The heat was gone, he noticed distantly as Riot helped him stand. That desperate ache that had lived in his body for days had faded to almost nothing. He was still warm—warmer than normal—but the wetness had almost stopped, the cramping had stopped, the hollow need that had driven him into Riot’s arms over and over had finally quieted.
First heats were supposed to be short, right? He vaguely remembered someone saying that. Or was it something he wished for? And his body had been through so much. It made sense that it would burn out quickly. He didn’t question it, mostly because he didn’t have room in his head to question anything except getting to Honey before the door in her mind started to form.
Cass found paper in the drawer of Lilac’s nightstand. A stub of pencil, worn down to almost nothing. His hands were still shaking as he sat on the edge of the bed, trying to think of what to write.
Miss Lilac, I’m coming back for this, he wrote. The letters were shaky, uneven.Please keep it safe. Thank you for your kindness.
He stared at the words. They didn’t feel like enough. Nothing felt like enough.
P.S. Riot picked flowers from your fence for my hair. I’ll plant new seeds when I get back.
He folded the note carefully and set it under the circlet, the silver weighing down the paper like a promise he felt foolish making.
Across the room, Riot was moving, shoving things into a pack and checking weapons Cass hadn’t even known he had. His jaw was set, his movements sharp, and every few seconds his eyes would flick to Cass with an expression that made something twist in Cass’s chest.
Cass looked away. He couldn’t bear the weight of that gaze right now.
He’d hit Riot. The red mark on his cheekbone was already darkening into a bruise, visible even in the dim light. And before that—his nails raking across Riot’s chest in the bathroom, breaking skin, drawing blood.
He kept hurting Riot.
Brother Matthias once explained why some people attracted suffering through their negative spiritual energy. Some souls were so unbalanced that they poisoned everything they touched by proximity alone.
But maybe he had been right. Maybe that was what was wrong with Cass—not something broken that could be fixed, but something fundamentally rotten. A wrongness at his core that leaked out and infected everyone around him.
Riot had been fine before Cass stumbled into his life. He’d had a home. A community. People who cared about him, who understood him, who weren’t afraid of him even when his eyes glowed gold. Now the whole Collective probably thought Riot had lost his mind, tricked by an Elysian, led astray by a missionary who couldn’t even complete the mission he’d been sent to do.
He’d ruined his relationship with Honey—his one real friend, his soul-family, the person who’d known him longest—by being unable to love her the way the Elders demanded. He’d ruined his standing by failing Chrysalis, by being too deficient to accept the help they’d tried to give him. He’d ruined Brother Matthias’ssessions by vomiting and crying and never quite achieving the purity they kept promising was just around the corner.
And now he was ruining Riot.
Cass watched him move—the economy of motion, the quiet competence, the way he handled the pack and the weapons like extensions of his own body. Everything about Riot was capable. Strong. Certain. Even with the Berserker lurking underneath, even with the damage Gensyn had done, Riot knew who he was and what he could do.
Cass didn’t know anything. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t plan. He couldn’t even explain what had happened behind the door in his mind without falling apart. All he could do was cry and shake and need things—need comfort, need reassurance, need someone to hold his hand through the dark.
Pathetic, something whispered in his head. It sounded like Brother Matthias. It sounded like the Elders. It sounded like himself.
Weak. Broken. A weight around everyone’s neck.
“Cass.” Riot’s voice cut through the spiral. “You need to get dressed.”
Lilac left clothes for him at some point—a tank top of soft gray cotton; a thin jacket with a hood; pants with a drawstring waist because he was too thin for anything with a proper closure. The clothes of someone who didn’t quite fit anywhere.
He dressed mechanically. The tank top hung loose on his shoulders, the armholes gaping to show the scars on his chest. The jacket swallowed him, sleeves falling past his wrists. When he pulled the drawstring tight on the pants, he had to wrap the excess cord around before it would stay.
He looked like a child playing dress-up.
This is who Riot is risking his life for. This... nothing.
Riot appeared beside him, a pack slung over one shoulder, and his eyes tracked over Cass’s borrowed clothes with somethingthat might have been pain. Or pity. Cass couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
“Ready?” Riot asked.
Cass nodded.
They slipped out of the bedroom, through the destroyed living room, past the dent in the wall and the books and all the evidence of what they’d done here. Riot moved like a shadow, barely making a sound. Cass tried to copy him and mostly failed, his bare feet too loud on the hardwood, his breathing too ragged, everything about him too much and not enough at the same time.
The front door creaked when Riot opened it. Cold night air rushed in, sharp and clean after the warmth of the house.
