Chapter 4

Wren's POV

The Ember Court crowds close together by nature, which means every walk home is a gauntlet of familiar faces already deciding what to think of me before I've reached them. I'm lucky in one respect Maison Bellerose and my apartment both sit near the outer edge of Court territory, well past the estates where anyone important bothers to live.

To the ranked families, the edge of things is exile. To me, it's the only breathing room I get. I've never minded sitting this close to the human world. Humans, in my experience, have shown me more decency in passing than most of my own kind have managed in a lifetime.

The Ember Court's roots go back further than the city itself, further than the country, honestly but numbers eventually beat power. Humans multiplied faster than anyone could fight, and the Court learned to fold itself into shadow rather than compete. Now we're bedtime stories, half-remembered superstition, nothing anyone takes seriously in daylight. And still the Court runs half the real machinery underneath this city quietly owns the docks, the old money, the political favors nobody can trace. My people take a strange pride in that invisible grip. I've never understood the appeal of ruling an empire you can't be decent inside of.

I dig my phone out one-handed, fingers unsteady, and call Odette. Nothing. She's one of maybe two people in this Court who look at me and see a person instead of a burden. I fire off a text and watch the screen for a reply that doesn't come, and a slow, cold dread settles into my stomach. There's only one option left. The healing house. Just the thought of it makes something in my chest curl inward.

I take the long way, cutting through the thick tree line at the edge of the property to avoid being seen by anyone with a reason to talk. Every step sends a fresh spike up through my arm. When I finally stop to check the burn under the makeshift bandage, my stomach drops. It isn't healing right. The skin at the center has gone a wrong, waxy color, and heat radiates off it that has nothing to do with the July night.

Shifters heal fast when they can shift at all. What that speed does to an infection, though, is the cruel side of the gift: it doesn't slow anything down, it accelerates it, turning a bad wound into a fever within hours.

I need Odette, and I need her now, because walking into the healing house alone means letting Court staff handle me with the same detached caution they'd use on something they'd rather not touch. Gloved hands. Sideways looks. I don't have the reserves tonight to survive being made small on top of everything else.

I check the phone again. Still nothing. My mind starts spinning through worse options the human pharmacy on Dauphine, gauze and antiseptic and nobody who knows what I am. I'm walking with my eyes down, halfway lost in that spiral, when I walk directly into something that doesn't move.

It's like colliding with a wall that decided to stand in the middle of a sidewalk. He barely rocks back on his heels. I go down hard, tailbone first, air punched clean out of my lungs. For a few seconds the whole world is just gray static at the edges.

"Hey are you all right? I didn't see you."

The voice lands somewhere above me, low and even. Before I even see him, his scent reaches me cedar smoke and rain on hot pavement, something underneath it that feels like standing too close to a fire. I crack one eye open despite my ribs protesting the movement, and find a man crouched over me with dark hair and eyes the exact color of storm-lit water.

He's absurd, honestly. I've been around good-looking shifters my whole life and none of them prepared me for this the clean, deliberate lines of his face, like someone had sculpted him with more care than the rest of us got. Somewhere between the pain and the concussion I probably have, my filter gives out entirely.

"Are you actually real?"

He blinks, leaning in like he misheard me. "Sorry?"

"You're unfairly good-looking," I mumble. "It's a little rude, honestly."

Color climbs up his throat, and he lets out a short, surprised laugh. "You must have hit your head harder than I thought."

He offers a hand, and when his fingers close around mine to pull me up, something runs up my arm that has nothing to do with the fall warm and sudden and entirely unwelcome given the state I'm in. I try to yank my hand back out of pure reflex, and the world tilts sideways for it.

He catches my shoulders before I can go down again. "Whoa easy."

Then the amusement drains right out of his face as he gets a proper look at me in the last of the daylight the swelling along my jaw, the blood dried into my hairline.

"What happened to you? Were you jumped?"

The question lands like cold water. Whatever spell his face had put me under breaks clean. I can feel the power sitting under his skin now that I'm paying attention not Court power, not anything I recognize from home. A stranger. Someone from outside our borders entirely.

I pull free, stumbling a step. "I'm fine. Sorry I wasn't paying attention. I hit my head on the way down, that's all."

I try to move past him and he steps into my path, faster than that should've been possible.

"I'm not letting you just walk off like this. Let me find you a healer."

His eyes are wide open with something I don't have a name for anymore not pity, not the performance of concern I get from Court staff. Something closer to alarm on my behalf. For one reckless second I want to tell him everything, all of it, right there on the sidewalk. Then I remember exactly what I am.

I press my mouth shut against the sting building behind my eyes. I know how this goes. The second he learns I've got no Ember, no name worth anything, that look will curdle into the same thing I see on Garrick's face. I don't think I can watch that happen on a face like his.

He doesn't let it go. His hand finds my wrist gently, and a low sound rumbles in his throat when his gaze drops to the bandage.

"Someone did this on purpose. Do you need help getting somewhere?"

Before I can pull away again, he's already seeing the dark lines spreading up from under the cloth.

"This is infected. Badly. You need a healer tonight, not tomorrow."

He digs a clean handkerchief from his jacket without waiting for permission and starts winding it around my hand, firm and careful.

"This'll keep it clean enough until we find someone."

I can barely get a full breath in. I watch his hands work, brow drawn in concentration, tying it off with the kind of easy competence that says he's done this before. He isn't rough the way every man I've grown up around is rough. There's a gentleness in it that feels almost dangerous, warmth spreading up my arm that has nothing to do with the burn. I've never once reacted to anyone like this in my life.

He looks up, voice steady. "Whoever did this needs to answer for it. This isn't something you walk away from."

I open my mouth to explain that people like me don't get to report anything, that there's no version of justice built for someone with my status. Then reality catches up with the moment and swallows it whole. I don't know this man. But I know exactly how my world works.

I pull my hand free, the white cloth stark against my skin. "I'm fine. Really. Please just let me go."

He reaches for me again and I don't wait around for it. I turn and force my legs into the fastest limp they can manage, my chest aching worse than my hand. He calls after me, confusion clear in his voice, and I break into an unsteady run instead of answering.

I can't let myself take what he's offering. If I let even a sliver of it in, the moment it gets taken back will be the thing that finally breaks me. I don't have anything left to spend on hope tonight.

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