Faylan didn’t step back.
That was the first thing she noticed about herself.
Not the blood still warm against her skin. Not the body behind Cassius. Not even the fact that she was standing in an alley with a man who had just confirmed—very calmly—that he was a vampire.
No.
What she noticed was that she hadn’t moved.
Cassius watched her like he was measuring that.
Like it mattered.
Then, after a moment that stretched just a little too long, his gaze flicked past her shoulder, down the alley, toward the open street beyond.
Something in his posture shifted.
Subtle.
But immediate.
“We need to move,” he said.
Faylan blinked. “Excuse—”
“It won’t be the only one.”
That shut her up.
For about half a second.
“Okay, hold on,” she said quickly, pushing off the wall despite the way her shoulder protested. “You don’t get to just drop that and then—what—escort me like this is normal?”
Cassius didn’t argue.
He didn’t explain.
He just stepped closer.
Faylan’s breath caught—not from fear this time, not entirely—but from the sudden shift in proximity. He moved into her space without hesitation, one hand lifting as if to reach for her before stopping just short.
For a second, his gaze dropped again.
To her shoulder.
To the blood.
His jaw tightened.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower.
More controlled.
“You can stay here and wait for the next one,” he said, “or you can come with me.”
Faylan stared at him.
“Those are terrible options.”
“They’re the only ones you have.”
A beat.
Then—
“God, I hate that you’re right.”
Cassius’s mouth twitched faintly, like he almost smiled.
Faylan rolled her eyes and stepped forward. “Fine. Lead the way, vampire.”
The word felt strange on her tongue.
Too real.
Too immediate.
Cassius didn’t react to it.
Not outwardly.
But something in his expression sharpened, just slightly, as he turned and started toward the mouth of the alley.
Faylan followed.
Because apparently this was her life now.
The street outside felt different.
Colder.
Quieter.
Or maybe that was just her.
Cassius moved beside her, not ahead, not behind—just close enough that she could feel him there without looking. His presence wasn’t loud, wasn’t obvious, but it pressed at her awareness in a way she couldn’t ignore.
Like standing near something powerful that hadn’t decided what it wanted to do yet.
Faylan shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, trying to ground herself.
Trying not to think about the fact that she was walking through Greythorne at night with a vampire like it was a normal Tuesday.
Her phone buzzed.
She flinched slightly, pulling it out.
The screen lit up.
Rowan (Ro)
Her stomach dropped.
Missed calls.
More than before.
And new messages.
Ro: Fay, where are you?
Ro: Your dad just called me.
Ro: He’s freaking out.
Ro: Please tell me you’re okay.
Ro: I can’t find you.
Faylan slowed.
“…what?”
Cassius glanced at her briefly. “Problem?”
Faylan didn’t answer right away.
Her eyes were still on the screen.
I can’t find you.
That line stuck.
Rowan always found her.
Not in a creepy way—just in that annoying, reliable, Ro being Ro way where he always seemed to know where she was, when she needed something, when she was about to make a bad decision.
Except now—
He couldn’t.
Faylan frowned slightly, her thumb hovering over the screen.
“That’s weird,” she murmured.
Cassius’s gaze lingered on her a second longer this time.
“Is it?”
She looked up at him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he said smoothly, looking ahead again.
Faylan narrowed her eyes.
“You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The ‘I know something and I’m not going to tell you because it’s more fun for me’ thing.”
Cassius’s mouth curved faintly. “You make it sound malicious.”
“It is malicious.”
He didn’t deny it.
Faylan looked back at her phone, reading Rowan’s messages again, something uneasy settling in her chest.
“I can’t find you.”
She typed quickly:
I’m fine. Don’t tell my dad where I am.
Then hesitated.
Deleted it.
Typed again:
I’m okay. Just… out.
Sent.
Her phone buzzed almost instantly.
She didn’t open it.
Instead, she shoved it back into her pocket and exhaled slowly.
“Everyone needs to calm down,” she muttered.
Cassius glanced at her again.
“They won’t.”
Faylan let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that.”
They turned down another street.
Quieter.
Darker.
The kind of place most people avoided at night unless they had a reason not to.
Faylan noticed something then.
It took a second to place.
A shift.
In the air.
In the feeling under her skin.
That strange awareness that had been following her all night—the sense of being watched, tracked, noticed—
It dulled.
Not gone.
But… muted.
Like someone had turned the volume down on it.
