He steps fully into the room. Doesn't call for help. Doesn't reach for a phone. Doesn't do anything except stand there with his hands in his pockets and his face completely composed, the expression of a man watching something he expected to see eventually and has been patient about.
"Nazareth." His voice is even. "Perhaps?—"
"Don't manage this, Rowan. Not tonight."
A pause. "The guards youdidn’tslaughter will need to be dealt with."
"Then deal with them."
Another pause. Longer this time. I can feel him reading the room the way he always does — calculating, cataloguing, deciding which variables he can use and which he needs to wait on.
"Let her breathe, Nazareth," he says quietly. "There are things that need to be said, and she can't say them unconscious."
I don't let go.
My fingers stay locked around her throat, and I feel her pulse under them — steady, unlike someone who’s genuinely afraid — and the rage in my chest burns clean and cold and completely without resolution because I want to. I want to finish it.
"Nazareth." Rowan's voice remains even. But there’s something underneath it I’ve only ever heard during training. During the hours he was turning me into the weapon they needed. "Don't force my hand."
I look at him. There’s the slight easing back of his jacket, the glint of a gun, and Mary right in his line of sight. The threat’s there, in the silence.
My fingers burn. My insides are singing with the urge.
One motion. That's all it would take. Thirteen years of wanting this. Thirteen years of running the calculation and arriving atnot yetand walking back into her house anyway, and she's right here, right now.
But Mary is standing three feet behind me with Rowan's gun angled precisely enough that I understand exactly what he's telling me. NotI'll shoot you.That's not the threat. The threat is the line of sight. The angle. The cold knowledge of a man who has spent decades understanding that the most effective leverage is never the target themselves.
It's the person standing beside them.
One motion, and I end Valeria.
One motion, and Rowan makes a decision I can't undo.
24
RETH
My sister is the reason my hand won't move. She’s always been the reason my hand won't move. Still the leash. Even now. Even here. Even with Valeria's throat marked from my fingers.
I curse as I let go of her, snarling under my breath with enough hate to spit blood. Valeria gasps, coughs, her hands on her throat. Mary scrambles to her, frantic. “Valeria, are you okay?”
I step back, feeling the imprint of Valeria’s throat on my fingers, the ghost of the kill command that never came.
"Besides.” Rowan steps in next to me, eyes kept on Valeria. “If anyone is going to kill my wife… it will be me."
Valeria makes a sound. Low. Amused. Her fingers still on her neck. "Always a romantic, husband."
“I’ll leave you three to it.” Rowan moves toward the door like he already got what he came for and is leaving the rest to settle on its own. He pauses at the threshold. Doesn't look at Valeria. He looks at Mary. “You have much to discuss.”
One beat. Two. A look that contains something I can't fully read. And when I turn to Mary, she's staring at Rowan, too.
Something fires in my chest. Instinct. A signal that tells me when a room has changed before I can identify how. The same signal that has kept me alive in more places than I can name, where the threat found the air before it found a face.
I don't know what I'm reading. I just know something’s wrong.
Then he's gone, and the door closes behind him.
Mary is still beside Valeria, one hand on her arm, tears already streaming down her face. She looks at me and then away and then back again and I can see it happening — the thing I've watched happen in other people a hundred times, the internal collapse of someone whose architecture is giving way.
