Rain slicked the cobblestones, turning the narrow service alley behind the gala hall into a mirror of neon and shadow. The van's engine roared, door yawning wide as masked men yanked Myra backward, her crimson dress streaking with water and grime. Her scream tore through the drizzle—sharp, desperate, unpolished.
Arkellin was already moving.
He slipped from the sedan like a blade leaving its sheath, coat snapping in the wet wind. His shoes struck the pavement hard, water splashing up his calves, but his focus was narrowed to one thing: Myra's eyes wide with terror as she clawed against rough hands.
The first man lunged with a knife, the steel flashing under the lamp. Arkellin caught his wrist mid-swing, twisting sharply until bone gave way with a crack. The scream was swallowed by thunder as Arkellin drove an elbow into the man's throat, sending him crumpling into a puddle.
The second masked figure tried dragging Myra toward the van, arm clamped tight around her waist. Her clutch had already spilled open, lipstick and cards scattered across the wet stone like blood drops.
"Let her go," Arkellin said. His voice was cold steel over the storm.
The man sneered under his mask and pulled harder. That was his mistake.
Arkellin surged forward, one hand seizing the back of the man's collar. With brutal precision, he yanked him off balance, slamming him into the van's frame. Metal rang out, reverberating in the alley. The man staggered, grip on Myra slipping just long enough for Arkellin to pull her free.
Her body hit his chest with a jolt, rainwater soaking through her dress and his suit alike. She trembled, fingers clutching his lapel, her breath hot against his neck despite the cold night.
The attacker lunged again, desperate. Arkellin pivoted, shoving Myra behind him. His fist came up sharp, knuckles colliding with the masked jaw. The man reeled, blood smearing under the mask, before Arkellin kicked him square in the ribs. The impact sent him crashing onto the wet stone, gasping, broken.
The van screeched as its driver realized the mission was lost. Tires spun, splattering dirty water, and the vehicle peeled away into the rain-slick streets, leaving its men behind.
Silence fell, heavy and fractured, broken only by Myra's shaky breaths.
Arkellin turned back. Myra had sunk to her knees on the soaked ground, hair plastered to her face, her crimson dress darkened by rain. She looked up at him, eyes wide, shining with both fear and relief.
For a moment, neither spoke. The storm filled the gap with thunder and the smell of wet asphalt.
Then Arkellin stepped closer, extending his hand. "You're safe now."
Myra's trembling fingers slid into his, clinging as though her life still depended on it. He pulled her gently to her feet, steadying her against him.
The rain traced cold rivers down their skin, but the heat of her grip burned through it.
She swallowed hard, voice breaking into a whisper. "I thought… I thought they'd take me."
Arkellin's eyes, hard as obsidian, softened just enough for her to see. "Not while I'm breathing."
And in the ruined quiet of the alley, with smoke, rain, and broken men at their feet, Arkellin carried her back toward the waiting car—her body still trembling, her heart already burning for what would come after.
The sedan door shut with a heavy thud, sealing out the storm but not the weight it had left clinging to them. Rain drummed on the roof, a relentless percussion, the scent of wet asphalt and exhaust still seeping in through their damp clothes. The leather seats creaked as Arkellin guided Myra inside, his arm still firm around her shoulders until she collapsed against him.
Mira sat opposite, silent. Her tablet rested on her knees, screen black. For once, even she had no words. Her gaze flicked from Myra's ruined crimson dress to Arkellin's steady grip on her hand, and though her mask held, the tension in her jaw betrayed her.
The car lurched into motion, tires cutting through the flooded streets. City lights smeared across the windows in blurred streaks of gold and red, reflected in Myra's wide, wet eyes. She hadn't let go of him. Her hand—cold, trembling—clung to Arkellin's as if the act itself tethered her to the present.
Her voice broke the quiet, low and raw. "For a moment…" She swallowed, trying again, softer. "For a moment, I thought I'd never see you again."
Arkellin turned his head slightly, the faintest shift of his gaze to meet hers. The storm's glow lit the sharp line of his jaw, the streak of white in his hair, the calm carved into his features as if even chaos bent around him. He didn't rush to answer. Instead, he squeezed her hand once, firm, grounding.
