BLOOD IN SILK

The morning crept in through the cracks of the safehouse.

Thin, grey light cut across the room like a blade. It fell on the table, the broken glass, the bruises on her thighs — and the space between them, wide as an ocean.

Alina opened her eyes slowly.

Cassian hadn't moved.

He lay with his back to her, sheets low on his waist, the curve of his spine tense and unforgiving. Not sleeping. Just… silent. Like a corpse waiting to rise again.

She reached out — barely — fingers hovering above the line of his shoulder.

But she didn't touch him.

She already knew the rules had changed.

And so had he.

---

When he finally stood, the cold air rushed in with him.

Cassian didn't speak.

Didn't glance her way.

He dressed in silence — black shirt, dark slacks, gun holster strapped on like ritual. His movements were efficient. Controlled.

A soldier after the war.

Alina sat up, pulling the sheet around her as if it could shield her from the void sitting across the room.

Last night haunted her in fragments — the way he'd touched her, taken her, not like a lover but like a punishment. Her lips were still raw. Her skin still burned.

But her soul? Her soul felt… scraped clean.

He hadn't come back for love.

He came back to leave a scar.

And God, he had left it deep.

---

"Where are we going?" she asked quietly.

Cassian didn't respond.

"Cassian."

His voice was low. Flat. "Get dressed."

That was all.

She stood, slowly, wrapping the blanket around herself. "Are you going to keep me locked away again?"

He didn't blink. "You were safer in a cage than in your father's house."

She flinched. "He's dead. You saw to that."

"And yet," he said coldly, "you still wear the same face when you lie."

---

They drove in silence for an hour, winding through a back road that stretched like a vein into the wilderness. No traffic. No signs. No escape.

Alina stared at the trees blurring past her window.

"So what now?" she asked.

"You live," he said.

"But not free?"

His jaw ticked. "Freedom is a myth."

She turned to him. "You came back for me."

"No," he said. "I came to finish something."

Alina's breath caught. "And now that it's finished?"

His grip on the wheel tightened. "Now you get to live with what you did."

---

The cabin was old. Remote. The kind of place people went to vanish.

Cassian opened the door and motioned her in without a word.

Inside, it was barren — a cot, a small fireplace, and a lock on the outside of the door.

Not prison.

But close enough.

He set a bag down — clothes, food, a burner phone — then turned to leave.

Alina stood in his path. "That's it?"

He looked at her like she wasn't even real. "You got what you wanted. You're not dead."

"And you?" she whispered.

"What about me?"

"Do I mean nothing now?"

He stepped closer. Too close.

"You meant everything," he said. "Until you turned it into a weapon."

His voice was a blade.

"You don't get to ask about meaning anymore, Alina. Not when you looked me in the eye and sold me to the man who wanted me dead."

"I didn't—"

"You did," he snapped. "You looked me in the eye and chose survival over loyalty."

Her throat closed.

Tears burned.

He stepped back, calm again. "You wanted freedom. So here it is. Rot in it."

---

That night, she lay on the cot, staring at the cracked ceiling.

No chains. No guards.

But the silence was worse than captivity.

Her body ached from him. Her mind burned with guilt.

And her heart?

It beat for a man who no longer existed.

Cassian Vale had buried her once.

Now he was burying himself.

---

Somewhere far off, in another part of the city, Cassian sat in a dark room watching a screen flicker with surveillance feeds.

Alina. Alone.

Caged again — not by walls, but by regret.

Luca entered quietly.

"She hasn't moved," he said. "Didn't eat."

Cassian didn't respond.

Luca hesitated. "We don't have to keep her alive, you know. There are other ways to hurt a senator's legacy."

Cassian's gaze didn't move from the screen. "She's not Darrow's legacy."

Luca tilted his head. "No?"

"She's mine," Cassian said quietly. "The last part of me I haven't destroyed."

Luca frowned. "And what are you planning to do with her?"

Cassian's smile was cold. Hollow. "Watch her remember."

"Remember what?"

"What it's like to lose everything you thought you could use."

---

The next morning, when Alina opened the cabin door, she found a letter on the step.

A single line, written in Cassian's hand:

"Ashes don't speak. They just wait to be scattered."

She clutched the page to her chest, shaking.

Not from fear.

From the realization that she had never been free.

Not from him.

Not from what she had become.

And maybe she never would be.