The leather wheel is slick under my palms. Too slick. Just sweat, not the Shroud crawling through the stitching, but the thought won’t leave. My hands lock at ten and two like some first-year driver’s ed kid, knuckles bleached against the dashboard glow. I drum once, twice, then force my fingers still.

Cassie’s seatbelt clicks into place beside me, a small, final sound.

I didn’t give her a choice. Shoved her into the seat before we left the lot. “You’re not driving,” I’d said, voice sharp enough to make her eyebrows arch. She hadn’t argued. She hasn’t said anything since.

The coupe hums low as we merge onto Silverrow’s arterial road. Neon and sodium lamps drag ribbons of light across the windshield, strobing her cheek in pale flashes. My eyes flick—lane, mirror, sidewalk. Scan, scan, scan. Every set of headlights feels too close. Every pedestrian too slow to turn away. Even the crosswalk signals pulse red like warnings meant just for me. The city feels hungry tonight, and I’m the delivery.

The tether thrums steady between us, not comfort—mockery. A heartbeat I can’t unclench from. A reminder of what I said. What I couldn’t unsay once the glamour cracked and steam rose.

Because you’re my wife and I fucking love you.

Gods, the memory scalds worse than the salt bath.

I grip harder, shoulders climbing toward my ears. Seara’s voice slashes through my head, sharp as flint: Reckless. Weak. Firebrand daughters don’t hand their throats to anyone—least of all to a girl still learning our world.

But it hadn’t been politics or calculation. It had been Cassie, pupils blown wide, laugh wrong, drifting toward a stranger in gray scrubs—and me terrified enough to shatter. The words clawed their way out because nothing else would stop her.

She stares out the window now, jawline mirrored in glass, pale hair spilling like starlight. Untouchable. Silent. She hasn’t touched her phone. No teasing, no heel tapping, no practiced captain’s smirk. Just stillness—too much stillness for her.

It’s unbearable.

Say something. Anything. Roll your eyes. Call me dramatic. Tell me I’m wrong, or furious, or both. Just don’t leave me in this vacuum where the only sound is my pulse and the tether’s live-wire hum.

But she doesn’t.

Silverrow’s polished facades blur into Grimwall Hollow’s sprawl, then the familiar slope into Ravenrest Heights. I read the shift like omens. A kiosk glowing too long in the mirror. A sedan that lingers an exit late. A man on the curb who never lifts his head. My bones catalogue it all. The Shroud was waiting. Not for me. For her.

She moves at last—fingers tugging at a nonexistent crease in her skirt. Not toward me. Never toward me. My stomach flips. I’d rather she screamed. At least then I’d know the edges.

The words push against my teeth: I didn’t mean it like that. Or maybe: I meant every word. Both true. Both wrong. Both ruin.

The coupe climbs the cobblestone curve into Ravenrest. Tires hum a drumbeat under my ribs. Headlights flare across the wrought-iron gate, ivy twisting silver in the glow. Minutes from home, and still no word from her.

I steal a glance—quick, reckless. Her face unreadable, all sharp lines and silence. But her hand rests closer on the seat now, just near enough that if I moved mine from the gearshift—

I don’t. Can’t.

I exhale, long and shaky. Fog ghosts the windshield. My fingers twitch against leather before curling back tight. The tether hums low, steady, like it’s waiting for me to combust.

And maybe I will.

The wards taste like old copper as the house exhales us inside. My tongue prickles, metallic, as if I licked a coin. My skin joins in—itching with warning, the tether vibrating like it knows I’m seconds from flaring.

Cassie’s footsteps follow mine up the stairs. Not hesitant. Not rushed. Just measured. Silent as a dare.

My door looms, familiar and hated. I reach for the lock on reflex—needing the barrier, needing control. The handle snaps hot against my palm, wards shoving back. Seara’s leash. Her smug reminder this door never shuts without her blessing. Always open. Always listening.

“Of course,” I mutter, jaw tight. The door swings wide with a whisper like mockery, and I storm in. Cassie drifts after me, unhurried, like she’s got all the time in the world. That unbothered grace makes me want to scream.