Faylan slowed slightly.
Her brow furrowed.
“…okay, that’s new.”
Cassius didn’t stop walking.
“Keep moving.”
“I am moving,” she said, but her gaze flicked around the street anyway, instinctively searching. “It just—felt different a second ago.”
Cassius said nothing.
Which, at this point, was suspicious.
Faylan glanced at him.
“You did something.”
“No.”
“You absolutely did something.”
He didn’t look at her.
“I’m keeping you from being noticed.”
That made her stop.
Completely.
Cassius took one more step before realizing she wasn’t beside him anymore.
He turned.
Faylan stood in the middle of the dim street, staring at him.
“…I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “You’re what?”
Cassius regarded her for a moment, then stepped back toward her.
Closer again.
Always closer.
“The scent of your blood,” he said quietly. “It carries.”
Faylan’s stomach twisted.
“I hate that sentence.”
“I imagine you would.”
She crossed her arms instinctively, ignoring the way the movement pulled at her shoulder.
“And you’re just—what—masking it?”
“For now.”
“For now?” she echoed. “That doesn’t sound temporary at all.”
“It isn’t sustainable,” Cassius said simply.
Faylan stared at him.
“So what, I just walk around like a glowing beacon to… things like that?” she gestured vaguely back the way they came.
Cassius’s gaze flicked briefly to her shoulder again.
To the blood.
Then back to her face.
“Yes.”
A beat.
Faylan exhaled slowly.
“Great,” she said. “Love that for me too.”
Cassius’s expression shifted slightly—something almost like approval, or maybe interest, threading through it again.
“You’re handling this better than most would.”
Faylan gave him a flat look. “I’m choosing not to scream. That’s not the same thing.”
“Still impressive.”
She shook her head, but didn’t argue.
Because, honestly?
He wasn’t wrong.
They walked a little further in silence.
Not comfortable.
Not uncomfortable.
Just… charged.
Faylan could feel him there, every step, every shift of movement. The space between them wasn’t large, but it felt deliberate, like neither of them was quite willing to close it completely.
Or widen it.
Her shoulder throbbed.
Warm.
Wet.
She could feel the blood still there, slow and steady.
Cassius could too.
She knew he could.
Because every so often, his attention would flicker—not obvious, not constant, but enough.
Enough that she noticed.
Enough that it made her pulse jump.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Faylan glanced sideways at him.
“You’re going to have to deal with that,” she said.
Cassius didn’t look at her.
“I am.”
“Are you?” she pressed.
Now he did look.
And this time—
there was no pretending.
No soft amusement.
No careful distance.
Just something darker.
Something held tightly in place.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
Faylan’s breath caught.
Because for the first time since the alley—
she believed him.
And somehow—
that was worse.
Not because Faylan suddenly doubted he was dangerous. She was way past doubting that.
It was worse because now she believed he was dangerous and believed he was trying not to be.
That combination was deeply offensive to her peace of mind.
They kept walking.
The farther they moved from the alley and the brighter streets near the bar, the quieter Greythorne became. The road narrowed, storefronts giving way to older buildings with dark upper windows and locked side doors, the kind of places no one looked at too closely in daylight and absolutely no one wanted to explain at night. Fog slid low across the pavement in pale, shifting bands, softening edges and swallowing distance.
Faylan’s shoulder throbbed in time with her pulse now. The first sharp heat of the attack had settled into something more insistent—a wet sting every time she moved her arm, every time the torn fabric of her shirt brushed her skin.
Cassius noticed when she winced.
Of course he did.
Without a word, he turned off the street and guided her down a narrow side passage between two old brick buildings. It opened into a small courtyard she had never noticed before, boxed in on three sides by weathered stone and a rusted iron staircase leading nowhere she could see from this angle. One wall was half-covered in dead ivy. A single security light glowed weakly above a back door, leaving most of the space in dim silver shadow.
Faylan stopped walking.
“This is either where you patch me up,” she said, glancing around, “or where I become a victim in a murder documentary."
Cassius looked at her over his shoulder.
“You do make everything sound dramatic.”
“I make things sound accurate.”
That earned the faintest twitch at one corner of his mouth.
He crossed to the back door and pushed it open without taking out a key.
Faylan narrowed her eyes. “That feels suspiciously illegal.”
“It isn’t.”
“You said that too fast.”
Cassius stepped inside and switched on a low lamp near the wall. “Do you want me to explain property access, or do you want to stop bleeding?”
