Fire always starts small.
Not as an inferno. Not as ruin. Not as the thing people remember afterward when they lower their voices and speak about loss like it is a place instead of an event.
It starts as warmth.
As light.
As a match struck in the dark because someone wanted to see more clearly.
In the summer of 1971, the first thing Cassius noticed about the town was how ordinary it looked.
That, in itself, should have warned him.
The streets were narrow and sun-warmed, the old storefronts painted in faded creams and greens that had already begun to peel in the heat. A radio somewhere down the block carried music through an open window. The air smelled like cut grass, gasoline, and the syrupy sweetness of peaches turning too soft on a fruit stand outside a grocer’s. Nothing in it felt important. Nothing in it felt like history waiting to happen.
Which was, more often than not, exactly when history was closest.
Caspian stood beside him on the sidewalk with his hands in his coat pockets, his expression unreadable in the way it always became when he was paying too much attention to something. They had been in the town less than an hour, and already Cassius could feel that shift in his brother—the subtle narrowing of focus, the dangerous sort of curiosity that never stayed harmless for long.
“You’re doing it again,” Cassius said.
Caspian did not look at him. His gaze remained fixed somewhere farther down the street, beyond the flower boxes and parked cars and the soft blur of people moving through the late afternoon.
“Doing what.”
“That thing,” Cassius replied. “Where you act like the world just said something to you and you’re deciding whether to answer.”
That earned him the faintest shift at the corner of Caspian’s mouth.
“So dramatic.”
“So accurate.”
Caspian exhaled softly through his nose, not quite amused, not quite dismissive. Then he tilted his head slightly, like he was listening to something too quiet for ordinary hearing.
Cassius felt it a second later.
Not sound.
Not scent.
Something subtler than either, though no less immediate. A pull in the blood. A strange, soft pressure at the edges of awareness. Human, yes. Entirely human in shape and heartbeat and warmth. And still—
not.
Cassius’s gaze sharpened.
“Well,” he said quietly. “That’s inconvenient.”
Caspian finally looked at him then, his dark eyes bright with that dangerous alertness Cassius knew too well.
“You feel it.”
“I noticed it.”
Caspian’s mouth curved slightly. “You noticed her.”
Cassius did not answer.
Because he had.
She stood at the far end of the block beside a narrow brick building with ivy climbing one wall and flower boxes bursting over the second-story windows. Two paper grocery bags sat at her feet. One had tipped slightly, leaving a loaf of bread peeking over the top and a cluster of yellow flowers pressed against the folded paper. She was laughing at something an older woman had said from the doorway, her head turned slightly, dark hair catching gold where the sun slipped through it.
She was not remarkable in the way vampires usually used the word.
Not dazzling. Not crafted. Not the sort of beauty built for rooms to stop and rearrange around her.
She looked—
alive.
Inconveniently, unmistakably alive.
There was color in her face from the heat. A looseness to her posture that belonged to people who had not yet learned to watch every doorway. She wore a pale summer dress with tiny flowers printed along the hem and a denim jacket tied around her waist like she expected the evening to cool eventually but not soon enough to ruin the day. There was a smudge of something dark on one of her fingers, maybe ink, maybe soil, and she kept brushing her hair back from her face only to have the wind undo the effort a second later.
Cassius watched her longer than he meant to.
Because the oddness of what he felt only sharpened the more he looked.
She should not have felt different.
And yet something in the blood did not lie.
The woman in the doorway said something else, and the girl laughed again—full this time, unguarded, one hand lifting in a helpless little gesture as if the world had personally offended her by being funny at the wrong moment.
Caspian went still beside him.
Not physically.
Internally.
The kind of stillness that meant something had already happened and the rest of the world simply had not noticed yet.
Cassius cut his eyes toward him once.
“No.”
Caspian blinked, all false innocence. “No what.”
“No whatever that look is.”
“What look.”
“The one that turns into trouble three minutes after I point it out.”
That got him a real smile, brief and quiet and immediately concerning.
“You’re judgmental.”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re suspicious of joy.”
“I’m suspicious of you.”
“Also fair.”
Cassius looked back toward the girl. She had bent to gather the grocery bags now, lifting one with each hand before pausing to look up at the sky as if checking whether the weather intended to keep its promises. There was something easy about her movements, something unwatched, and perhaps that was why the strangeness in the blood felt so wrong. Power—or whatever shadow of power this was—did not belong in people who still moved like nothing in the world had ever wanted anything from them.