The room looks wrong. Too clean. Duvet folded razor-sharp, air scrubbed of me. It feels like an accusation, like even the walls know I lost control. Only my blazer, crumpled on the chair, breaks the lie—a single mess in a room trying too hard.

I spin on her, heat clawing my throat. “You could’ve been taken.”

Her icy eyes flick up, cool and unreadable. She leans against my dresser like this is just another night, like her body hadn’t gone soft and pliant in someone else’s hands an hour ago. “Good evening to you too.”

“Don’t.” The word cracks like flint. “Don’t stand there and act like I’m being dramatic. You were—” My throat seizes, fire clogging it. I shove past. “You were laughing at them. Like they were friends. Like they weren’t about to—”

Her brows arch, sharp. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“You weren’t you, Cass.” The words whip out before I can leash them. My ring spins furiously on my finger. “Your pupils were wrong, your laugh was wrong, everything about you was wrong, and you—you didn’t care. You almost followed one of them out of the bath like—like some kind of sleepwalker.”

Her mouth curves in that infuriating almost-smile. “But I didn’t.”

Gods, I want to shake her. “You didn’t because I stopped you!”

Her eyes flash, ice hardening to steel. “No, you anchored me. That’s different.”

“That’s the same thing,” I snap, sparks biting my fingertips. “Don’t spin it noble. You were about to float away like they already owned you.”

She pushes off the dresser with deliberate calm. “So what, now I’m fragile? Now I need babysitting because my nervous system is human and yours isn’t?”

“This isn’t about fragility!” My hands flare helplessly, palms hot. “It’s about the fact that the Shroud was right there, waiting, and they almost had you—”

She cuts me off, sharp: “Almost. But they didn’t.”

Silence slams down, thick as smoke. My pulse hammers. Ash coats my tongue.

Cassie doesn’t blink. “You don’t get to control me just because you’re terrified.”

The words land like a brand. My body jerks like she seared me with them. Control. Terrified. She says them like they’re curses.

I bare my teeth in something not quite a smile. “You think this is about control?”

Her chin tips up, daring me. “Isn’t it?”

Heat claws at my ribs, magic straining against the leash. I stalk closer, every step a spark on stone. “No. This is about the fact that I watched you vanish in front of me. That I had to drag you back. And you—” My fists knot, useless against the open door, against her maddening calm. “You don’t even care that it almost happened.”

Her voice sharpens, captain’s steel slicing through. “Of course I care. But you can’t wrap me in your fire and call it love if what you mean is a leash.”

For a moment, silence. Then the fire roars back, furious at the wrongness of her words, at the sting of them. Sarcasm saves me from begging.

“Fine,” I say, sharp as broken glass. “Next time I’ll let you wander off with the attendants and see how you like it.”

Her eyes narrow. “That’s not what I said.”

“No?” I sneer, stepping closer. “Could’ve fooled me. You were halfway out the door with them.”

She steps into my space, ice meeting fire, chin lifting until our foreheads almost clash. “And you were halfway to burning the building down. Maybe we both need to admit what we are before we start rewriting the script.”

The tether thrums between us, alive and merciless. I can’t breathe. Can’t stop.

I smirk, teeth bared. “What I am is the reason you’re still here.”

Her voice comes back like a whip. “And what I am is the reason you don’t get to pretend you own me.”

The air snaps—frost and flame colliding. The door yawns open behind us like a stage. My whole body aches to combust, to scream, to kiss her just to shut her up. Instead I stand there, trembling, glaring into those ice-chip eyes like we’re still rivals daring each other to break first.

The wards hum smug in the hallway, like they’re taking notes.

The air thickens, humming like it’s begging for a match. My magic snarls at its leash, desperate to break something. Anything.

I open my mouth to snap another barb—something sharp enough to wound, to push her back where it’s safer. Nothing comes. Just a hollow sound, a fracture in the fire.