Faylan glared at him for a second, then walked in.
The room was small and unexpectedly clean. Not an apartment, not exactly. More like a private storage office someone had made temporarily livable—a narrow sofa against one wall, a wooden table, a cabinet with neatly stacked supplies, a small sink in the corner beneath another weak lamp. It smelled faintly of cedar and clean linen, with something colder underneath that she was beginning to associate specifically with him.
“This yours?” she asked.
Cassius shut the door behind them. “For tonight.”
That was not an answer.
Faylan let it go anyway, mostly because her shoulder had upgraded from painful to deeply rude.
Cassius gestured toward the sofa. “Sit.”
The command in it hit before she could stop herself from reacting.
Her chin lifted. “You know, you say things like that like I’m supposed to just—”
“Faylan.”
Her name, low and even, cut cleanly through her irritation.
He stepped closer, and whatever she had been about to say got lost somewhere between the ache in her arm and the simple fact of his attention.
“Sit,” he said again, quieter this time. “Before I have to listen to you complain while you pass out.”
Faylan stared at him.
Then sat.
“Just so we’re clear,” she muttered, easing herself onto the edge of the sofa, “I hate that you’re currently the most competent person in my life.”
Cassius moved to the cabinet and opened it. “I’ll recover.”
She watched him in silence for a moment as he pulled out a small kit, gauze, a dark glass bottle, and what looked like a folded black cloth. His movements were efficient. Familiar. Too practiced.
That struck her almost as hard as everything else.
“You’ve done this before,” she said.
Cassius glanced at her once. “Yes.”
“I feel like I should be more alarmed by how unsurprised I am.”
“You’re adapting.”
“I’m coping badly with style.”
Cassius set the supplies on the table and came to stand in front of her.
The room felt smaller instantly.
Not because it was small.
Because he was close again.
Close enough that she had to tilt her chin to hold his gaze properly. Close enough that she could see the minute shift in his expression when his eyes dropped to the tear in her shirt.
“Move your hand,” he said.
Faylan looked down. At some point, she’d pressed her palm back over the wound without noticing.
She peeled it away slowly.
Blood had darkened the fabric along her shoulder and collarbone, the tear in the shirt exposing a line of skin beneath. The injury itself wasn’t huge—more a long, shallow rake than a deep puncture—but it was ugly enough to make her stomach turn now that she could actually see it.
Cassius didn’t look disgusted.
He looked—
Focused.
Too focused.
That dangerous stillness slid over him again, subtle but unmistakable. His eyes tracked the blood with a concentration that made the skin on the back of her neck go warm despite the chill in the room.
Faylan swallowed.
“So,” she said lightly, because apparently humor was the only thing standing between her and losing it, “on a scale from one to absolutely terrible, how weird is this for you?”
Cassius didn’t answer immediately.
His gaze lifted, met hers, then dropped once more to the wound.
“Very,” he said at last.
That honesty did not help.
He reached for the black cloth, dampened it under the sink, and came back to her.
“Hold still.”
Faylan gave him a flat look. “You’re weirdly bossy for someone who literally admitted to being a vampire less than an hour ago.”
“I’m washing blood out of a wound,” he replied. “You’re welcome to make this harder.”
“I feel like you’d enjoy that.”
A pause.
Then, “At the moment? No.”
Her pulse jumped in a way she found unhelpful.
He touched the cloth gently to the torn skin.
Faylan hissed.
“God—”
“It’s superficial.”
“It feels rude.”
Cassius’s hand stayed steady, cleaning the blood away with maddening patience. He was careful. More careful than she expected. He didn’t crowd the wound, didn’t drag the cloth harder than he had to, didn’t touch her like he was trying to prove a point.
That somehow made it worse.
Because if he had been rough, she could have hated him cleanly.
Instead, she was acutely aware of everything. The coolness of the wet cloth. The warmth of his hand where his fingers bracketed her arm to steady it. The fact that every time she breathed in, she caught the faint dark scent of him and the brighter, metallic scent of her own blood beneath it.
And he caught it too.
She saw the exact second it hit him stronger.
His hand paused.
Not fully.
Barely.
But enough.
His eyes lowered again, and for one stretched, dangerous moment, the room seemed to go silent around that gaze.
Faylan’s breath thinned.
Cassius was looking at the line of blood sliding down the curve of her shoulder like it was speaking to him in a language she couldn’t hear.