“Do not,” Cassius said, very evenly, “make this my problem.”
Caspian looked offended. “Cassius. You wound me.”
“Yes,” Cassius replied. “That was the goal.”
The girl turned then.
Not toward them.
Toward the crosswalk at the end of the block, where a truck had rumbled too far into the line and trapped two women with strollers on the curb. She shifted both bags to one hand without seeming to think about it, stepped around a parked bicycle, and moved toward them with quick, practical purpose. No hesitation. No performance. She set one grocery bag down, backed the truck’s bumper away with a sharp rap of her knuckles and a look at the driver that somehow managed to be polite and unimpressed at the same time, then helped steady one stroller over the curb while the women thanked her too many times.
Caspian watched all of it.
Not smiling now.
Not speaking.
That was worse.
Cassius folded his arms loosely. “You’ve gone silent. I dislike that.”
“She’s kind.”
The observation came too quickly.
Too quietly.
Cassius turned his head. “That is somehow more alarming than if you’d said she was interesting.”
Caspian ignored him completely.
By the time the girl reached the corner nearest them, the sunlight had shifted lower, softening around the edges of buildings and staining the street in amber. She slowed only when she noticed them standing there—not with fear, not with the sharp little recalculations most humans had around strangers, but with open curiosity. Her eyes moved over them once, taking in two men in dark coats on a hot evening, and something almost amused touched her expression.
“Either you two are very lost,” she said, “or this town has gotten dramatically moodier since lunch.”
Her voice was warm.
Not sweet.
There was wit under it, and a kind of directness that made most people seem less solid by comparison.
Caspian’s answer arrived first, as if he had been waiting for the chance to use it.
“Do we look lost?”
She considered that openly, shifting the grocery bag in her hand.
“No,” she said. “You look expensive.”
Cassius, against his will, nearly smiled.
Caspian did smile—slow, deliberate, and just interested enough to make the moment dangerous.
“That’s hardly a better thing to say to strangers.”
“Depends,” she said. “Are you offended?”
“Not yet.”
The girl’s mouth twitched.
There it was again—that easy flash of humor, as if she had not spent her life learning to be careful around things stronger than herself. As if she had not yet been taught that some people only looked beautiful right before they destroyed whatever peace they found.
Cassius stepped in before his brother could tilt any further into fascination.
“You should go before the bread loses the fight with gravity.”
She glanced down at the grocery bag in her hand where the loaf had indeed started slipping sideways.
“Well,” she said, “that’s embarrassingly practical of you.”
“It’s one of my worst flaws.”
Finally, she looked at him fully.
And for one brief second, Cassius understood what Caspian had felt first—not obsession, not anything so wild and immediate as that, but the distinct, unsettling recognition of something that did not belong in an ordinary town under an ordinary sun.
Her face was open in a way most humans’ weren’t, all expression and intelligence and life moving too quickly to hide. She had dark lashes, warm moss-green eyes that held a faint shimmer of silver, and the sort of mouth that looked on the edge of laughter even when she wasn’t using it. There were freckles across her nose, faint but visible in the light, and a small nick near one knuckle that looked recent enough to sting if touched.
Human.
Entirely.
And still the blood in him knew better.
She shifted the bag again and nodded toward the street behind them. “You’re not from here.”
“Does it show,” Caspian asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You both look like you got lost on your way to a funeral and accidentally ended up in July.”
Cassius did laugh at that.
Low. Brief. Against his better judgment.
Her attention flicked to him immediately, surprised and just a little pleased with herself.
“See,” she said to Caspian. “He’s the reasonable one.”
“No,” Caspian said, still watching her in that way Cassius already wished he wouldn’t. “He only sounds like it.”
“That seems like a personal issue between you two.”
“It is,” Cassius said.
The girl adjusted the flowers in the grocery bag, then seemed to remember her manners all at once. “Right. Sorry. You looked like you were waiting for someone and I decided to make that my business.” She shifted the bag again, a little sheepish and not sheepish at all. “I’m Liora.”
There it was.
A name simple enough to fit in one hand.
A name that would, years later, still sound like smoke.
Caspian repeated it softly, as if trying the shape of it against memory before there was any memory to give it weight.
“Liora.”
She gave him a mildly suspicious look. “That usually sounds less ominous.”
He almost smiled. “I’ll practice.”
Cassius should have ended it there.
Should have pulled his brother away, left the town, followed the thread only enough to confirm the anomaly and not enough to let it become a person.
