The bar felt smaller now.
Maybe it was the bruise on Riley's ribs. Maybe it was the way Lucien wouldn't meet her eyes. Or maybe it was the silence—the kind that said too much without saying anything at all.
Riley stood just inside the door.
Lucien sat on the barstool she usually used, shoulders forward, hands clasped like he was praying to something long since done listening.
She didn't move toward him.
She dropped her bag by the door, slow and loud enough to be intentional.
Still, he didn't look up.
"I'm not going to ask why," she said finally.
Lucien's voice was rough. "About Dominic?"
"About any of it."
He nodded. Still didn't meet her eyes.
"But I am going to ask this," she continued. "Why did you let me stay?"
Lucien blinked.
"I walked into your bar with questions. With weapons. With a name someone planted in your journal like a curse. You could've run. Could've erased me. Could've bled me dry in an alley."
She took a step closer.
"You didn't."
Lucien's jaw moved. No words came.
"You didn't even warn me," she said, voice low. "Not really. You kept pouring drinks and dodging truths and hoping I'd... what? Leave? Break? Burn out?"
He looked at her now.
His expression wasn't defensive.
Just tired.
"I let you stay," he said quietly, "because I wanted someone to see me and not flinch."
Riley froze.
He stood then—slow, deliberate.
"Everyone flinches," he said. "Before they shoot. Before they run. Before they decide to save themselves."
She watched him, unreadable.
"I thought you might be different," he added.
"I am," she said. "But that doesn't mean I'm not dangerous."
He smiled, just barely. "I'm counting on that."
The back room smelled like iron.
Not strong, not fresh—just the faint, dull tang of old blood drying on cotton and gauze.
Riley peeled off her jacket slowly. Her ribs ached from the inside, a deep bruise beneath the skin and deeper still beneath the surface. She'd taken harder hits. But not from people who knew her name before she gave it.
She sat on the edge of the small couch, pulled her shirt up just enough to expose the side wound. Not deep. But messy.
Lucien appeared in the doorway a second later, a small black tin in his hands.
"Antiseptic," he said. "And something stronger."
She didn't reach for it.
He stepped closer.
Still, she didn't take it.
"Riley," he said, tone even.
"I've got it."
"You're bleeding."
"I'm supposed to be."
That made him pause.
She didn't meet his gaze. Just opened her own kit—slower, older, half-empty—and pulled out a roll of bandage like she was proving a point.
Lucien set the tin down on the table anyway.
"You think pain earns you clarity?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I think it earns me memory."
She cleaned the cut in silence. Flinched once. Didn't complain.
Lucien leaned against the wall, watching her, unreadable.
"You keep trying to survive yourself," she said after a long moment, not looking at him. "I think you stopped realizing how much damage you still do."
That landed.
Not like a slap.
Like a truth.
He didn't argue.
And she didn't press.
She wrapped the bandage cleanly, tied it off, then pulled her shirt back down with a wince she refused to let him see.
"Don't clean up the blood," she said, motioning to the couch cushion.
Lucien raised an eyebrow.
She stood, slow.
"I want to remember what it cost."
The front door opened without sound.
Riley and Lucien both turned.
Ashgrave stepped inside like he still had a key.
Same coat. Same perfectly polished boots. Same expression: detached, surgical, unimpressed by the emotional weight still hanging in the air.
He glanced once at Riley's wrapped side. Once at the bloodstain on the couch behind her.
Then straight at Lucien.
"No one died," he said. "Interesting."
Lucien didn't speak.
Riley did.
"You're late."
"I wasn't invited," Ashgrave replied. "Didn't think I needed to be."
He took a few steps farther in, inspecting the bar like it was an experiment mid-autopsy.
"You should've brought him when I asked," he said to Riley. "Now things are more complicated."
"Dominic wasn't part of the arrangement," she said.
Ashgrave didn't blink. "Dominic was a proof of concept."
Lucien's fists clenched at his sides.
Ashgrave looked at him again.
"You're not what she wanted anymore," he said. "You're unpredictable. Unstable. That makes you a liability."
"She?" Lucien asked.
Ashgrave smiled faintly. "Don't pretend you don't know who I answer to."
Riley stepped between them—not protectively. Deliberately.
Ashgrave shifted his attention to her.
"This is your last offer," he said. "Deliver him within forty-eight hours. Or we take him. Along with anyone who touches him."
"You threatening me?"
"No," Ashgrave said simply. "I'm reminding you."
He slid a folded slip of paper onto the bar.
Coordinates.
No context.
Just a time and place.
"Forty-eight hours," he repeated.
Then he turned and walked out.
No parting shot.
No raised voice.
Just silence where something sharp had passed through.
Lucien didn't speak after Ashgrave left.
He didn't have to.
Riley could see it in the way he moved—precise, quiet, like a man folding himself back into a suitcase he swore he'd buried.
She followed him into the bar's back room, where he was packing a small duffel with calm efficiency.
"You're leaving," she said.
"Yeah."
"You think that'll fix it?"
"No," Lucien said. "But I won't give him the satisfaction of using you to pull the trigger."
Riley stepped into his path.
He stopped.
"I didn't say I was going to," she said.
"You didn't say you wouldn't."
He looked down at her.
"I'm not worth it, Riley."
She folded her arms. "You don't get to decide that for me."
Lucien gave a faint, broken laugh. "You think I'm afraid of Ashgrave?"
"No," she said. "I think you're afraid of giving me a reason to choose him."
That landed.
Lucien looked away.
Riley kept going. "If you run, that's a choice too. If you stay and fight, it means you're still willing to be held accountable. But this?" She motioned to the bag. "This makes you a ghost. And I don't shoot ghosts. I bury them."
Lucien's hands tightened on the bag's straps.
"I'm trying to protect you."
"Stop," she said. "That's not what this is. You're trying to absolve yourself by stepping off the board."
Lucien didn't move.
Then she said, quieter, "If you go, you make it easier for Ashgrave to be right."
He looked at her again, finally.
Eyes like a storm that never broke.
"You really think this ends with mercy?" he asked.
Riley's voice was steady.
"I don't believe in mercy."
She turned to leave.
At the door, she paused and added—
"But I do believe in consequences."
The ruins groaned under Lucien's weight as he stepped through the scorched shell of the Crimson Room.
Ash still dusted the floor like snowfall that never melted.
He moved without a flashlight.
He didn't need it.
He knew every wall. Every hidden door. Every bloodstained corner memory refused to let him forget.
The fire had gutted most of it—but not all.
He passed through what had once been the tasting room, down into the old archive corridor. The walls were still blackened, but the steel vault remained intact. No flames had touched it. Not even time.
Lucien reached beneath a slab of collapsed ceiling and pulled free a narrow black case—sealed in protective resin. The kind Juno used for things she wanted preserved, not found.
He opened it.
Inside: a single white envelope.
No name on the front.
But when he turned it over…
RILEY VOSS
Written in Juno's hand.
Lucien stared at it for a long moment.
He considered burning it.
He considered opening it.
He did neither.
Instead, he put it back in the case. Sealed it. Tucked it beneath his coat.
Then stood there for several long seconds, listening to the silence.
This wasn't a message meant for him.
But it told him everything he needed to know.
Riley wasn't just sent.
She was shaped.
And Juno had been waiting a long time for her to find the right vampire