When he spoke, his voice was lower.
Tighter.
“You should be more frightened.”
Faylan looked at him carefully. “Of the wound?”
His eyes lifted.
“Of me.”
There it was.
Not flirtation. Not a threat exactly.
A fact.
Faylan held his gaze, though her pulse had gone quick and uneven now, the steady tapping beneath it layered with something hotter and far more human.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked.
The question hung between them.
Cassius went very still.
He was close enough that she could see the way his throat moved when he swallowed, the subtle tightening at the edge of his jaw, the minute flare of something dark in his eyes before it was banked down again.
“No,” he said.
The word came quietly.
Absolutely.
And somehow that certainty made everything between them sharpen.
Because he hadn’t said he didn’t want to.
He had said no.
As if the wanting and the doing were two very different things.
Faylan looked away first, because suddenly the room felt too warm despite the cold.
“Great,” she murmured. “Love the distinction.”
Cassius finished cleaning the wound in silence after that, though the silence itself had changed. It wasn’t empty. It was crowded. Full of things neither of them was saying.
He uncapped the dark glass bottle and poured a small amount onto fresh gauze.
“This will sting.”
Faylan narrowed her eyes. “That is universally the most suspicious sentence in medicine.”
Then he pressed it lightly to the scrape and she nearly came off the sofa.
“Jesus—”
Cassius caught her forearm before she could jerk away fully.
“Still.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Faylan glared at him, breathing hard through the sting. “That confidence is psychotic.”
His mouth curved faintly, but his hand stayed locked around her arm, steadying her through the worst of it.
The hold should have felt controlling.
Instead it felt grounding.
That, too, was infuriating.
Once the antiseptic stopped burning quite so violently, he set it aside and reached for the gauze. His fingers were long and deft as he layered it carefully over the scrape, then held it in place while he tore a strip of medical tape with his teeth.
The sight of that should not have done anything to her.
It did something anyway.
Faylan looked at the wall.
Very firmly.
Cassius noticed, because of course he did.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he said.
“I’m processing.”
“Poorly?”
She looked back at him. “Obviously.”
He smoothed the tape over her skin with more gentleness than she wanted to think about.
When he finally stepped back, the loss of his proximity was immediate.
Annoyingly immediate.
Faylan looked down at the neat line of gauze against her shoulder, then back up at him.
“That’s it?”
“It wasn’t deep.”
She should have felt relieved.
Instead she felt strange.
Shaky in a way that had nothing to do with blood loss and far too much to do with the fact that a vampire had just patched her up in a hidden room while trying not to stare at her like she was a prayer and a problem at the same time.
Cassius capped the bottle, set the supplies aside, and turned back toward her.
For a second, neither of them said anything.
Then he looked at the inside pocket of her jacket where the letter rested hidden, and something in his expression shifted again—interest, recognition, maybe both.
“You know more now,” he said.
Faylan’s fingers instinctively brushed the fabric over the pocket.
“Not enough.”
Cassius’s gaze held hers.
“No,” he agreed. “Not enough.”
And that was somehow the most honest thing he’d said all night.
Faylan sat very still on the edge of the sofa, one hand lightly braced beside her, the other hovering near the gauze at her shoulder like she wanted to check that it was real and didn’t trust herself not to make it worse. The room had gone quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet now. Less jagged. More intimate.
Which was, frankly, unacceptable.
Cassius stood a few feet away near the table, sleeves still neat, expression once again composed in that infuriating way he had—as if the last several minutes hadn’t happened, as if he hadn’t just admitted she should be more afraid of him while carefully cleaning blood from her skin like he was trying not to bruise her.
Faylan looked at him, then at the small collection of medical supplies on the table, then back at him again.
“You keep doing that,” she said.
Cassius lifted a brow. “Doing what?”
“That thing where you say one deeply alarming sentence and then immediately become useful, like that somehow cancels it out.”
His mouth twitched faintly.
“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to choose only one.”
Faylan let out a soft, disbelieving laugh and leaned back a little, careful of her shoulder. The movement pulled the letter against the inside of her jacket, the folded paper pressing lightly over her ribs like a reminder.
Her mother.
The Houses.
The bloodline.
The warning.
Everything in her life suddenly divided itself into two parts: before she knew and after.
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled the letter free, looking down at the worn folds for a second before lifting her eyes to him.