He knew that.
He knew it with the cold, practical certainty of someone who had survived this long by understanding the difference between danger and temptation.
And still, when Liora shifted the grocery bag into her left hand and nodded toward the flowers, saying, “Well, now I have bread, bruised peaches, and two very strange men standing in the road. That feels like a sign I should keep moving,” neither of them left.
Caspian asked, “Do signs usually come with groceries.”
Liora lifted one shoulder. “Only the rude ones.”
Then she looked at Cassius again.
Not because she preferred him.
Because he had said the least and, somehow, that made him the safer mystery.
“Tell your brother not to stand in intersections looking haunted. It’s bad for traffic.”
Cassius glanced at Caspian. “You heard the lady.”
“Lady?” Liora repeated. “That was incredibly formal. Are you eighty.”
Caspian answered before Cassius could.
“On difficult days.”
That got a laugh out of her.
A real one this time.
And that was the moment, Cassius would later think, that everything was lost.
Not in the fire.
Not in the scream of collapsing wood or the orange bloom against the night sky.
Here.
On a hot summer corner beneath a harmless sun, when his brother heard a girl laugh and decided without admitting it that the world had just handed him something worth keeping.
Liora began to step around them, then paused.
Not because she was afraid.
Because she had forgotten something.
She turned back slightly, the flowers brushing against her wrist.
“If you are lost,” she said, “the diner on Oak stays open late and the coffee is terrible enough to be memorable. You look like the kind of men who’d appreciate that.”
Caspian’s eyes stayed on her face. “Will you be there.”
Cassius shut his eyes for one brief, murderous second.
Liora blinked.
Then, to his immense irritation, she laughed again.
“See,” she said, pointing lightly at him with two fingers, “that’s exactly the kind of thing expensive-looking strangers shouldn’t say on first meeting.”
“And yet,” Caspian replied.
“And yet,” she agreed, amused against her better judgment, “I might.”
Then she was moving again—down the sidewalk, flowers and groceries and summer all wrapped around her like she belonged to the season itself.
Caspian turned to watch her go.
Cassius watched him.
The look on his brother’s face was not love.
Not yet.
It was the far more dangerous beginning of it.
“You are not serious,” Cassius said.
Caspian did not look away from the retreating shape of her.
“I haven’t decided.”
“That is a lie.”
“Possibly.”
Cassius folded his arms, looking down the street where Liora disappeared around the corner in a wash of evening light and ordinary life.
“She’s human.”
“Yes.”
“She’s trouble.”
Caspian finally looked at him, and there was something in his expression that had not been there an hour ago—something sharpened, lit from within by curiosity too fierce to stay harmless.
“Yes,” he said. “That too.”
Cassius held his gaze for a long second.
Then looked away first.
Because there was nothing else to do when your brother had already stepped willingly toward the edge of something and called it interest instead of hunger.
The evening light thinned around them. Somewhere farther down the block, a screen door slammed. A radio changed songs. The town went on being ordinary with the kind of carelessness only ordinary places could afford.
And Cassius, staring at the corner where Liora had vanished, felt the blood answer once more—quietly, unmistakably.
Not random.
Not simple.
Important.
He should have said no then. Should have dragged Caspian out of town before dusk, before a diner table, before names became habits and habits became attachment and attachment became the kind of weakness Houses remembered forever.
Instead he said, “If we do this, you do not let it become real.”
Caspian’s gaze remained on the empty corner.
“It already is.”
Cassius did not answer.
Because, in the distance, church bells began to ring the hour.
And years later, when fire took her at twenty-three and left nothing behind but ash, blood, and memory sharpened into obsession, he would think back to that exact sound and understand that what had begun as warmth had already learned how to burn.
The memory never left cleanly.
It did not fade at the edges like most old things were supposed to, softening with time until they became story instead of wound. It remained exact in all the places that mattered—the heat in the air, the yellow flowers bruising against brown paper, the way Liora had laughed like the world had not yet taught her what it did to bright things.
Cassius had learned, over the years, not to linger in that part of the past for too long. Not because he had forgotten how to carry it, but because some griefs did not lessen when revisited. They simply woke.
By the time he stepped out of memory and back into the present, the day had already shifted around him.
The room was quiet in the way old rooms became quiet after voices had passed through them and left their shape behind. He stood near the long front windows of the place Caspian had chosen for the morning—an old house at the edge of town that no longer belonged to any family and had not for years, its emptiness maintained rather than abandoned. Dust gathered where no one walked. The curtains were too heavy for the season. Light filtered through them in long dim bands that never quite reached the corners.