"You did," he said simply.
Her breath caught, chest heaving against the soaked fabric of her dress. She leaned closer, pressing her forehead briefly against his shoulder, the scent of rain and perfume and iron filling the close space between them. "I can't—" Her words fractured, too many thoughts spilling at once, too much fear still rattling inside. "I can't lose you."
Arkellin's eyes shifted back to the window, watching the riot-smeared city blur past—graffiti glowing under streetlamps, smoldering trash bins, protestors still chanting in the distance. His free hand tightened into a fist on his knee, unseen in the shadows.
"You won't," he said, quiet but absolute.
The silence that followed wasn't empty—it was heavy, filled with everything she wanted to say but couldn't, everything he promised without embellishment. Mira's eyes lingered on them both, unreadable, before she turned her face back to the rain-streaked glass.
The villa waited in the hills beyond the city lights, cedar and stone standing against the storm. And for Myra, every mile closer felt like a reprieve, a sanctuary. A place where fear would dissolve into something else—something fiercer, something she'd claim with both hands before it slipped away again.
She never let go of him the entire ride.
By the time the sedan climbed the winding road to the villa, the storm had thinned to mist, the night air cool and damp. The stone-and-cedar house loomed warm against the hills, its tall windows glowing amber, a sanctuary carved from rain and ruin.
The moment the door shut behind them, Myra pulled at him.
Her fingers, still trembling from the alley, clutched his lapel and dragged him into the living room. The faint lavender from the diffuser mixed with the musk of wet clothes, sharp and intimate. Rainwater dripped from the hem of her ruined crimson dress, darkening the rug beneath their feet.
She didn't care.
"Myra—" Arkellin began, voice steady even now.
"No," she cut him off, her eyes fever-bright, her voice rough with everything she'd almost lost. "Not tonight. Not after that."
She pushed him back onto the sofa, the leather creaking under their weight. Her hands roamed his chest with urgency, nails grazing through damp fabric. She kissed him hard, fierce, as if trying to drown out the echo of her own scream from earlier.
Arkellin let her take for a moment, her desperation crashing over him. Then his arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer, anchoring her as much as himself. The tension bled into heat, into the urgency of survival turned into possession.
The room blurred. Clothes fell—wet fabric hitting the rug, heels kicked aside, his jacket slipping from her grasp. The scent of rain and lavender deepened, their breath hot and tangled in the cool night air.
She broke against his mouth, whispering between kisses, "I thought I'd never— I thought they'd take me away—" Her words fractured, muffled against his throat.
Arkellin's voice cut through, low and unwavering. "They won't. Not while I'm here."
Her answer wasn't words but the desperate arch of her body against his. The world outside—the smear campaigns, the riots, the Council—faded to nothing but this moment, this heat, this proof that she was alive, that he was hers, here and now.
The sofa creaked, the storm hissed faint against the tall windows, and their silhouettes merged into one—raw, desperate, unstoppable.
And when the night closed in fully, the details blurred into black, leaving only the rhythm of survival turning into something far more dangerous: love laced with fire.
The villa's silence pressed close around them, broken only by the softened hush of rain gliding down the tall windows. The storm had gentled, but inside the cedar-and-stone walls, the air pulsed with a different violence—heat, urgency, and the lingering echo of what almost happened to her in the alley.
Arkellin carried her upstairs, her arms looped around his neck, her damp hair brushing against his jaw. Every step creaked under the weight of her clinging body and the tension still thrumming in her breath. The crimson dress was gone, abandoned on the rug below, a fallen flag marking the battleground they had already left behind.
He pushed the bedroom door open with his shoulder. Golden lamplight spilled across cedar beams and the fresh, untouched linens of a king-sized bed. The sheets smelled faintly of jasmine and new cotton, a sharp contrast to the scent of wet skin and rain still clinging to them both.
Arkellin set her down, slow, deliberate, as if laying something precious onto sacred ground. But Myra didn't loosen her grip—her nails dug faint crescents into his shoulders, her eyes locked on his as though even a breath apart was too much.
Her voice came raw, stripped of all her usual mischief: "Don't leave me… ever."