And then it hits all at once. The what-ifs. Her smile aimed at strangers who weren’t strangers. Her laugh pitched wrong, drifting loose in poisoned water. Hands I didn’t recognize almost closing on her wrist. My chest knots, fire curling in on itself, too hot, too wild.

“I can’t—” The words shatter, catch on a sob I never permitted. I grit my teeth, furious, but they rip free anyway. “Gods, Cassie, I can’t stop worrying.”

Her arms cross tighter, braced like she’s waiting to be struck. “Mira—”

“No, listen to me.” My voice cracks, humiliating, jagged edges laid bare in the open doorway. “You don’t get it. If I lose you—” The fire in my throat tastes like blood. “If I lose you, it’ll break me in two. Worse than my mother ever has. Worse than anything Dominveil could do.”

Tears slip hot down my cheeks, betrayal with every drop. I want to claw them back, burn them off before she sees. But they keep coming. My body shakes, split down the middle.

“You think I want to be like this?” The words pour raw, sharp. “I hate it. I hate that my fire eats me alive when you’re in danger. I hate that I can’t breathe when you’re not—” My voice drops, splintering. “—when you’re not okay.”

Silence.

The tether hums too loud, too knowing. The house leans in, wards vibrating like smug witnesses.

Cassie doesn’t answer. She just looks. I can’t stand it—I wrench half away, scrubbing my sleeve hard across my face, desperate to erase the weakness.

Then she moves.

Her arms wrap fast, decisive, no hesitation. Stronger than I expect. My forehead collides with her shoulder, and she just holds me, grounding me. Her fingers thread into my hair—no tug, no tease. Just steady.

I collapse into it, half-sob, half-flame, too raw to fight anymore. “I’m sorry,” I gasp into her shoulder. “I didn’t want to—”

“Shh.” Her voice is low, fierce and gentle at once. “Don’t apologize.”

I shake my head against her, words still spilling. “I’m a mess. I don’t know how to do this without combusting. I don’t know how to stop—”

“Good.” She tips her head, cheek brushing my hair, anchoring me deeper. “Don’t stop. Not for me.”

The fight drains out of me like someone pulled a plug. Fire gutters low, leaving only her heat against mine. Solid. Unyielding. The first thing in hours that hasn’t shifted wrong.

My breathing staggers, hitches, then steadies against her. The tether steadies too, humming like it’s pleased we’ve finally remembered how to fit instead of fracture.

Her thumb brushes the back of my neck. Careful. Chosen. Cool against overheated skin.

“You terrify me too, Firefly,” she murmurs, words so close they vibrate against my temple. Her breath carries citrus and something sharper. “But I’d rather be terrified together than let either of us face it alone.”

The wards hum smug in the hall, but for once I don’t care. My fire flickers, my cheeks are wet, my chest split open—but Cassie is here. Arms around me, holding the pieces. Choosing to hold them.

And for the first time since the salt bath, since the hum, since that wrong-pitched laugh, I can breathe.

Her arms don’t let go. My fire’s stopped clawing, but the aftermath aches—like smoke lining my lungs.

I pull back a fraction, enough to breathe air that isn’t borrowed from her shoulder. My cheeks are blotched, eyes raw, and I hate that she’s seeing me like this—red, trembling, undignified. My fingers twitch for the ring; I spin it once, metal biting too warm against the soft skin inside my knuckle. Anchor. Distraction. Humiliation.

Cassie doesn’t flinch.

Her icy eyes track every tear like she’s memorizing them. Not mocking. Not weaponizing. Just looking. And it undoes me worse than silence.

“Stop staring,” I snap, voice cracked. “I already lost the argument. You don’t get to catalogue it for later.”

Her mouth quirks—not her cutting smirk, not the cafeteria twist that used to slice me open. Smaller. Sadder.

“You think I want to win?” she asks.

“Don’t you always?” I shoot back, too fast, too defensive. My chest still heaves in uneven bursts. The tether hums low, insistent, like it’s calling bullshit on both of us.

