He stopped.
Sage’s back was against the trellis, and her cream seeker robes were not where they should have been. The collar was pulled open, the fabric pushed off one shoulder, and Honey’s hand was inside, the shape of her fingers visible through the thin cloth, moving against skin. Honey matched the disheveled look of her own robes with all the careful composure of the morningcompletely dismantled. Her other hand was at the back of Sage’s neck.
And Sage was smiling.
Riot had never seen Sage smile. Not once.Not even when Granny Lu was going off on Prepper and said he was so stupid, he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. Her face was built for flat assessment, controlled anger, and the occasional expression that meant she was rethinking her decision not to shoot someone.
The smile was…unsettling. Not because it was wrong. Because it wasright.It was a real smile. Warm. Soft. It transformed her face into something Riot didn’t recognize and didn’t know how to feel about, because it was beautiful and wrong and happening at the worst possible time.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Both of them froze.
Honey’s hand came out of Sage’s robes. Sage’s smile vanished, replaced by the flat expression Riot knew, the default setting, just with a little extra color in her cheeks. The space between them was approximately zero inches and neither of them was moving to increase it.
“I convinced her,” Sage said as if she hadn’t just been caught with someone’s hand under her clothes. “She’s coming.”
“Is that what I interrupted?”
“I’ll come with you,” Honey said, straightening her robes and clearly missing Riot’s implication. “I’ll leave with you. Sage explained—about the Collective. About Granny Lu. About what we’d be going to.” She paused. “It might be worth it.”
Might be worth it. Might be worth it.Riot would have laughed if he could remember how, because five minutes ago he’d been sobbing in the grass..
“That’s great,” Riot said. His voice was low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that Sage knew well enough to take a step back from,but Honey didn’t. “That’s really great. I’m happy for both of you. While you’ve been out here doingthis, Cass is inside being tortured.”
Notnegative energy release.Notsession.Not any of the words Springfield Gardens made up to keep the thing it was doing from looking like the thing it was.
Tortured.
Honey’s face fell the way a shelf falls when the bracket gives out. Everything that was sitting on it—the composure, the decision, the tentative joy— crashed to the floor at once.
“He’s having a release session,” Honey said. “He has them all the time, they’re—”
“A man is in your house right now carving circles into Cass’s skin, and he’s been doing it since Cass was sixteen.”
“That’s—” Honey’s voice was barely there. “That’s not—he can’t have—I would have seen—”
Honey’s hand went to her own mouth.
Through the wall, he could hear Cass’s voice. Not a pain-sound. Words. Muffled through dry wall and wood but audible in the evening quiet, audible because the evening was still and the meditation bell had rung, and everyone in Springfield Gardens was where they were supposed to be except for the three people standing in a garden while something happened inside.
“Please let me go.”
The fear hit Riot’s body like a truck.
Not his fear. This was sharp and electric, flooding through his nervous system from a source ten feet away and three inches deep. His stomach lurched. His vision snapped to gold—full and angry whether he wanted it or not.
“I’m going in,” Riot said.
“We’re not supposed to—” Honey started.
“I don’t care what he said. Something’s wrong.” He was already moving. His feet were bare and the grass was cold and the gold was pouring through his vision, turning the evening into a high-contrast targeting display. “You can come with me or you can stay here. I’m not waiting for that man to finish what he’s doing because I don’t think what he’s doing is what Cass signed up for.”
“His eyes,“ Honey gasped.
Riot didn’t stop walking.
“That’s normal,” Sage said. “Don’t worry about it and try not to be in front of him when he snaps.”
