Page 67 of Rook

“Vance, you playing puppet master now?” My voice echoes in the dark room as I stare at the face on my screen. The assassin’s eyes, cold and dead on the footage, are the same ones that glanced over Vance’s shoulder just an hour ago. “You’ve been dealing with this trash behind our backs?”

The image taunts me, a silent mockery of every truth I thought I knew.

The game has changed…and I need to talk to the others right fucking now.

Before Vance does them all in for good.

Chapter twenty-eight

Luka

I’m melting into Aisling like I’m nothing but shadows and whispers.

The heat spa, with its distant voices and lush decor, is a cocoon where time’s got no grip on us. Can’t say how long we’ve been here, tangled up in each other, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever known. We fuck her in an endless rotation—finding each tight space, every empty cavern of her body. Me, Gunnar, Oberon…she needs us all.

My senses come back to me in fragments. I blink awake, not a damn clue what hour it is. I’m curled tight around Aisling, her soft breaths tickling my chest. Only us now; Oberon and Gunnar’s voices drift from the annex, their words too hushed for me to catch.

Aisling’s looking up at me, grey eyes wide as the moon, pupils blown out. Her lips are bruised from kisses, telltale signs of our recklessness. She’s a picture of desire and vulnerability all mixed up in one, and it hits me hard, right in the gut.

“Hey,” she whispers, voice rough like it’s been dragged through gravel and honey.

“Hey yourself,” I manage, voice barely there. My hand finds her hair, threads of white-gold slipping between my fingers. There’s something sacred about this, about her, in the quiet after the storm.

Just don’t know if I’m the saint or the sinner in her story.

A shudder ripples through me, unbidden. My mind’s a traitor, dragging me back to New Eden, where the world was red and raw, where I woke up knotted inside her, with the taste of blood and salt on my tongue. Her cries still echo somewhere in the hollows of my skull. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to banish the ghost of that day—this is different, this is safe.

“Stop,” I murmur to myself more than to her, but Aisling’s hand finds mine, her fingers tracing patterns on my skin, grounding me.

I look into her eyes, and she’s staring at me with something fierce and soft all at once. It’s like she sees right through the bullshit, straight to the parts of me I can’t hide.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes out, and it cuts through the haze, sharp and unexpected.

“Sorry for what?” Confusion laces my words; it feels like we’re dancing around a bonfire, and I’m about to step into the flames.

“For everything.” Her voice, it wavers, carrying the weight of worlds. “If I hadn’t—“

“Shh.” I want to argue, tell her none of this is on her, but she silences me with a finger pressed to my lips, gentle yet insistent.

“I need to say it, Luka. To you, to them,” she insists. “Maybe then we can start to heal.”

“None of this is your fault, Ais,” I say, but the words feel heavy, like I’m dragging them up from the seafloor.

“Let me have this,” she pleads, eyes earnest and searching. “Please.”

I nod because what else can I do? She’s the gravity that holds us all together, even when she’s breaking apart. And if her apology’s what she needs to patch herself back up, then I’ll swallow every word if it means she gets a shot at peace.

“Okay,” I whisper, watching as the tension eases from her shoulders, a silent surrender to whatever comes next.

Her fingers brush against mine, a touch that lights up the dark corners of my mind. I can’t help myself—I reach up, take her hand in mine, and bring it to my lips. Her skin’s soft, and I kiss every fingertip, one by one, like they’re something precious.

‘Cause they are.

They’re part of her.

She watches me, those storm-cloud eyes of hers wide and wondering, as if she can’t fathom why I’d bother with such tenderness. But I’ve got reasons, too many and not enough all at once.

“Didn’t want it this way, Ais,” I murmur against her skin, voice rough like gravel. “Everything…it should’ve been different.”

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