“She wrote about Houses,” Faylan said quietly. “Capital H. Which feels rude, honestly.” She turned the paper slightly in her hand. “She said not to trust them.”
Cassius’s gaze dropped to the letter at once.
Not startled.
Not surprised.
Just alert.
“The letter was from your mother,” he said.
It wasn’t phrased as a question.
Faylan narrowed her eyes immediately. “That sounded like you already knew that.”
“I suspected.”
“That is a really annoying distinction.”
Cassius didn’t argue.
He just watched her, the low lamp near the wall catching along the sharp line of his cheekbone and the darker strands of his hair. In this light, there was something old about him. Not in the sense of age showing—he looked young enough to be dangerous in all the obvious ways—but in the stillness. In the way he seemed to hold himself as if time had taught him not to waste movement.
It made her more aware of the fact that she still didn’t know what he was beyond the obvious.
A vampire.
As if that word alone explained anything.
Faylan drew in a slow breath.
“Okay,” she said, shifting the letter onto her lap. “Let’s try this again, except this time with less mystery and fewer life-threatening surprises.”
Cassius inclined his head slightly. “You’re welcome to try.”
She gave him a pointed look. “What are the Houses?”
For the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t answer immediately.
He crossed one arm loosely over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the wall, studying her in silence for a moment that stretched just long enough to sharpen her irritation.
Then he said, “Power.”
Faylan blinked.
“That’s your answer?”
“It’s the simplest one.”
“That’s not actually the same as helpful.”
A faint, almost amused exhale left him.
“The Houses,” he said more carefully, “are old bloodlines. Old power. Old alliances. They govern what survives and what doesn’t.”
Faylan’s fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the letter.
“Govern,” she repeated. “That sounds incredibly dramatic.”
“It is.”
There was no irony in the way he said it.
That landed.
Faylan leaned forward a little despite herself, elbows on her knees now, eyes fixed on him. “And my mother thought they’d want me.”
Cassius’s gaze dropped briefly to the letter again, then rose.
“Yes.”
A single syllable.
No hesitation.
Faylan stared at him.
“Why?”
He held her gaze, and this time when he answered, his voice lost some of that smooth amusement. It settled into something lower. More serious.
“Because you are not ordinary.”
The words moved through the room quietly.
They should not have affected her.
They did anyway.
Faylan’s pulse flickered strangely beneath her ribs—not just the steady tapping now, but something warmer layered beneath it. Irritation. Fear. Something more curious and dangerous than she wanted to name.
She looked away first, because otherwise it would’ve been obvious.
“Yeah, everyone keeps saying that,” she muttered. “Nobody seems interested in explaining it in human language.”
Cassius’s mouth curved slightly. “You want human language?”
“I’d settle for any language that isn’t designed to make me lose my mind.”
That earned her one of those brief, sharp almost-smiles again.
Then it faded.
He pushed off the wall and took a few slow steps closer—not too close, not enough to pin her in place with presence alone, but enough that the room seemed to narrow around him again.
“Your blood,” he said, “doesn’t just mark you. It carries.”
Faylan’s jaw tightened. “You said that before.”
“Yes.”
“And it was still creepy then.”
Cassius ignored that.
“It carries memory,” he said. “Recognition. Old things wake around it. Older things notice it. Lower creatures”—his gaze flicked briefly, meaningfully, toward the door, toward the alley, toward what had attacked her—“respond to it first because they’re too starved and too simple to do anything else.”
A cold little shiver moved down her spine.
Faylan looked at the gauze on her shoulder, then back up at him.
“And the higher ones?”
Cassius went still.
That answer mattered.
She knew it before he gave it.
“When they notice,” he said quietly, “they think before they act.”
Faylan swallowed.
That was somehow more frightening.
Because it meant the attack in the alley had been the easy version.
The stupid version.
The version with hunger and claws and no plan.
Her mother’s warning rose in her mind again.
There are those who will pretend protection when what they mean is possession.
Faylan studied him carefully.
“And what do you think before you act?”
The question landed between them like a lit match.
Cassius’s expression didn’t change much.
Just enough.
His eyes darkened slightly, not with the feral crimson of the rogue but with something steadier and more dangerous because of it. Thought, yes. Hunger, yes. And something else layered under both—a fascination he wasn’t bothering to fully hide anymore.
When he answered, his voice was softer.
“That depends on what you’re asking.”
Her breath caught, small and involuntary.
Faylan hated that he noticed.
