BLOOD IN SILK

Washington D.C. slept beneath a veil of rain.

Inside the Darrow estate, the senator sat behind bulletproof glass, sipping brandy. Guards patrolled the perimeter, ears full of static, unaware that death had already slipped through their defenses like smoke.

Cassian Vale was no longer hiding in shadows.

He was the shadow.

And tonight, the reckoning had come.

---

Alina stood in the grand upstairs hallway, staring at the old portraits she used to walk by as a child. They looked back at her now with judgment, with silence. She was back in the house she once called home — summoned by her father after months of running.

He hadn't said why.

Only that it was time.

The same words she'd once heard before people were sentenced to disappear.

She didn't notice the power flicker outside.

Didn't see the red dot move across the marble floor, or the cameras blink to black.

But she felt something.

A chill down her spine.

A scent in the air she hadn't breathed since Sicily.

Cassian.

---

The first guard went down without a sound.

The second managed a whisper of breath before his windpipe collapsed.

Cassian moved like winter — precise, silent, merciless. A knife slid from his belt, catching only the dim light before it slipped between ribs.

He walked the corridor of the Darrow estate like a man who had already buried its owner in his mind.

Room by room, he erased the Senator's defenses.

Until there were only two people left inside.

The father.

And the traitor.

---

Senator Darrow stood when Cassian entered his office.

To his credit, he didn't look surprised.

"I was wondering how long it would take."

Cassian said nothing.

Just raised the gun — silencer attached — and shot him once in the shoulder. A warning.

The senator staggered, gasping.

"You could've had her," he coughed. "She loved you. Or whatever broken thing you think love is."

Cassian stepped forward, calm as death. "She used me."

Darrow's smile twisted. "She came back to me."

Cassian shot him in the leg.

"You made her into this," he said, voice like smoke and steel. "But I'll be the one who ends you."

The senator reached for the panic button.

Cassian was faster.

The final shot was through the heart.

Not for justice.

For silence.

---

Alina found the body first.

The office door was ajar. The smell of blood hit her before the sight did. Her breath caught as she stepped inside, heels sinking into thick carpet already stained dark.

Her father lay slumped against the desk, eyes still open in shock.

And across from him, standing tall and utterly unshaken —

Cassian Vale.

She froze.

He turned to her slowly, eyes devoid of emotion. No warmth. No rage.

Only ice.

"Hello, Little flame," he said.

The sound of that name broke something inside her.

---

They didn't speak on the drive.

She sat in the passenger seat like a ghost, hands stained with the past, heart thudding against ribs like it wanted to escape her chest.

Cassian didn't look at her once.

Didn't need to.

She could feel it — the hatred under his skin, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

She didn't ask where he was taking her.

Somehow, she already knew.

---

The room was small. Dim. Familiar.

A safehouse in the outskirts of New York — one she once escaped.

Now she was back.

Cassian opened the door, motioned her inside, and locked it behind her.

Alina stood in the center of the room, shivering. Not from cold. From him.

He stepped toward her — slow, deliberate.

"You killed him," she whispered.

"He deserved worse."

"And me?" she asked, voice trembling. "What do I deserve?"

Cassian's stare didn't soften.

"You'll find out."

She flinched. "You're going to kill me?"

He stopped inches from her.

"No."

Then his hand gripped her throat — not tight, not cruel, just enough to tilt her head back and look her in the eye.

"I'm going to remind you what it felt like to be mine," he said darkly. "So when I leave you again, you'll understand what you destroyed."

His mouth crashed against hers — nothing sweet, nothing kind. Just fire.

Alina gasped, tried to speak — then gave up.

Because her body remembered.

Even if her soul wanted to run.

Clothes vanished in seconds. She clawed at him as he lifted her onto the table, his grip bruising, desperate. His touch was punishment and possession, a war between hate and hunger.

She didn't beg.

Didn't stop him.

Because deep down, she wanted the same thing:

To burn.

His mouth found her neck, her chest, her hips. Every kiss was a scar. Every breath a curse.

And when they collapsed together — tangled, sweating, spent — neither spoke.

There were no I love yous.

No apologies.

Only the sound of his breathing, steady again for the first time since she left.

---

Later, when she reached out to touch him…

He turned away.

And slept with his back to her.

The message was clear:

She was no longer his flame.

Only ash.