Caspian stood across the room with one hand braced against the mantel, expression unreadable in the way it often became when he was pretending not to feel too much. The blood container from the day before was gone, already delivered where it needed to go, already no longer theirs to think about. On the low table beside him sat nothing but a glass untouched for too long and a folded note he had not opened since it arrived.
Cassius had noticed that too.
“You’re quiet,” he said.
Caspian did not glance up. “You say that like it’s unusual.”
“It’s unusual when you’re thinking instead of plotting.”
That earned him the faintest shift at the corner of Caspian’s mouth, though it did not become a smile.
“She’s moving.”
Cassius was still for half a second.
The words were simple.
The meaning inside them was not.
“Which one.”
Caspian looked up then, grey eyes sharpening with something that was not surprise and not satisfaction either, but something nearer to inevitability.
“You know which one.”
Cassius let out a slow breath through his nose and turned his attention toward the window, toward the thin seam of street visible between the curtains, toward the quiet edge of Greythorne holding itself together around things it had hidden for too long.
He had felt it before Caspian spoke.
Not clearly.
Not enough for distance or direction.
Just the distinct, unsettling sense that something in the air had altered.
Faylan.
There was no point pretending otherwise. He knew the feel of her now in the same reluctant, precise way he knew the first pressure of a storm in old walls or the difference between ordinary hunger and blood already moving toward the surface. Her presence did not settle neatly into the world around it. It pressed. Gathered. Changed the shape of a room before she ever stepped into it.
And this morning it was sharper.
Less uncertain.
More dangerous.
Cassius moved toward the window and pulled one side of the curtain back just enough to see the street below. The town looked offensively normal in daylight. A man on the opposite sidewalk was trimming hedges with more care than the hedges deserved. Somewhere farther down, a car door shut. Two children biked past the corner without any awareness that the world around them had layers they would hopefully never have to see.
Then he saw her.
She was still half a block away, walking with the kind of directness that made hesitation feel like a trait belonging to other people. Dark jacket. Bag over one shoulder. Hair pulled back badly enough to suggest she had done it fast and not cared if it stayed perfect. There was no softness in the way she moved now, none of the restless uncertainty she had worn at the edge of herself when she first began asking questions she was not supposed to ask.
Something in her had changed overnight.
Not visibly enough for a human stranger to notice.
More than enough for him.
She did not look afraid.
That was the first problem.
The second was that she should have.
Cassius let the curtain fall back into place.
“She shouldn’t be here.”
Caspian’s brow lifted slightly. “And yet.”
Cassius looked at him.
There were answers available in that room if he wanted them—cheap ones, cruel ones, the kind Caspian would hand over with infuriating ease because he mistook provocation for clarity whenever it suited him. But none of that was the real thing sitting under the surface, and they both knew it.
“She knows enough now to stop being manageable,” Cassius said.
Caspian’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly. “She was never manageable.”
That, infuriatingly, was true.
Cassius glanced once toward the front door, though Faylan had not knocked yet. She would. Or she would not. Somehow either option felt equally like her.
“What did she find,” he asked.
Caspian pushed away from the mantle at last, moving with that loose, easy grace that hid the fact that most of his decisions were made before other people realized choices existed. “More than her mother intended and less than she deserved.”
“That is a terrible answer.”
“It is an accurate one.”
Cassius did not bother replying to that. Instead he crossed the room slowly, the old floor barely sounding beneath his steps, and stopped near the entryway where the light from the window touched the wood in thin, faded stripes. He could feel her more clearly now. Not just presence. Motion. The Veil fraying around her in fine threads. The pressure of firstborn blood no longer staying folded into itself as neatly as it had before.
She had read something.
Something that had shifted her relationship to fear.
That thought settled badly.
Because fear, however inconvenient, was still a form of caution.
What replaced it was rarely better.
The house held still around them.
Caspian did not move again. He only watched Cassius with that infuriating calm he reserved for moments he believed had already gone in his favor.
“Don’t,” Cassius said without looking at him.
“Don’t what.”
“Whatever expression that is.”
A quiet pause.
Then, almost amused, “You noticed.”
“I notice everything.”
“Yes,” Caspian murmured. “That’s part of the problem.”
The front steps creaked.
Not loudly.
But enough.