She hated even more that he noticed and said nothing.
Instead, she held his gaze and made herself speak evenly.
“I’m asking whether I should trust you.”
That stripped the room down to its bones.
No teasing.
No half-smiles.
Just the question.
Cassius looked at her for a long moment. Long enough that the silence itself started to feel like an answer.
Then he said, “No.”
Faylan blinked.
Of all the things she expected, honesty was somehow still the most destabilizing.
“No?” she repeated.
“No,” he said again. “Not fully. Not yet.”
A strange, sharp laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
“That might be the first useful thing anyone’s said to me in days.”
One corner of his mouth lifted.
“Good.”
Faylan leaned back, exhaling through her nose as she looked down at the letter again. Her fingers moved over the folded edge absently, tracing one crease and then another.
“Rowan kept telling me not to ask questions,” she said after a moment, almost to herself. “My dad looked like he wanted to lock me in the house. My mom left me a warning from beyond the grave.” She glanced up at him again. “And somehow you’re the one making the most sense, which feels like a terrible sign.”
Cassius’s gaze sharpened at Rowan’s name, though only briefly.
“You trust him,” he said.
Faylan frowned. “That sounded weird.”
“It was an observation.”
“Ugh. You don’t get to steal my thing.”
His expression softened by a fraction, but it vanished almost immediately.
Then he stepped closer again.
Too close now to pretend it didn’t matter.
Faylan felt it instantly. The shift in the air. The way every nerve in her body seemed to become aware of where he was, how near, what parts of him were still and which weren’t. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and blood and that darker scent that belonged only to him.
His gaze dropped to the base of her throat.
Not touching.
Just watching.
Her pulse betrayed her at once.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Cassius’s jaw tightened.
“Do you hear that all the time now?” he asked.
Faylan swallowed. “The weird heartbeat thing?”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“Yes.”
She nodded once, slower this time. “Since the bell. Since… everything.”
Cassius was quiet for a second.
Then, very carefully, he reached out.
Faylan went still.
His hand stopped near her wrist—not touching at first, giving her enough time to refuse.
She didn’t.
Not because she trusted him.
Because she needed to know.
His fingers settled lightly against the inside of her wrist.
Cool skin.
Steady pressure.
Her pulse jumped so hard she nearly laughed from sheer irritation.
Cassius’s eyes half-lidded for the briefest moment, and she felt rather than saw the reaction that moved through him.
Not pain.
Not relief.
Recognition.
Something dark and immediate answered in him, banked down almost as soon as it surfaced.
When he opened his eyes again, they were sharper.
“You’re stronger than you should be this early,” he said quietly.
Faylan stared at him. “That sentence means absolutely nothing to me.”
“It means your mother’s seal held longer than most protections would have.” His thumb shifted once against her pulse before he stilled it. “It also means what woke in you is moving faster now.”
A chill moved over her skin.
“What woke in me?”
Cassius looked at her hand.
At the faint place beneath the skin where silver had flickered before.
Then back at her.
“The blood remembers itself,” he said.
The words hit somewhere low and strange inside her.
Not because she understood them.
Because part of her did.
Against all logic.
As if some buried thing in her had turned its head toward his voice.
Faylan drew in a careful breath.
His hand was still on her wrist.
The room had become painfully small.
Every point of contact felt magnified, ridiculous, impossible to ignore. His fingers. Her pulse. The slow, dangerous concentration in his face as though the sound beneath her skin was telling him things.
This was insane.
Truly, spectacularly insane.
And yet she still hadn’t pulled away.
“Cassius,” she said softly.
Something in his expression changed at the sound of his name in her voice.
Not softened.
Focused.
Even more.
“Yes?”
Faylan held his gaze and made herself say it.
“If my blood makes monsters notice me”—her voice steadied—“what does it make you do?”
The question settled between them.
Heavy.
Intimate.
Cassius didn’t answer immediately.
For one stretched, electric second, the only thing either of them seemed to hear was the pulse beneath her skin.
Then he let go of her wrist.
The loss of contact felt immediate.
Sharp enough that she hated noticing it.
He stepped back once, not far, but far enough to put air between them again.
His expression had gone composed.
Too composed.
“It makes me careful,” he said.
Faylan looked at him for a long moment.
Then she gave a quiet, humorless laugh.
“That,” she said, “is not remotely the whole answer.”
Cassius’s gaze held hers.
“No,” he agreed softly. “It isn’t.”