Page 29 of Fire and Silk

My heart lurches.

I push myself up from the bed, limbs heavy, skin clammy, dress clinging to my spine. My head pounds—cotton-stuffed and slow—but I force myself upright. My vision blurs, then sharpens.

The room is still beautiful.

Still wrong.

And then the door opens.

He walks in like the world knows him.

He’s tall, lean, built like someone who doesn’t need to fight because he already knows how it ends. His black shirt is buttoned to the top, sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows, exposing forearms marked with faint veins and control. His pants are tailored, his shoes polished. There’s not a single crease on him. Not one detail out of place.

His hair’s tied back, jet black and glassy. His skin is pale, almost luminous against the shadows of the chamber. But it’s his eyes that trap me— blue, the kind of blue that feels like it’s staring straight through everything I’ve ever tried to hide.

And his mouth—curved into something that isn't quite a smile, not quite a smirk. Just… knowing.

“Lira Marcelline Falco,” he says, like my name tastes expensive.

My spine locks. “Who are you?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He walks further in—slow, graceful—and every step rings like a thread tightening around my ribs. He nods to the bed like it’s a request. It isn’t.

“Relax,” he says, low and calm. “Sit. Let’s talk.”

My hands tremble. I don’t want to obey.

But I do.

I lower myself onto the mattress like gravity gave up pretending and just commanded me outright. He watches every motion with clinical ease, like he’s used to things falling in line. My legs are stiff. My throat burns. My body wants to run. My brain won’t let it.

“I don’t know who you think I am, or what you think I’ve done,” I say quickly, hands spread out as if they could shield me, “but I have nothing. I don’t have money, or secrets, or anything worth taking. I work three jobs. I’m in debt. I’m a recovering addict.”

I say the word like it matters. Like it might humanize me. Like it might make me small enough to be spared.

“Just let me go,” I whisper. “And I’ll let this go.”

He doesn’t blink.

He says it again, softly.

“Sit.”

I realize I’ve started to rise. That my body tried to flee. I hadn’t noticed. My knees buckle and I return to the bed like a scolded child.

His eyes stay on mine the whole time.

“Good girl,” he says.

Two words. Nothing special.

But they land in my chest like a key in a lock I didn’t know was there. My pulse thunders in my ears.

I hate how warm my skin feels. I hate the way my body listens to him like it’s always known how.

Who is he?

Why can’t I look away?