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K el kept her features blank. “I should really be getting to work.”

“Perfect. I have no duties for at least another week. I’ll tag along.”

Kel’s jaw clenched. What could she say?

Sorry, Coup, but your presence makes me want to curl into a ball beneath Savita’s wing like a frightened hatchling.

“You clearly need my help, anyway,” Coup added, when she didn’t reply. “How is it possible that you look worse than I do? Have you slept at all since the race?”

His voice was taunting, trying to bait her into their usual barbed rhythm. But words kept sticking in her throat. She needed more time. She needed to figure out what the anxious insects in her stomach meant and why she couldn’t meet his eyes.

Kel could tell by the thin press of his lips that Coup wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally, she forced herself to nod. “Fine. If you’re up for it.”

Coup adjusted his crutches. “A few bruises can’t stop me from helping with a chore or two.”

They walked in silence, keeping a slow pace. Kel opened and closed her mouth to speak too many times to count. The quiet between them grew and thickened until a knife could have pierced it.

Kel trudged to her small, square office. She scrambled through the white corridors between aviaries. She updated Cristo’s other tamers on her progress observing phoenix behavior in the different environments of each aviary.

Coup seemed determined not to leave her side.

“I have plenty of recovery ahead of me,” Coup sang, when Kel darted out of another aviary. Coup folded his arms and leaned against a wall. He raised his chin, offering a clear view of the red marks still lingering along his neck. “I can wait all day.”

Kel halted, rubbing her face. “If it’ll stop you lurking, let’s talk.”

Kel wrapped a hand around his arm and led him back through the maze.

She felt his warmth through the gray shirt, all too aware of how her fingers bunched in the fabric.

The pair twisted through the corridors and, too soon, pushed through The Prism ’s entrance.

Kel relished Coup’s stunned, slack features as he took in the diamond room.

“Cristo plans to use this place for phoenix rebirths,” Kel explained, as Coup wandered into the center of the room. “Theoretically, the diamonds can withstand the heat and stop any damage to the building. When the diamond gets too hot, it’ll turn to graphite. But the room hasn’t been used, yet.”

Kel drifted toward the nearest corner. Overhead, the only blemish in an otherwise flawless space, a security camera was mounted to a small incision in the roof. There was no light flickering on the camera and there was a film of dust covering the lens; they were truly alone.

She turned back to Coup. “What did you want to talk—”

“Why didn’t you visit me?”

Kel flinched. His eyes were duller than usual, his voice sharper.

“I-I’m sorry.” The words were brittle and forced. The room’s light was suddenly too bright. “I thought you’d want some time to rest.”

The lie drooped in the air between them. Coup hobbled closer. She didn’t know how to spark their usual teasing, the frustration of almost every conversation they’d ever had. What had changed?

She tried again: “I figured you’d appreciate some peace and quiet without me there to lecture you. A gift from the self-righteous sweetheart to the fallen hero.”

“Is that what’s wrong?” he asked dryly. “You’re mad because I called you self-righteous? I’m sorry, Varra. I was just… I wanted to make you squirm.”

Oh , he’d succeeded. But not in the ways he’d intended.

Kel shook her head, trying and failing to find the right words. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What, then?”

Kel forced her tongue to move, to wrap around words— any words. “If you’re going to be sorry for anything, it should be for scaring me to death. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

His brows rose. “You were worried for me ?”

“Of course I was! I thought I’d gotten you killed.”

Coup gave a harsh, unamused laugh. “This isn’t your fault, tamer. I’m the one who risked our team’s future. I almost blew up everything we’ve worked for over the last months, and I didn’t care if I got hurt.”

Coup stood too close, breathing hard. She could almost hear his hammering pulse.

Kel swallowed. “Just promise you won’t do it again, all right?”

The diamonds pressed in sharp peaks at her back and there was nothing but Coup in this room. Broken reflections and echoes of his painful words. His eyes darkened to burned copper, and she couldn’t understand the way they darted across her face, searching.

“Promise me you won’t do it again, Coup,” she repeated. “I can’t lose—this. The Howlers,” she added, praying he hadn’t heard the hitch in her voice.

From the way his gaze flickered to her lips, she knew her prayer had gone unanswered.

Coup stepped closer. He didn’t pause until they were just a whisper apart.

She couldn’t think about what she’d just said. Not as he leaned toward her and she felt his breath against her lips.

“I can’t make that promise, tamer,” he murmured. She was all too aware of him. Every breath, every small movement overwhelmed her. “Not when we both have too much to lose.”