He paused, gaze steady, the streak of white in his hair catching the lamplight like a scar. In her eyes he saw no provocation, no playful fire—only fear and a plea she'd never admit in daylight.
"I won't," he answered. It wasn't comfort. It was oath.
She pulled him down to her, lips pressing into his with a hunger that was no longer frantic like the sofa downstairs, but slower, more devastating. Her hands mapped him, not with urgency but with reverence, each touch an anchor binding him to her.
The bed groaned softly as he shifted over her, their bodies sinking into the linen's coolness. His palm cupped her face, thumb brushing damp strands of hair from her cheek. She kissed him again, softer, a tremor running through her lips as if she was tasting the reality of his promise.
The rhythm that followed wasn't hurried—it was deliberate, every movement deeper, every gasp quieter but sharper. Myra's body arched against his, the sheets twisting, her voice breaking into hushed moans that filled the villa more vividly than the storm ever had.
"Please…" she whispered between breaths, the words cracked with need, with surrender. "Just stay."
Arkellin's hand slid down, gripping her waist, holding her steady as he gave her exactly what she asked. He didn't retreat, didn't hold back. And when she realized he was staying, truly staying, she trembled—half in ache, half in the rush of release.
Her head fell back against the pillow, hair splayed in dark waves, lips parted around the rawest sound she'd ever made. He bent to press his mouth against her temple, catching her whispered confession: "It's safe… tonight."
For the first time, she let him in fully. And for the first time, he didn't pull away.
The jasmine-scented sheets tangled tighter around their limbs, the lamp's glow casting shadows that fused them into one. Rain tapped against the windows like an audience muted by the heat inside.
The world beyond—the Council, the smear campaigns, the riots—ceased to exist. In this room, only their bodies spoke, only their hearts burned, and only their promise mattered.
The night blurred into black again, but it was not the darkness of fear or desperation.
It was the darkness of two souls choosing to stay, no matter how the storm raged outside.
The rain had thinned to a hush, a fine veil whispering over glass. The lamp threw a soft amber halo across the bed, catching in the messy fan of Myra's hair as she lay half on Arkellin's chest, one leg tangled in the sheet, one hand spread at his sternum as if testing the steadiness of his heartbeat.
Their breaths slowed together. Heat bled into the cool linen. The room smelled of rain and jasmine and the faint metal tang of adrenaline finally leaving the blood.
He reached for the blanket with his free hand and drew it up over her shoulders. She made a small sound—contentment frayed at the edges by exhaustion—then settled again, cheek pressed to the place where his pulse beat slow and certain.
"You're too calm," she murmured, voice husky, tasting the vowels like she was afraid they might break.
"I'm alive," he said. "That helps."
She huffed a quiet laugh against his skin that wasn't quite a laugh. "I wasn't." Her fingers flexed, then locked where they were. "Back there, I disappeared. It was like falling through a trapdoor. And then—" She stopped, swallowed. "Then I heard you."
He didn't tell her he'd heard her first. He didn't tell her the sound of her scream had narrowed the world to a single corridor through rain. Instead, he slid his palm up the line of her spine, slow, steady, as if smoothing the panic from each vertebra.
"I'm here," he said.
Myra nodded, a small, fragile movement. "Say it again."
"I'm here."
Her eyes closed. The villa breathed around them—the faint tick of the settling beams, the distant murmur of water along the eaves, the diffuser's lazy curl of lavender. Outside, a car passed down on the road below, tires whispering over wet asphalt; the sound rose and fell like a tide and then was gone.
"I've been stupid," she said after a while, words barely above the sheet. "Playing with the flame because I liked the way it looked. I thought nothing could touch me if I smiled at it." She drew a breath, unsteady. "Tonight it touched back."
Arkellin didn't answer. He let the quiet take the first layer of the fear and dull it down. When he spoke, his voice was low enough that she had to listen with her whole body. "Fear is just the body remembering it wants to live."
"And what does your body remember?"
He didn't tell her about nights lined with gunmetal and concrete, about narrow halls where the last thing a man ever saw was the white streak above his eyes. He only said, "Enough to know what to do next."
Silence again, but softer now. Her shoulders unknotted beneath his palm. The rain thinned further, a lullaby of water.
