Page 170 of The Silent War
“Luca?”
“Mm.”
“Do you hate him?” She didn’t say the name. She didn’t need to.
“I hate anyone who told you to carry this alone. But I’m not giving them time in this room. Not right now. They can wait their turn.”
She let out a tiny laugh. My thumb kept moving. The top of her foot slid against my shin under the surface.
“Tell me something not dynasty,” she said after a while, voice gone soft. “Something that won’t make my head hurt.”
I thought of the penthouse, of the things she doesn’t know we programmed because some part of me is always ten minutes ahead of her pain.
“In the new place. The bath remembers you. It won’t run if the water’s too hot. It will start draining if your heart rate drops too low. The speakers won’t play anything louder than rain if you’re in here past midnight. The light in the bedroom is set to warm so your eyes don’t sting when you wake up. And if you ever stand in the shower for more than five minutes without moving, the mirror sends me a message that says, ‘She’s stuck. Come get her.’”
She made that soft noise in her throat. “That’s… a lot.”
“It’s enough,” I kissed the edge of her hair. “It’s what we should have been doing since the first night.”
“I was the one?—”
“You were the one who’d been told love meant shutting up and standing still.” I worked a knot under her thumb until it let go. “We’re rewriting the book.”
She was quiet after that. I felt her muscles unwind one by one. The water did the rest.
I slid my hands up to her shoulders and pressed slow circles into the tight muscle until she sighed and let her head tilt to give me more access.
By the time the room clock blinked twelve-thirty, her breaths had lengthened into that almost-sleep rhythm, and the weight of her against me had turned trusting and heavy.
I tightened my arm around her waist because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I will never again trust this city not to reach over a wall and take what I love.
Bastion appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, hair a mess, T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, eyes flicking once to me and then locking on her.
She blinked up at him, fighting a smile she didn’t have energy for.
He leaned against the frame a second like his knees needed help. Then he came to the tub and crouched—his face soft in a way only she ever saw.
He held her gaze. “How’s your head?”
“Not trying to kill me,” she said around a yawn.
“Good.” He dipped his fingers into the water, testing heat like I had. “He get it right?”
“Perfect,” she said, eyes fluttering shut again.
We shared a look over her hair. That twin look—the one that carries a whole language: the war room plans, the thirty-day clock, the blackmail packet ready to snap around the Adams throat, the call to Damius scheduled for dawn that would change the shape of our family. The part where, for once, we were ahead of a dynasty instead of clawing to keep pace.
We’d done it.
Not all of it. Not the vows, the island. But the worst lay behind us.
“Stay,” Bastion said to her, like he was asking for a promise and giving one. “Stay in today. Let us do the ugly.”
She made a little hum that meant yes without moving her mouth.
He leaned in and kissed her temple. I felt the press of it through her body where her shoulder rested on my chest. He rested his forehead there a beat, then pulled back and smoothed her damp hair from her cheek.
“Coffee?” he asked me, voice low.
