

Him.

My pulse kicked hard against my ribs.

“You can come in,” I said quietly. “I know you’re there.”

A pause.

Then the lock disengaged.

Cassian stepped inside without a word, closing the door behind him with the same careful finality as before. He’d changed—dark shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms. No jacket. No weapon visible.

That didn’t make him less dangerous.

His gaze flicked over me once, assessing. Alive. Standing. Not curled into myself.

“Still awake,” he said.

“So are you,” I replied.

“I rarely sleep,” he said. “Bad habit.”

I didn’t ask why. I didn’t want the answer.

“Why does this house feel like it’s watching me?” I asked instead.

He considered that. “Because it is.”

At least he didn’t lie.

“You said tomorrow,” I said. “You said we’d start figuring out what I am.”

“Yes.”

“And tonight?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do tonight?”

Cassian stepped closer, stopping where he had before—close enough to matter, far enough not to touch.

“Tonight,” he said, “you survive the silence.”

Something twisted in my chest.

“I’m good at that,” I said bitterly.

“I know,” he replied.

That was the problem.

I met his gaze, forcing my voice steady. “You don’t look at me like a prisoner.”

“No,” he agreed.

“Or like a weapon,” I pressed.

His jaw tightened slightly. Just a fraction.

“That,” he said, “is still under evaluation.”

The Mark flared—brief, sharp heat. His eyes dropped instantly to my shoulder.

There it was again.

That invisible line between us.

“Why does it react to you?” I demanded. “You said it recognized something. What?”

He was silent for a long moment.

When he spoke, his voice was lower. Careful.

“Because some things don’t respond to belief,” he said. “They respond to authority.”

The word landed heavy.

“I don’t believe in your cult,” he continued. “I don’t believe in gods, or seals, or holy hunger. But power… power recognizes its own.”

Cold crept up my spine.

“You think you’re like it,” I said.

“No,” he corrected. “I think it knows I won’t kneel.”

That terrified me more than anything he’d said so far.

“And what if it wants you to?” I whispered.

His mouth curved—not a smile.

“Then it’ll have to try harder.”

The house seemed to inhale.

I realized then that Cassian wasn’t afraid of the Mark.

He was curious.

And curiosity, in men like him, was lethal.

“You said answers have a cost,” I said.

“What’s mine?”

He stepped back, breaking the pressure between us.

“Not tonight,” he said.

“Tonight, you stay here. You eat. You rest. You don’t touch the windows. You don’t try to test the guards.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, hand on the door, “we find out whether the cult was right to fear you.”

He paused, glancing back once.

“And whether I was right to take you.”

The door closed.

The lock slid into place.

I stood alone again, heart racing, the Mark burning faintly under my skin.

For the first time since the night everything burned, a new thought settled into me quiet, dangerous, impossible to ignore:

I hadn’t escaped one cage.

I’d been moved into another.

And this one was built by a man who didn’t believe in gods—

but might be something just as unforgiving.