Cassius went still, attention narrowing in an instant. He could hear the shift of weight through the old porch boards, the brief pause at the threshold, the faint sound of fabric brushing as she adjusted the strap of her bag. There was no uncertainty in her breathing. No pacing at the edge of the door. No last-minute retreat.
She had come here to ask.
Or accuse.
Or demand.
Perhaps all three.
And whatever had happened in the attic the night before—whatever truth Elara had finally allowed to survive her—it had carried Faylan here faster than caution could slow her.
Cassius reached for the doorknob before she could knock.
The door opened inward on its own quiet hinge, and morning light spilled across the floor between them.
Faylan stood on the porch with one hand half-lifted, not startled enough to step back but clearly annoyed that he had stolen the moment before she could control it. The wind had loosened strands of hair from whatever careless attempt she had made to tie it back, and the cool outside air had brought color into her face that sharpened rather than softened her expression. Her eyes met his immediately.
No hesitation.
No greeting.
Just intent.
For one suspended second, neither of them spoke.
Caspian remained somewhere behind him in the room, silent now, listening.
Cassius looked at Faylan and saw it all at once.
The sleepless night.
The anger she had already moved through and came out the other side of.
The grief she was holding so tightly it had become structure instead of collapse.
And under all of it—
the dangerous new clarity of someone who had learned the future might be shorter than she’d been promised and had started thinking accordingly.
That was the worst part.
Not the pain.
The resolve.
Cassius stepped back from the doorway just enough to let her choose whether to enter.
He did not tell her she should leave.
He knew better than that.
And as Faylan held his gaze on the threshold of the house, neither of them pretending this was anything except a turning point, he understood with a certainty that sat cold and clean in the blood that whatever came next would not resemble caution at all.
Faylan doesn’t step back.
She doesn’t hesitate at the threshold or glance past him like she’s trying to measure the room before entering it. She just lowers her hand, shifts her weight forward, and walks past Cassius into the house like she has already decided that whatever waits inside is worth the risk of finding out.
The air changes when she crosses the doorway.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way a human would notice.
But Cassius feels it immediately—the subtle tightening of space, the way the atmosphere seems to pull inward around her presence, as if something inside her has stopped pretending to stay quiet.
Caspian feels it too.
Faylan doesn’t look at him.
That, more than anything, makes his attention sharpen.
She stops just inside the room, taking it in quickly—the drawn curtains, the old furniture, the kind of stillness that doesn’t belong to abandoned places but to ones being used deliberately. Her gaze moves once across the space, registers Caspian without reacting to him, then comes back to Cassius.
Focused.
Direct.
“You said I need an outlet.”
No greeting.
No buildup.
Just that.
Cassius studies her for a second longer than necessary.
Not because he doesn’t understand what she’s asking.
Because he does.
And he does not like the version of her that has come here to ask it.
“You came all the way here for a word,” he says.
Faylan’s expression doesn’t shift.
“I came because you didn’t lie when you said it.”
A pause settles between them.
Caspian exhales softly behind her, something like interest threading through the sound.
“That’s generous,” he says.
Faylan doesn’t turn.
“I’m not talking to you.”
Caspian smiles anyway.
Cassius does not.
He moves past her slowly, circling once, not to intimidate but to understand—to feel the difference in her more clearly, the way her presence presses unevenly, like something building pressure without release.
“It’s stronger,” he says.
Not to her.
About her.
Faylan’s jaw tightens slightly.
“Yeah,” she replies. “I noticed.”
Cassius stops in front of her again.
“You read something.”
It’s not a question.
Faylan holds his gaze.
“My mom knew,” she says. “Everything. About what I am. About what happens to firstborns.”
Caspian goes still behind her.
Cassius doesn’t look away.
“And now you think urgency makes you safer,” he says.
Faylan tilts her head slightly.
“No,” she says. “I think sitting still makes me easier.”
That is not wrong.
That is what makes it dangerous.
Cassius exhales slowly, his attention narrowing in a different way now—not dismissive, not cautious—
engaged.
“You want control,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You don’t have time to learn it slowly.”
“No.”
“You don’t trust any of us to give it to you without taking something in return.”
Faylan’s gaze flicks once toward Caspian.
Then back.
“…no.”
Caspian lets out a quiet laugh at that, not offended in the slightest.
“Good,” he murmurs. “You’re learning.”
Cassius ignores him.
Because the question now is not whether she needs an outlet.
It’s which one she’s willing to survive.
“There are three ways to stabilize firstborn escalation,” he says finally.
Faylan doesn’t move.