“I don’t care about winning.” If he wasn’t leaning on crutches, she might have shaken him. “Just… promise me. Before I do something I’ll regret.”

Coup’s lips twitched with a smirk. “Like what?”

Kel’s lungs emptied. The overhead light stopped buzzing and her pulse silenced and there was only Coup , watching her watch him, the scarce space between them threatening to catch aflame.

Kel didn’t remember closing the distance between them. She didn’t see Coup move, either. Between one breath and the next, their lips collided.

It took everything inside of Kel not to buckle to the floor.

The kiss heated her blood more than his words ever had. They fought for control, stealing air from each other. Kel felt like she was breaking apart, taut and unraveling all at once. Their embrace was unyielding and—she hoped—unending.

Coup shifted closer, crutches clattering to the ground. He kept one hand pressed to the diamond, caging her. His other hand seized her hip in a calloused hold. Without thinking, Kel twined her hands in the curls creeping down his neck. Coup pressed tighter against her.

Their teeth clashed as he deepened the kiss. She thought her chest might explode as a low groan escaped his lips.

Her thoughts darted in every direction, desperately searching for the truth. She couldn’t want him like this. Not Warren Coupers. He was arrogant, and reckless, and…

Kel didn’t care. The flames racing through her were too consuming. She arched into his touch and breathed everything she was into the kiss. All her anger, her fear, her fire.

His tongue traced her lower lip and she fisted her hands in his hair, tugging him closer. She wanted to feel every part of him. She’d kissed boys before, other CAPR racers, men who frequented The Ferret, but she’d never felt this heat in her belly. She’d never wanted more .

Coup dug one hand into Kel’s hip and splayed the other across her lower back.

He pressed closer, tighter, before shifting to trail warm kisses across her jaw, her neck.

There was nothing gentle or tender between them.

Just a desperate, aching need. His touch broke her apart and stitched her back together, all sharp edges and brutal warmth.

Kel forced him to spin around so his back was pressed to the diamond for support. Their lips fought and his hands roamed up her back, grazing the skin beneath her breast.

Kel knew it was wrong—now was not the time to kiss him, or do the other things that her body screamed for.

She needed to unravel more of him, first; to understand his recklessness.

That was more important than the feel of his lips against hers, his hands tracing rough circles on her hips, his chest pressed against hers…

A deeper groan escaped Coup’s throat and an ache settled in Kel’s core. His hands roamed her back, her sides, as if he couldn’t touch enough of her. Kel palmed the back of his neck, trapping his mouth against hers, wanting to feel every inch of him against her—

And then, Kel froze. A chill crept down her spine, replacing the heat from Coup’s touch. Her breath came out short and fast and she forced herself back. Her hands lifted from Coup’s neck.

Coup’s eyes flashed, dark and blazing, like gold beneath moonlight. He kept his hold on her for just a moment, before pulling back. A question filled his features.

But Kel couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t breathe. She could only stare at her fingers, which had brushed the diamond wall behind Coup’s neck.

Ash was smeared across her hand. Though black and gray, it caught the room’s refracted light and sparked to life. As if there was still magic inside.

She’d seen plenty of pictures to know what phoenix ash looked like. It was finer than ordinary ash, with small particles of orange and red scattered through it.

This ash contained enough red and orange to look like a tiny galaxy, gleaming on her trembling fingers.

Slowly, Coup bent forward and lifted a finger to the diamond wall, a miniscule crevasse still coated with ash. “Is that what I think it is?”

Dread doused every ember of warmth coursing through Kel. “Phoenix ashes.”

Coup straightened. He reached for his crutches and shifted closer to the wall.

Cristo had said that this room hadn’t been used. Had he lied? Or had a phoenix died and rebirthed within the last month?

No matter the reason, these ashes shouldn’t be here . Every molecule of a phoenix’s ashes was swept up in a rebirth; they swarmed into a single pile, as if drawn by a magnet, from which a phoenix was reborn. There was never a single iota left.

If there were ashes remaining, it meant that the phoenix they belonged to had never been reborn. The creature had met a true death.

Kel looked up at the camera attached to the crystalline roof.

Cristo would never leave security so lax for a room as priceless as The Prism .

Yet, the camera was switched off and gathering dust, nothing more than a sleek ornament.

The door was always unlocked; locks would draw questions, and no one seemed to know that this room even existed.

Cristo didn’t want to draw any attention to the invaluable room. The cameras were switched off on purpose.

So no one would ever know what kind of crimes he committed within.