Cassie exhales through her nose. Then she does the thing that undoes me most: puts her hands on my face. Both palms, cool and steady, thumbs brushing the streaks I couldn’t wipe away fast enough. Nail polish and eucalyptus from the spa linger under her own vanilla musk.

“Gods, Firefly.” Her voice isn’t soft—it’s low, grounded. Stone underfoot. Ice that won’t crack. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

My pulse skitters. My ring clicks against my teeth before I realize I’ve dragged it to my mouth, a stim I can’t disguise. “Get what?”

“That you’re not the only one.”

Something in the air shifts.

I blink, stunned, because the words sound simple, but the tether thrums so hard it rattles my bones. “Not the only—”

Her thumbs press firmer, forcing my gaze to lock on hers. Clear. Unflinching. Blue like cut glass under moonlight—cold enough to slice, steady enough to hold.

“I love you too,” she says.

Not a whisper. Not poetry. Not hesitant. She says it like a fact already carved into the world, like I should’ve known all along.

My fire surges so fast the sconces gutter higher. My body goes taut, trembling with too much—shock, relief, rage at myself for doubting, terror I heard wrong, and something blazing so bright it hurts to look at.

“You—” The word cracks jagged. “You can’t just—”

“I can.” Her voice is firm. Unyielding as ice. “I just did.”

The tether pulses like a heartbeat, syncing to mine.

I stumble back half a step, then forward again, can’t decide if I need distance or more of her. Sparks spit through my veins, caught between combustion and collapse. My nails dig crescents into my palms. “You can’t drop it like that. Not when—not after—”

“Mira.”

One word, captain’s command. It pins me in place.

Her hands don’t leave my face. Her eyes don’t look away.

“I’m not saying it because you broke down,” she tells me. “Not because I pity you, or because you’re scared. I’m saying it because I’ve known it longer than I wanted to admit, and I’m done pretending it isn’t true.”

The breath knocks out of me like a punch.

I can’t think. Can’t breathe. Only stare at her while the fire tears me open from the inside. Every wall, every mask, every scalding joke—stripped under the weight of those words.

“You love me,” I whisper. Disbelief, prayer, blasphemy.

Cassie huffs the faintest laugh, sharp-edged. “Gods help me, yes. Infuriating, reckless, arson-brained you. I love you.”

My knees want to fold. My lungs want to scream. My heart wants to ignite.

I don’t know what my face is doing—I can’t feel it—but she smiles, small and fierce, like she reads it anyway.

The tether roars, alive and blazing, no longer content to hum. For one dizzy moment I think the whole house can hear it—maybe the whole Court. The wards hiss like they’ve been burned.

And maybe they have.

Because for the first time, this doesn’t feel like something Seara can leash. It feels like ours.

I don’t kiss her yet. Don’t even move. I just stand there, burning, unraveled. The girl I swore to outmaneuver, to hate, to never yield—standing in my room, hands on my face, eyes steady, telling me she loves me.

And gods help me, the world will never be the same.

Her voice flint-steady, my pulse wildfire: I love you too. The tether thrums like a live wire cinched around both our ribs, daring either of us to cut it.

I don’t remember who moves first. Maybe both of us. One heartbeat we’re staring; the next my back hits the dresser and her mouth claims mine like an argument she refuses to lose.

It isn’t soft. It isn’t careful. It’s a clash that tastes like salt, ozone, and the last of the spa’s lavender burned off our tongues.

I yank her closer by the tie she never bothers to retie correctly, and she laughs into my mouth, low and vicious—the sound that used to belong to our worst fights. Turns out it also belongs here.

We break only long enough to glare. She’s flushed, eyes icy and bright. “You infuriate me,” she says, breath jagged.

“Likewise,” I rasp, already reaching for her again.

We pull each other apart and back together like waves that don’t believe in shores. She drags me toward the bed; I drag her with me and shove her away just to watch her come back harder. Our rings—still glamoured to harmless stones—knock once, a silent bell. The tether sings louder. Everything in me answers.