Doesn’t interrupt.
She just listens.
That alone is new.
“Ritual discharge,” he continues. “You release the excess through controlled casting. It requires precision, training, and someone who knows what they’re doing. Done wrong, it accelerates the damage instead of easing it.”
Faylan’s expression tightens slightly.
“So not an option right now.”
“Not unless you enjoy collapsing your own system from the inside out.”
“Noted.”
Cassius studies her for a second before continuing.
“Second is external anchoring,” he says. “Transformation. You bind the power to something else—another form, another structure. It gives the energy somewhere to go.”
Faylan stills.
Just slightly.
Because that—
that feels familiar in a way she doesn’t understand yet.
“Cost,” she says.
Cassius’s gaze sharpens.
“Everything,” he replies.
A pause.
Then, quieter—
“You don’t come back from that the same.”
Faylan absorbs that without reacting.
But something settles behind her eyes.
Not rejection.
Consideration.
Caspian watches that moment closely.
Too closely.
Cassius cuts it off before it can go further.
“The third option,” he says.
Faylan’s attention returns fully to him.
“Bonded channeling.”
Silence.
Not empty.
Focused.
“Explain,” she says.
Cassius doesn’t answer immediately.
Because this is the one that changes things.
This is the one that doesn’t end cleanly.
“You form a temporary channel,” he says slowly. “Between your system and someone else’s. The excess doesn’t build—it moves. Circulates. Stabilizes through shared control.”
Faylan’s brow furrows slightly.
“Like… splitting it.”
“Not splitting,” he corrects. “Balancing. It still exists. It just doesn’t sit entirely inside you.”
Her eyes narrow slightly.
“And the downside.”
Cassius holds her gaze.
“You don’t get to pretend it’s only yours anymore.”
That lands.
Not as fear.
As weight.
Caspian shifts slightly behind her, his interest sharpening into something more dangerous now.
“And,” he adds lightly, “you would need someone strong enough not to be overwhelmed by you.”
Faylan ignores him.
Her attention stays locked on Cassius.
“…you,” she says.
Not a question.
Cassius doesn’t answer right away.
Because he knew that was where this would go the second she stepped through the door.
“You can handle it,” she continues.
It’s not flattery.
It’s assessment.
Cold.
Accurate.
Caspian’s smile fades slightly at that.
Because now—
this isn’t about him.
Cassius exhales slowly.
“It’s not stable long-term,” he says. “It buys time. It doesn’t fix the outcome.”
Faylan nods once.
“I don’t need forever,” she says. “I need control.”
The words sit in the room.
Heavy.
Clear.
Cassius watches her carefully.
Because she means that.
She is not asking to be saved.
She is asking to function.
That is a very different kind of request.
“And if it fails,” he says.
Faylan doesn’t hesitate.
“Then it fails.”
Caspian exhales softly.
There’s something almost impressed in it.
“You really did read something interesting,” he murmurs.
Faylan ignores him again.
Cassius studies her for a long second.
Then another.
Because this is the moment.
The one where he decides whether to step into this with her—
or let her find another way that will almost certainly destroy her faster.
His jaw tightens slightly.
“You don’t understand what you’re agreeing to,” he says.
Faylan’s gaze doesn’t waver.
“Then explain it while we do it.”
That almost earns a reaction.
Almost.
Cassius looks at her like he’s trying to decide whether she’s reckless or simply past the point of pretending not to be.
The answer is both.
“…not here,” he says finally.
Caspian’s head tilts slightly.
“Already making plans without me?”
Cassius doesn’t look at him.
“This requires controlled space.”
“Translation,” Caspian says lightly, “he doesn’t trust me not to interfere.”
Cassius doesn’t deny it.
Faylan exhales slowly.
“Then where.”
Cassius meets her gaze.
And for the first time since she walked in—
there’s something different there.
Not just assessment.
Decision.
“House Sanguis,” he says.
The name settles into the room like something heavier than sound.
Faylan doesn’t recognize it fully.
But she feels it.
Power.
Structure.
Something old enough to matter.
“Then let’s go,” she says.
No hesitation.
No second thought.
Caspian watches her closely now.
Too closely.
Because something about this—
this choice—
feels familiar in a way he does not like.
Cassius doesn’t move immediately.
He just looks at her for one more second.
As if measuring whether she understands what she’s stepping into.
As if deciding whether it matters if she doesn’t.
Then—
he turns.
And this time—
he doesn’t tell her to leave.