Page 20

??The Rot Beneath the Smile

Dorian

I watched her on the security feed again.

She hadn’t touched the food. Hadn’t screamed. Just… stared at the far wall like it was whispering secrets I couldn’t hear.

She was always listening. Even in silence. Even now.

Ember Carr was a prisoner. But she didn’t look broken. She looked patient.

And that unnerved me more than any monster I’d gutted.

What the fuck was I going to do with her?

The question gnawed at me, sharp and constant, like teeth on tendon. I couldn’t let her go. Not yet. Not when Kreed was still out there. Not when she still hadn’t told me everything she knew.

Not when I hadn’t decided what she meant to me.

A soft knock echoed from the hall.

Cassian.

Of course.

I didn’t invite him. He never needed invitations.

He slipped into the study like smoke, already holding a glass of blood like he poured it from the sky. His hair was wet. His coat dark with something too thick to be rain. I turned off the monitors before he saw what secret lay upstairs.

"Lovely evening," he said, lounging into the chair across from mine, all elegance and teeth. “Still hunting the girl?”

I didn’t answer.

He smiled wider. “You always were bad at letting things go.”

“Say what you came to say, Cass.”

“I didn’t come to say anything.” He raised his glass in a mock toast. “Just checking in on an old friend and his very new obsession .”

The way he said it. Obsession. It coiled around the room like poison.

I leaned back in my chair. “You’ve been sniffing too close.”

“To her?” he asked, feigning innocence. “She smells like firewood and rage. Of course I’m curious.”

My jaw tensed.

Cassian took another sip, licking the blood from his lip. “She has bite. You like that, don’t you?”

“No.” I lied.

“Hmm,” he hummed, tipping his glass again. “And yet, I can’t help but wonder what she tastes like.”

I moved faster than breath. One second I was seated. The next, I had Cassian by the collar, pinned against the antique bookshelf like a pinned butterfly.

“You will not go near her,” I said, voice low, guttural. “Not when I’m awake. Not when I’m dead. Not even if the world splits open and the Veil swallows every last soul. She is not yours to touch.”

Cassian didn’t flinch. His eyes glittered, wrong.

“Touchy,” he whispered. “What if she touches me first?”

I stared into him. Past him. Something was off. Rotten beneath the charm.

His pupils didn’t dilate the way they should in my shadow. His scent, different. Colder.

“Get out,” I said.

He straightened his lapels as I stepped back, his grin never slipping. “Don’t say I didn’t offer help.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Oh, but Dorian,” he said over his shoulder, voice echoing like a curse, “you do . You just don’t know from what yet.”

The door shut behind him like a tomb sealing.

And for the first time in over a century, one-hundred and thirty-six years of blood, shadow, and silence, I felt something crawl up my spine that wasn’t hunger or hatred.

It was doubt.

And it reeked of something ancient. Something wearing Cassian’s skin like a suit.

I turned back to the monitor. Ember still hadn’t moved. But the air in the house had.

And something told me… She wasn’t the only secret left to uncover.