My breath catches in my throat. The coffee pot feels suddenly too heavy in my hand. I force a shaky laugh, the sound brittle.
"Excuse me?"
Her pale eyes never leave mine.
"The bargain."
Her fingers brush the rim of her mug, rings clicking softly like tiny bells.
"The blood. The mark. You've tied yourself to him."
The room tilts. The clatter of dishes, the hiss of the grill, Naomi's chatter—all of it recedes until there's only her voice and the hammer of my heart. The mark above my heart flares hot, as if it recognizes her words, or her.
I swallow hard, gripping the edge of the table to steady myself.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I whisper, but my voice sounds too thin, too guilty.
A faint smile ghosts across her lips—sharp, knowing.
"You do." She tilts her head, hair falling like a curtain of ink over one eye. "I can smell him on you."
The mark pulses again, a steady throb under my blouse. My knees want to give out.
The idea of her smelling him on me sends a fresh wave of heat through me, a confusing mix of shame and something akin to pride. It's true, I can feel the faint thrum of his essence, a residual warmth that's become as familiar as my own heartbeat. And even though part of me recoils from the thought of being so irrevocably tied to him, another part… another part cherishes it. He's shown me glimpses of a pain I never expected, a vulnerability beneath the arrogance. He's not just the one who claimed me; he's the one who sees me.
"Who are you?" I manage, my voice trembling.
She leans back, the movement languid but precise.
"Someone who's been watching. Someone who's seen girls like you before." Her eyes narrow, and the softness in her tone hardens to steel. "And someone who knows how bargains like yours end."
A shiver rakes down my spine. I glance toward Naomi, toward the kitchen, toward any anchor of normalcy—but no one's looking. It's like the whole diner's slipped, like we're suspended in a bubble of her making.
Her hand slides across the table, palm up, rings glinting in the fluorescent light. "If you want to live long enough to save her, you'll come with me. Quietly. Before he realizes someone else has found you."
The mark throbs again—harder this time—as if in warning. Or agreement.
My fingers tighten on the coffee pot. My voice comes out smaller than I want.
"Why should I trust you?"
Her pale eyes glitter with something unreadable.
"Because I'm not here to take you," she says. "I'm here to teach you how to run."
The words hang between us, heavy, suffocating. Come with me.
My stomach twists at the thought, a cold coil tightening beneath my ribs. Leave Adrial? The very idea makes something sharp and panicked claw through me. I don't even want to picture it—his absence, the severing of the bond, the hollow ache it would leave.
But the truth is sharper than that, deeper than that.
Because somewhere beneath the fear, beneath the bond's relentless pull, beneath every moment I swore I hated him…
Something else had already taken root.
It began in Rome.
In that impossible night when he let me see him—not the monster, not the Fallen, not the thing I should have feared—but the man buried under all that fire and ruin. The way he touched me then, the way he unraveled under my hands, the way he whispered yours like it was a prayer he'd been choking on for centuries…
I've been falling since that night.
I think part of me knew it even then.
My fingers clench around the coffee pot until the handle creaks.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," I say, sharper than I intend, but my voice still shakes. "I don't even know who you are."
For the first time, she blinks. Not surprise—something closer to amusement. Her smile curves slow, deliberate, as though my resistance pleases her.
"You're braver than you look," she murmurs, tracing the rim of her mug. "Or maybe just naïve."
Heat flushes my cheeks, half from anger, half from the mark's insistent throb beneath my collarbone.
"Either way, it's my choice," I snap, though the tremor in my voice betrays me. "And I'm not leaving him."
Her pale eyes sharpen, pinning me in place. "Not even if staying damns you?"
The question slices clean through me, but I keep my chin high, forcing the words past the lump in my throat.
"Especially then."
For a heartbeat, silence stretches—thick, dangerous. Then she laughs softly, low and unsettling, the sound curling through me like smoke.
"Very well," she says, standing with languid grace. She leaves a bill on the table, though her mug is still half-full.
"But remember, Evelyn—choices have teeth. And yours will bite."
She brushes past me, perfume sharp and strange, and I feel the weight of her stare linger long after the bell above the door jingles in her wake.
The diner hums back to life around me—voices, dishes, the smell of grease and coffee. But my knees are weak, my stomach knotted. Because for all my bravado, a single truth lodges itself deep inside me, cold and unshakable:
I don't know if she was wrong.