There’s no choreography to it, just a starved recognition. Her hands claim my shoulders, my waist, the hinge of my jaw; mine memorize the line of her spine like a stolen map. The room smells like frost and smoke and something sweeter uncoiling from the place in me that finally stopped pretending.

We argue between kisses because of course we do.

“You don’t get to—” Cassie manages, and I catch her mouth mid-sentence like a challenge.

“—control you,” I finish against her lips, and her answering bite is delicate vengeance.

“Good girl,” she murmurs, dizzy and smug.

“Don’t you good girl me,” I growl, and kiss her until the smirk dies under my teeth.

The open door breathes behind us like a witness. A draft lifts the hall runner; somewhere a ward crackles in prissy disapproval. It needles at my skin until Cassie’s palm slides to the nape of my neck and presses, possessive and promising, and the rest of the house fades to a chorus I refuse to hear.

“Your mother,” she says between breaths, “is a tyrant.”

“Tell me something new,” I pant, and pull her down with me onto the bed.

The duvet—cruelly, perfectly smoothed—wrinkles under us, a small rebellion that sparks something mean and happy in my chest. She’s above me, then beside me, then both of us tangled, chasing the same inevitable center. My magic scrapes at my edges, desperate; I leash it with Tharion’s breathing counts.

She kisses me like she’s testing the word mine for tensile strength, and I give it back, piece for piece. Proof traded until my mouth aches, until the corners of my eyes sting, until the only thing that exists is the push-pull of her and the stupid door that won’t shut.

“Gods, the ward,” Cassie snaps, tearing away just long enough to glare past me. “I hate your house.”

“I hate my house more,” I gasp, and because I can’t torch the door without starting an international incident, I grab her wrist, press her hand flat to my chest, and make the tether sing under her palm. “Let it listen.”

She blinks, then smirks—the captain’s focus narrowing, mean little smile that means oh, we’re doing this on purpose. “Then make it regret eavesdropping.”

“Already on it,” I say, and kiss her harder, until my name rips out of her like a curse and a prayer in one syllable.

We go further than we ever have, but not farther than I’ll allow with the door open. Intensity shaped into restraint; want tightened down to a wire. Clothes stay on, mostly. It doesn’t matter. Every inch is revelation. Her thigh against mine, the exact hitch of her breath when I trace the hinge of her jaw, the small sound she makes when I mouth the corner of her smile—turns out my favorite luxury is data, and she’s handing me all of it.

“Firefly,” she whispers, more warning than endearment.

“I know,” I whisper back, forehead to hers, biting back the urge to bruise her shoulder where the house could see. “I know.”

We pause because we have to, not because we want to. The door steals courage with every draft. The wards hum smug as chaperones. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine another world where the door is shut, the springs sing, the water loves us both—but imagination is a dangerous drug. Tonight I stay sober.

Cassie kisses the corner of my mouth, gentle edged in feral. “Say it again,” she orders, because of course she does.

“I love you,” I breathe.

Her icy eyes flash—relief, triumph, something soft she’ll deny later. “Good,” she says, and the word brands me whole.

We find a rhythm—kiss, laugh when we shouldn’t, curse the door, kiss again like we can make vows out of friction. My hands tremble less. Her mouth grows hungrier. My magic claws harder. I keep counting. Five in. Seven out. The bed creaks once like it’s choosing sides.

She breaks away only to press a palm to my heart. The tether presses back, pleased. “We can stop,” she says, and she looks like she’ll hate me if I say yes and hate me if I say no and love me either way.

“We won’t,” I admit, raw. “But we can.” And then, because the house doesn’t deserve it but I do, I add, “When the door closes—on our birthday—we go to the springs. A real first time. No witnesses.”

Something in her face melts and sharpens at once. “That’s eight months away,” she groans.

“I know.” My laugh is half a growl. “Fuck, I don’t know how we won’t combust.”

Her mouth twists, furious and helpless. “Me either. But we wait.”

We kiss again, softer now, teeth still gritted at Seara’s leash. My fire aches in my ribs, hers pressed steady against mine. Eight months feels like forever.