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She stands quickly and walks to the door. Her hand is on the knob when she pauses. Turns. “You can never own anyone.”

It’s soher—idealistic, righteous. It sounds naive, almost pathetic.

But something about it hits like a stone dropped in still water.

She doesn’t wait for a reply. She walks away, and I stay kneeling on the rug like a fool.

28

Damian

It’s night, and I haven’t seen her since dinner on the terrace. When I came inside, she announced that she was going to her bedroom to study. The hours have dragged since, each one stretching tighter across my chest. I tried to distract myself—reading, drinking, checking my messages—but nothing worked. The silence in this place is unbearable.

Eventually, I give up the pretense of patience. My body moves on its own, carrying me down the hall, straight to hers.

When I open the door, Ava is sitting up in bed, propped against pillows with a notebook in her hands. She startles at my entrance. Then she sets her notebook down and quietly watches me.

I cross the room and sit down beside her on the edge of the bed. I swallow, my throat tight. “Ben Cartwright died quickly. He didn’t feel any pain.”

Ava’s expression doesn’t change. She’s silent, her eyes searching.

“He didn’t even know it was happening.”

“How do you know how he died?” Her voice is soft, careful. Curious rather than accusing.

I breathe again, forcing calm back into my tone. “I always make it quick. The fear of death is the worst part. Afterward—it’s just blankness, I assume.” I laugh humorlessly. “It’s all sort of stupid. We think we have so much control.” I shake my head. “We’re just animals.”

Now, I’m rambling. But fuck, it’s so hard to tell her this. I’m not ashamed of it.

I’m not.

But I don’t want her to turn the lights out on me forever. To withhold her smiles and her warmth. That might kill me.

Silence stretches between us, and my heart is thundering against my ribs as I wait for her response. Waiting for the disgust, the condemnation, the rejection.

Ava tilts her head. There’s no judgment in her eyes. Just a soft, searching curiosity. “Can you tell me anything else?”

I nod, my heart pounding. “My organization… I’m not even a true member yet. Very few people are. I’m still too young.”

Her gaze remains steady, and something inside me shifts, loosens.

Ava’s eyes flicker with a quiet intensity. “Do you have any choice in doing the things they make you do?”

My dad made me kill Ben—which was technically illegal within The Four Hundred, though it’s done all the time—but I can’t tell her that. It would send her on a path of questions I’m not ready to answer. “Of course I have a choice.”

She frowns. “But would there be consequences if you chose not to do what they tell you?”

“What do you think?”

“If they’re making you kill people, my guess would be yes. And that puts you in a moral quandary. Something I can empathize with.”

She talks so much about morality. Before I met her, it hardly ever entered my mind. Humans are beasts, and highly adaptable ones. Put us in a novel environment, and we’ll figure out how to master it. That’s all there really is to anything. I don’t blame myself for killing any more than I’d blame a river for carving through stone.

Except that’s not really true. The fear of death… I can’t think about it too much or I’ll lose my mind. I make sure that my victims never know it.

But what if they feel it anyway? A flicker of knowing before the void. A whisper of terror before silence.

My fingers find her cheek and gently trace the delicate curve. Her skin is warm, impossibly soft, and touching her makes something ache deep in my chest. “Ava, I need you as my virgin sacrifice.”