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I gasp. I don’t know anymore whether I’m angry or wanting, and I can’t tell the difference.

“Are you still sore?” he asks, conversational, like I didn’t just try to choke the life out of him.

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“Because I can’t wait to fuck you again.”

He leans in, catches my lip between his teeth, and tugs. I fight his grip. He clamps down tighter, taking the fight as if it costs him nothing. We come together in something closer to a fight than a kiss, teeth and tongue and the bar of his piercing. His mouth drops to my throat, dragging over the mark he left there last night, and my whole body betrays me in a long shudder against his knee.

He kisses me one last time before pulling back. “You keep calling it wreckage.”

“Because that’s what it is.”

“Mm.” He finally releases my wrists but stays close enough that I’m still trapped between him and the car. “I take care of what’s mine.”

And I have no answer to that.

He lets me go, blood rushing back into my hands as I lower them.

“Show me.” Stepping away from the car, he nods toward the museum. “The Calder you love so much.”

“Asshole,” I breathe.

His mouth curves, and that’s answer enough. I turn and head for the entrance.

The woman at the desk looks up. “Jade.” Her face opens the way it always does, one hand already lifting to wave me through. “Back again?”

Then she sees who’s behind me, and her smile falters. Taking in the cut of his coat, she lowers her hand. “Good morning, sir.”

My hand goes to my collar without asking, dragging it higher over the mark.

“Don’t,” Asher murmurs close behind my ear.

I let my hand fall and lead him into the back rooms to show him what I’ve spent my whole life coming here to see.

The diorama first. The green Calder, the little painted hills, the rivers laid in blue thread, the orchards in their neat, lost rows. I tell him what the plaque says, then what it leaves out. The names of the market towns that once sat where the tailings ponds are now. The crop the southern flats were famous for. The year the last river ran. I show him the cracked irrigation maps and the photographs gone the color of tea, a whole world that grew things before his kind decided it would be worth more hollowed out.

As we keep walking, I lose track of time the way I always do here. The maps and photographs still hurt, but I love them anyway. Proof that Calder was once more than this.

By the time we’ve made our way through both exhibition halls, we step out into the gardens behind the museum, past a few hardy plants still clinging to beds that were once grand. The air is cooler here.

“Can I ask you something?”

I snort. “Since when do you need permission?”

His mouth twitches. “Fair enough. I wanted to ask you about the Hunt. You ran it for Onyx, didn’t you?”

“Yes. We’ve never been apart, and when he got sick...” I look out across the gardens. “He was never going to be able to run it himself, so I went for him. If I’d won, the sponsorship would’ve covered his treatment and maybe given me a few more years with him. But the scanner caught my lie.”

“That’s how we met.”

I nod. “Exactly. But you know what? I’d do it again any time. Despite knowing how cruel the Hunt is, I’d do it again if it gives me time with Onyx. Anything for Onyx. He’s my brother.”

“People have brothers, Jade. They don’t do what you did.”

“You’d do it for Ryven, wouldn’t you? And Seren?”

“Ryven can walk up a flight of stairs. Seren could probably kill half the people running the Hunt before breakfast.”