Page 37 of Infamous

So when she turns and looks at me like she’s staring straight at a ghost, I think maybe she is.

I force my feet to move. One step. Then another. Forward, into the unknown. If I can walk past Nadia without her seeing the man beneath the new skin, I can walk past anyone. If she can’t recognize me - the one person who once knew me better than I knew myself - then the world doesn’t stand a chance.

I intend to slip by unnoticed, to let her fade back into the crowd the way a memory does when you refuse to touch it. But nothing with Nadia was ever simple.

Her voice slices through the noise of the street - clean, sharp, electric. A live wire straight to the spine.

“Sorry,” she calls out, hesitant. “This might sound crazy, but… have we met before?”

Her voice rolls through the night like smooth honey. I stopjust far enough to half-turn, my back to her, forcing steel into my tone.

“No.”

She frowns. Takes a step closer, not enough to touch me, but enough for her eyes to close the distance. “You just… seem familiar.”

She laughs, but it’s thin, cracked around the edges. “Must be the lighting,” she murmurs, tucking her hair behind her ear.

I give a small shrug. “Happens a lot.”

She studies me for a beat too long - like she’s waiting for a spark of truth I can’t let her find. Then she nods. “Have a good night.”

“You too.”

She turns. Walks away. Doesn’t look back. But I do.

I watch her blend into the crowd until she’s gone, swallowed by the city that’s taken everything from us once before. My hands curl in my sleeves, nails biting deep into my palms. My breath fogs the air, trembling, uneven.

She didn’t recognize me. But for one goddamn second - I wanted her to.

22

NADIA

There’s a prickle at the base of my neck, so subtle that it’s almost imperceptible. A steady kind of awareness creeps in before reason can catch up. The air becomes heavier. Tighter. Until it’s so thick, I feel like I’m choking on my own breath.

I close the door behind me, the deadbolt clicking back into place with a metallic finality, and the silence swallows me whole. It greets me not like comfort but like an unwelcome guest sitting in the dark, waiting. And it reminds me that I’m alone. Completely and utterly alone.

I should be relieved to be home. This tiny slice of heaven away from the blinking lights and the metallic tang of blood should serve as my sanctuary. But it doesn’t, because more than anything else, it reminds me what a lonely mess my life has become. I’ve spent the entire day surrounded by people, buried in the noise of the hospital—and now the silence should feel like sanctuary.

But tonight, the silence feels wrong.

I shrug off the day the same way I shrug off my bag. It lands on the armchair by the door with a dull thud, keys clatteringinto the ceramic dish beside it. Habit. Normalcy. Rituals that should tether me to something safe. My jacket follows, but my gaze has already drifted past it, narrowing as my gut knots tighter.

Something’s off.

The air smells different.

It’s a smell that overpowers even the antiseptic scent that’s sunk so deep into my skin I almost don’t notice it anymore. It veils the faint tang of coffee grounds I left in the filter this morning. It’s a smell that counters all others, overwhelming and threatening to consume everything in its path.

This is something else. Something alien. Something that doesn’t belong inmyspace. And suddenly the silence isn’t just wrong. It’s dangerous. And I feel it in the deepest, darkest edges of my marrow.

Oud. Sandalwood.

The ache of recognition coils low in my stomach before I can fight it. That scent. God, I know that scent. It used to cling to my sheets, my hair, the hollow of my collarbones, lingering there like a claim. I would know that smell anywhere, because there was none like it, and it lived in my skin long after he was gone.

Lucian.

The name flares in me like a wound ripped open.