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“That is not what she needs from you, you know this,” Aster said, lower now, steadier, his forehead nearly against mine. “She has spent every day since you left being strong enough for everyone else. Be strong enough for her. Just this once. Without making her hold you up to do it.”

I don’t know how long it took.

Longer than I was proud of.

There was more wood broken before it was done, more of my father’s study reduced to splinters, and both of them bore the brunt of holding a thing that should not be held. But slowly, by inches, with her face in my mind and the thought of her dragged frightened from her rest, the crimson receded. The heat banked. The god sank back down beneath the man, sullen and unsatisfied, and left me standing in the ruin of my own office, shaking, my breath sawing in and out of my chest.

The markings on my arms dimmed to nothing. None of us spoke as I continued to calm.

Lazaros had a split lip. Aster’s forearm was already going purple where he’d braced it against my chest. Between them, the office looked as though the war had followed us indoors.

“Well,” Aster said at last, lowering himself gingerly onto the edge of the overturned desk, wincing as he did. “That went about as I expected.”

I closed my eyes.

Somewhere down the hall, she was sleeping.

Safe.

Whole, but for a mark on her back I had not even known to grieve. One I had missed entirely until the memory of the night before crept back, and with it the understanding that she had kept it from me on purpose. Kept her back hidden from me. Damn her caution. And yet, given what had just torn loose in this room, perhaps she had been wise to do so. Wise to hide the scar put there by a boy I had given my word I would not kill.

My word is my vow, I had told her. No harm will come to the boy.

I had promised her that. I had looked into those defiant, exhausted eyes and given her my vow. Because she had asked it of me, because she still saw something in that creature worth saving even after what he had done to her.

And now, I knew exactly what he had done.

I dragged a hand down my face and let out a long, slow breath, surveying the wreckage of the room, of the morning, of every plan I’d had for the hours ahead.

“So,” I said, my voice hollow and dark. “It seems all that is left for me to do now…” I closed my eyes, “…is to work out how in all the realms I am going to keep from killing the woman I love’s best friend.”

How indeed.

Alex

Iwas dreaming of fire when the touch came.

Not the warm, golden kind that lived between Atlas and me, but the other sort. The kind that smelled of scorched skin and basements and a voice I had once trusted telling me it was for my own good. So, when fingers brushed the bare skin of my shoulder, my body reacted before my mind could catch up. I jerked violently away as a gasp tore out of me, and my eyes flew open to a room I didn’t immediately recognize.

“Easy. Easy, my love, it’s only me.”

The voice settled over me like a healing balm, low and impossibly gentle, and the panic drained out of me as quickly as it had come.

Atlas.

Of course, it was him.

I was in his ridiculous island of a bed, tangled in sheets that smelled of him, with sunlight pouring through the tall windows and not a single basement in sight.

He shifted closer, and I felt the warmth of his lips press softly against the curve of my shoulder.

“There she is,” he murmured against my skin, the words a quiet echo of the night before. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t,” I lied, my heart still galloping. “I just… wasn’t expecting…” I trailed off because his hand had drifted lower, tracing an idle path down my spine, and the moment his fingers found the ruined skin there, I went rigid.

The scar.

My back was bare.