inen, counting the hours by the shift of shadows across a ceiling I hadn't chosen

ich and unfamiliar, water in a glass too fine for a prisoner. I ate anyway. Hunger doesn't care about dignity, an

licked ope

tory than the man from the car - not assessing my worth, assessing my threat level. She held herself like someone who'd spent year

stepping past me into the room like she'd walked this exact pat

ed for

small table by the window and looked at me with something that might h

id you

st an observation logged and filed the way I'd

s handed over in the same transaction, the same headlights, the same locked door. I didn't ask how many.

ing for something the stethoscope wouldn't catch. When she got to that part her whole posture changed, some careful blankness

you chec

ad used. The same flat, practic

not an

cked just enough that I saw something underneath it - calculation, maybe, or worry, or

nd she nodded like it confirmed something she'

rning than advice. "Not Silas. Not Briar. Not anyone who i

ince I'd arrived. "I don'

or me to see. "There's a word for what happened last night. I'm not the one who's supposed to tell you it. But you should know

me the

t looking back at me. "If he's brave enough to say it out

bed in the silence she left behind, turning her words over

A shelf of books in languages I recognized and some I didn't. A small mirror I avoided, not ready yet to look at the version of myself that had l

door opened again, and t

ed, eyes moving over me the way you'd study a problem you already resented having to solve. There was a tension around his mouth that loo

that Kane's didn't have, something sha

ve a

Kane had, taking his time, letting me feel the length of the walk, letting the silence between his footsteps do some of the work his w

ough me. "I don't know w

traint, like whatever discipline had shaped Kane had skipped over his younger brother entirely. "Because from where I'm standing, Wren Castellan, it looks like m

king for a flaw in something he was appraising. I froze, every instinct screaming at me to pull away and some deeper,

ref

t instead of volume, and the temperature of the room dropp

's hand fell away from my c