"I don't want to lose you," she said, the words small and deadly honest. "I don't want to pretend I don't care and then wake up to… to a van door and a stranger's hands and the taste of my own terror." She lifted her head, eyes shining, bare of every mask she owned. "Don't leave me. Not to that. Not to anything."
"I won't."
Her breath shivered out. For a long moment, nothing moved but the lamp's slow flicker and the steady rise and fall of his chest under her palm. Then she pushed herself up on an elbow and kissed him, not hungry now, not desperate—just a seal, a quiet press of certainty.
When she settled back, he reached for the glass on the nightstand and held it for her; she drank in small sips, throat working, then set it down, fingers briefly brushing his. He caught her hand and kept it, threading their fingers together against the sheet.
The phone on the dresser buzzed. Once. Twice. A third time in a tight stutter.
They both looked over. The screen lit the room with a cold square of light, casting thin blue across cedar grain. Arkellin stretched out an arm and dragged it closer without letting go of her hand. Push alerts stacked like falling cards.
BREAKING: Attempted Abduction of Heiress Outside Gala?
EXCLUSIVE: Grainy Video Shows Struggle — Who Failed Security?
Opinion: Clock's Chaos Spills Into the Streets — Where Are the Adults?
Underneath the headlines, a real-time ticker: clips already uploading, shaky footage from across the roundabout—shadows, a red dress, a door sliding, a scream stretched to static. Comment counts climbed like a fever.
Myra's breath hitched. "So fast."
"They were ready to catch it," he said. "Or ready to make it."
He swiped to the ops feed; messages poured in from the skeleton team he still kept in the city's underplaces—half names and burner numbers. Two of the men left behind are ghosts. Prints burned. Van plates swapped. Someone paid for silence on the route cameras. Another line: Council-linked botnets pushing the clip. Hashtag seeded in twelve languages.
Mira's name flashed across the top bar—three missed calls, then a text that was all granite even on a screen: I'm handling press at dawn. Keep her off the grid. We control the narrative or we don't have one.
Myra had gone very still, watching his face watch the world turn on them. "It's going to be worse in the morning."
"Yes." He set the phone face-down, the light dying, and turned back to her. "But you're here."
She held his gaze as if learning a new language written behind his eyes. Then she nodded, the smallest victory against the urge to tremble. "Then let it come." Her mouth softened. "I can face a city if you're where I can find you."
"You will." He brushed a damp strand from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. "We'll set terms before dawn. You'll sleep."
Her smile tilted. "Bossy."
"Efficient."
She laughed properly this time, the sound a warm crack in the cold. She tucked herself back against him, nose at his collarbone, legs tangling with his beneath the sheet until she found the exact place she wanted to live in for the night. Her next words were a whisper folded into his skin.
"I was terrified," she said. "More than I've ever been. But if the price of having you is fear, I'll pay it. I'll pay it and pay it and pay it, so long as, at the end—" She stopped, restarted, truer. "—so long as you're still here when the lights come on."
"The lights can break," he said. "We don't."
Her fingers tightened around his again. Outside, the rain gave one last sweep across the glass and moved on. Somewhere in the trees below the villa, a night bird called once, then went quiet. The diffuser's lavender line softened to nothing.
Sleep took her in slow increments, the way a tide takes sand. He felt the moment when her weight changed, when the tension bled all the way out, when her mouth parted and her breathing fell into long, even arcs. He did not move his hand from hers. He did not move at all, except to watch the dark and listen to the villa's small, faithful sounds.
The phone buzzed once more on the dresser, muted this time—a scheduled alert he'd set hours ago and forgotten to cancel. PR GRID: 06:00—STATEMENT WINDOW. Beneath it, another line compiled itself from his script and Mira's steel: bullet points he would sharpen by dawn, pressure points to press until the Council flinched.
He looked down at Myra sleeping against him, lashes still wet at their tips, and a rare warmth cut through the iron he usually kept coiled around his core. It wasn't softness. It was aim.
"Sleep," he murmured, the word a quiet order she'd already obeyed. "Tomorrow we take their fire and make it ours."
The villa held them; the night held the villa. And beyond the glass, Aurelia's storm reset itself for morning.