Trust is a tactical asset. Spend it like ammunition—but only when the outcome is worth the recoil.
—Service Field Doctrine 3.7: Squad Cohesion
NOA
My footsteps echo too loudly in the empty hallway of the Blue Dahlia. Each step feels like a betrayal—of myself, of her, of everything I thought we were building. I make it out the front door before the fire in my chest breaks loose. A punch to the wall does nothing but scrape my knuckles.
You walked away from her.
My father would call that discipline. Tactical withdrawal.Maintain control. Reassess the asset.But this feels nothing like control. It feels like the exact fucking opposite.
I drag a hand through my hair, breath sharp as frost in my lungs. The night air doesn’t cool the heat crawling beneath myskin. I didn’t expect perfection. But lies? Secrets? That’s not what we were supposed to be built on.
She looked wrecked. And I made it worse.
Gavrail.
The name alone twists my stomach into a knot. Not because of what he is.
Because of what she gave him.
That’s the piece that splinters something in me. The idea that she carried all of this inside her—this rare power, this knowledge, this history—and never said a word.
Not when we were alone in the Cavern.
Not when she was curled into me on the couch.
Not when she was in my bed, shaking from the force of her own magick, and I was trying to help. My hands around her waist, my mouth at her ear. My fingers cupping her jaw as I turned her face up to mine.
Look at me. Breathe, Cel. I’ve got you.
And she did. She looked at me like I was the only real thing in this world. She trusted me enough to fall apart in my arms. But not enough to tell me why.
And maybe that’s what stings the most. Not that she had secrets.
But that she didn’t trust me with them.
But she trustedhim.
I think about the way she was with me—warm, soft,minein a way that made me believe I’d earned it. And now I can’t stop wondering?—
Was any of it real?
Because I sure as hell didn’t walk into this halfway. And fuck if that doesn’t hurt.
Maybe I was just the version of safe she needed until something stronger came along.
Even just the idea of someone else touching her, of those lips whispering secrets into someone else’s ear, makes me almostturn back and demand everything from her right now. Her body. Her fucking soul.
I run through every conversation we’ve had, looking for a fracture I missed.
A moment where she might have almost told me the truth.
A moment I could’ve asked the right question and gotten the right answer. An answer that ended with her and me in bed right now. Taking out my anger while buried deep inside of her, instead of out here. Alone.
But I don’t turn around.
I stalk across the quad, barely aware of where I’m going until the steps of the Caldera rise beneath my feet. The night air greets me like a dare.
