Lumi closed the laptop. Slowly. The way a person closed a door when they knew the thing on the other side had already gotten in.
“It’s professional.”
“Sure it is.” Mika pushed the dumplings toward her. “Eat. And for the record, the paragraph he wrote about power being a language? That man was describing himself and he doesn’t know it. Which means he’s either extraordinarily self-aware or completely oblivious, and based on what you’ve told me about his social skills, I’m going with oblivious.”
She’s not wrong. About any of it.
Lumi ate the dumplings. They were excellent. She hated that they were excellent because it meant Mika had gone to the good place on Myrtle Avenue, which meant this visit was premeditated, which meant Mika had seen the entire email situation developing before Lumi had admitted it was a situation.
“For the record,” Lumi said. “His insights about reader identification with villain motivations are genuinely groundbreaking.”
“His insights about reader identification are making you blush. Eat the other dumpling.”
The contract came back signedon a Friday. She’d handed Tessa three of the early Sable roughs for archiving that morning—the pencil originals, timestamped and precious—and watched the girl handle them with the careful reverence of someone who understood what she was touching. Good. She needed someone who understood.
Keanu’s protections intact. Every creative control clause reinforced. The reversion language ironclad. She stood in her loft with the confirmation on her phone and the autumn light pouring through the industrial windows.
The Sable pages she’d been reworking since the meeting, her villain’s expression shifting in ways she couldn’t fully explain—more open, more hungry, as if the argument in that Chelsea studio had cracked a door inside the character that Lumi hadn’t known was closed.
You did it. You’re collaborating with Axan Dark. You’re working with the mind behind every villain you’ve ever studied. And you signed an email with your initial like a lovesickteenager and he signed back with his and nobody’s talking about it.
On the windowsill, Iago the fern had lost another frond. On brand.
This is either the smartest move you’ve made since going solo or the beginning of a disaster you’ll one day describe to a therapist. Possibly both.
She picked up her phone. Typed a text to Mika.
It’s signed.
Mika’s response was instantaneous: The contract or the love letter?
I’m blocking your number.
No you’re not. Congratulations, babe. You deserve this. Now go eat a real dinner.
Lumi tossed the phone onto the couch. The leather groaned. The loft settled around her—brush noise, street noise, the radiator’s familiar clank. She looked at the solitude that had been her fortress. The space she’d built alone.
The solitude didn’t feel like strength anymore.
It was a room with the door shut.
TWELVE
ZEIR
The counter-proposals landed on his desk like a declaration of war wrapped in legal letterhead.
Zeir spread the pages across the drafting table—Keanu Stone’s revisions were extensive, meticulous, and personally furious. Every creative control clause challenged. Every approval right expanded. Iron-clad IP protections that would make a studio lawyer weep.
He read them twice. The first time with an editor’s eye. The second time with an alpha’s respect.
She hired her brother. And her brother fights like he’s settling a personal debt.
Kael leaned in the doorway, coffee in hand. “The counter-proposals are aggressive.”
“They’re thorough.”
“They’re the legal equivalent of a moat filled with crocodiles.” Kael sipped. “She has a good lawyer.”
