Evander's POV
"Clean team in ten," I told Rook. "Make sure no one outside this house gets dragged into it. If there are witnesses, deal with them—only if they talk."
I didn't add the rest. People always talk when they're scared. And they always shut up again once they're paid.
Rook nodded. He knew exactly what I meant. He always did. He could make a house vanish without leaving smoke behind.
His eyes flicked to the man clutching the bloody mess of his hand. "What about him?"
"Patch him up," I said coldly. "Then remind him to follow orders. If he can't use one hand, he'd better learn with the other."
The man tried to laugh, like he thought I was joking. But the sound caught in his throat. Good.
I carry her through the debris of a life that used to look neat from a distance. Pictures watch without meaning. A vase bleeds white lilies onto the floor and into a red tide that points toward the door like a map no one wants to follow. Her head turns toward every small sound—my heel on marble, the soft squee of the glass, the hiccuped sob of a maid who just realized prayer takes too long.
At the threshold, she claws her way up my shoulder enough to get her mouth near my ear. "If you take me," she whispers, in that voice people use when they pray to a human, "I'll do anything. Please. Don't let them—" She can't say burn. She swallows and tries again. "I'll be useful. I'll—something. Just don't—"
The wolf presses his muzzle to the bars, eyes on mine. There. Useful. Hear it now that it cuts you?
I pause with one foot outside, one inside. The night air fingers the back of my neck. Cool. Real. Not kind.
"Earn it," I say.
She shudders, a whole-body tremor from neck to heel. She stops fighting. That is not the victory it should be.
Outside, engines idle, patient and hungry. The convoy is a spine of black along the curb. My door opens before I reach it; someone is always watching my distance to the handle. I lower Oddette into the back seat. She clings to me until physics makes her let go. The jacket slips again; I fix it. My knuckles brush her clavicle. A ridiculous, treacherous static snaps through my hand and up my arm like I've touched a live wire. I ignore it.
Don't lock me, the wolf says, too even to be anything but dangerous. Not now. Not with her smell in our blood. You promised yourself freedom. You promised yourself a crown with no chain. I'm the hand that held it up. I'm the teeth that kept it. You can't cut me out of this and call it strength.
I can do whatever I decide. It's not bravado. It's the only law that's kept me breathing.
He laughs. It's an awful sound, because it isn't cruel. It's right. You're already bending. Look at your hands. Look at the way you set the jacket, careful as a nurse. Look at the way you counted her breaths for a doorway. You pretend this is leverage. Leverage doesn't drag your pulse by the throat.
I slam the door on her and on him at the same time. The glass almost holds back both.
Rook stops with fingers tucked behind his belt, eyes on me, face flat. He's too smart to ask the real question. He asks the one he's allowed. "Destination?"
"South warehouse," I say. Neutral ground. Concrete. Cameras. Locks.
"You want medics ready?"
"For her?" The word scrapes. "Heat. Towels. Clothes. No questions unless I ask them."
"And the rest?"
I look back at the house. Through the open door, the room is a painting done in cruel colors. The staff look like they looked when I walked in—small—but hope has betrayed them and gone. They're not praying now; they're bargaining without words, trading breaths for minutes. Rook's men hold their aim steady and their faces steady and their hearts steady enough to do the job.
My jaw tightens. Not because I'm reconsidering. Because my wolf is chewing on the bars like they're wood and his teeth are tired of metal.
"Finish it," I say.
Rook tips his head once. The smallest motion. He isn't happy. He isn't unhappy. He's a hinge I built to swing the way I push it.
He turns. I turn. I start for my door.
A hand slaps wet against my thigh. I stop because momentum is a fragile god tonight. Oddette has gotten the door open half an inch—she learned the handle's shape in that one blind pass—and is kneeling with the jacket clutched crooked around her, trying to fall out of the car. Her fingers slide on my trousers; she finds the seam, grips.
"Please," she says, and she doesn't bother with the rest. It's all in that one syllable: the staff, the house, the fact that she can't see what I just decided and is asking me to let the answer be different than the silence says it is.
My men pretend not to see this. They are very good at pretending. The streetlight throws a pale circle the exact size of my choice.
I stand there long enough to hear a bird two streets over consider a note and discard it. The house breathes behind me. The car breathes behind me. She breathes in front of me, quick and thin and too sharp.
Then I peel her hand off my leg one finger at a time. Little bones. Cold skin. Tremor like wire. I put her hand back on her own knee and close the door as gently as if slamming it would bruise her more than everything else will.
I get in. The leather sighs. The engine's tone drops, ready.
Rook taps the roof. We pull away.
In the mirror, the house becomes a dark hole, then a darker line, then nothing at all. But the night doesn't swallow the sounds it should. It brings a soft pop too small to be thunder and too close to be anything else. Then another. Then many.
Oddette hears them. Of course she does. Her head lifts, blind eyes turned to the back window like they could catch the past if they wanted it enough. Her mouth opens, and no sound comes out. She curls into herself with that jacket like it's armor, and I learn in that moment exactly how soft armor is.
I told you, the wolf says, vicious again because it hurts less than grief. You did this. You did this with hands that could have done anything else.
I did what I always do, I say. What keeps us alive.
Alive is not the same as worth keeping, he says, and then he goes quiet in a way that isn't defeat. It's patience. The worst kind of promise.
The convoy hums along streets too rich to admit they ever hear gunfire. I watch her reflection in the glass—the pale of her hair, the gray fog of her eyes, the way her mouth holds still in a straight line because if it moves, it will fall apart.
I don't reach for her. I don't speak.
But I do lean forward and tell the driver, "Faster," because every second between this and whatever's next feels like standing in a doorway with the fire crawling up my back.
The city opens and closes around us like a throat swallowing. Somewhere ahead, a warehouse waits with keys and heat and the lie I keep trying to make into a plan. Somewhere behind, ash decides what sticks to what.
Oddette finally finds enough breath for a whisper. "Why me?"
For a second I almost say something true. Almost. But truth is weakness. So I give her something colder instead."
"Because," I say, eyes on the road that leads to every mistake I'm going to make, "you're useful."
She flinches like the word is a slap. My wolf bares his teeth at me in the glass. I show mine back.
We hit a red light. It thinks it can hold me. The street is empty. The driver waits for a word.
"Don't stop," I say.
We don't.
And as we run the light, as the city blurs, as the night peels back its quiet, someone's phone in the convoy crackles with Rook's voice and a list of things completed and a question I should care about. I don't answer. I'm watching Oddette's hand creep up, slow and shaking, to feel for the lock on her door like a prisoner testing the shape of a miracle.
My wolf lifts his head inside the cage and smiles a terrible, certain smile.
If she jumps, he says softly, I take over.
The light behind us turns green for no one at all.