Chapter 1: A Deal in the Dark
The door didn’t just open—it exploded. Splinters of reinforced oak and twisted metal hinges rocketed into the dim room ahead of her. Lyric came through the smoke and debris in a low crouch, silver stake a fluid extension of her arm, grey eyes scanning for movement.
Her boot crushed a discarded wine glass. The sound was obscenely loud in the sudden quiet.
She’d expected chaos. Snarling faces, a rush of feral bodies, the hot reek of hunting pack. She’d prepped for it, mentally counting her remaining blades, the vials of holy water sewn into her coat lining.
This was not that.
The air was thick, warm. It hummed with a low, bass note from hidden speakers and smelled of aged port, melted beeswax, and beneath it all, the clean, sharp scent of iron. Blood, but not the spilled-kind. The curated kind.
Candlelight flickered from a hundred sconces, their light swallowed and then spat back by the obsidian mirrors lining the walls. In them, her reflection was fractured a dozen times: a small, sharp-faced woman with cropped pale hair and a scar that drew a ragged, shiny line from temple to jaw. She looked exactly like what she was: a wound dressed in leather and rage.
“You could have knocked.”
The voice was a smoke curl, languid and old-world. It came from the room’s only piece of furniture—a throne, really—a sprawl of black velvet and dark wood on a shallow dais.
On it lounged Cassia.
She was barefoot, one leg curled beneath her, a stemless crystal glass loose in her fingers. Long ink-black hair fell over a shoulder of raw silk the color of a bruise. Her eyes, pale amber, caught the candlelight and seemed to generate their own.
Lyric didn’t lower the stake. Her muscles screamed, taut from the adrenaline surge with nowhere to go. This was wrong. This was a trap dressed as a salon.
“Where are they?” Lyric’s voice was gravel, unused for hours.
“Who, darling?” Cassia took a sip. The liquid in her glass was deep, opaque crimson. “The little ones? I gave them the night off. They’re so… noisy when I have company.”
“I’m not company.”
“No,” Cassia agreed, her gaze traveling over Lyric’s scar, her worn gear, the steady hand holding the silver. “You are a monument to disappointment. You came here for a massacre and found a conversation. It must be devastating.”
Lyric took a step forward. The floor was warm wood. “I came for the blood dealer. Cassia.”
“And you have her.” Cassia spread her free hand, a concession. “Though I prefer ‘sommelier.’ The term ‘dealer’ is so… transactional.” She tilted her head. “You’re Lyric. The hunter who works alone. The one with the scar. They say you leave a trail of ash and unanswered questions.”
“They talk too much.”
“Vampires do. It’s the eternity. It breeds gossip.” Cassia unfolded herself, rising with a serpentine grace that made Lyric’s finger tighten on the stake. She was taller than she’d looked sitting down. She drifted to a low table, not turning her back, and poured a second glass from a carafe. She held it out. “A drink. Before you try the inevitable, doomed thing with the pointy stick.”
“I don’t drink with your kind.”
“My ‘kind’ didn’t give you that,” Cassia said, her eyes lingering on Lyric’s scar. It tingled under the gaze, a phantom burn. “A werewolf, perhaps? The claws are usually messier. A demon? They lack poetry. No… that was fire and fury. That was personal.”
Lyric said nothing. The silence stretched, filled only by the thrum of the bass.
“I know who did it,” Cassia said, so softly it was almost part of the music.
The room constricted. The air vanished from Lyric’s lungs. “Liar.”
“A name,” Cassia continued, as if Lyric hadn’t spoken. She swirled the blood in her glass. “Appearance. Feeding grounds. The song he whistles when he’s hunting. I have it all. It’s not even a secret. Just information. Our world is small, Lyric. Monsters are terrible at keeping each other’s secrets.”
Every cell in Lyric’s body vibrated with a single need. Years of dead ends, of false leads, of waking up sweating with the smell of her own burning hair in her nostrils. It was a hook in her chest, and Cassia held the line.
“What’s the price?” Lyric hated the way her voice sounded—striped raw, hopeful.
Cassia smiled. It wasn’t cruel. It was something worse: fascinated. “One night. Here. With me.”
“I’d rather burn.”
“That’s already been arranged,” Cassia nodded at the scar. “This is different. You give me the night. Not your life, not your soul. Just the hours between now and sunrise. You… submit. To my hospitality. No stakes, no holy water, no questions of morality. You lay down your armor and your story, and you simply… be.”
Lyric barked a laugh, a harsh, broken sound. “You want me to be your pet for a night?”
“I want you to be a person for a night,” Cassia corrected. “The person underneath the vengeance. I’m curious about her. I want to see if she still exists. In return, at dawn, I give you the name. And you walk out, and you go kill him, and you become entirely uninteresting to me forever after.” She took a slow sip. “Or you can try to kill me now. You might even succeed. And the name dies with me, and you go back to scratching at shadows for another decade. Your choice, hunter.”
It was a game. It had to be a game. A vampire’s sadistic, twisting game. Submit. The word was a poison. Lyric thought of the countless monsters she’d ended, the way they begged or snarled but always fought. Submission was a fate worse than ash.
But the name…
The name was the only thing she’d ever wanted.
Cassia watched the war play out on Lyric’s face. She didn’t gloat. She just waited, a dark planet exerting its gravity.
Slowly, aching with the shame of it, Lyric let her arm drop. The silver stake pointed at the floor. It felt like surrendering a limb.
Cassia’s amber eyes glowed. “Good.” She set the second glass down on the edge of the dais. “The drink is a formality. A symbol of the truce. You don’t have to drink it. But you do have to sit.”
Lyric moved as if the air had turned to resin. Each step toward the velvet throne was an act of self-betrayal. She stopped before the dais, looking at the offered glass. Up close, the blood smelled specific. O-negative. Spiced with something like rosemary or memory.
She didn’t pick it up. She sat on the edge of the dais, her back to Cassia, putting the throne at her shoulder. It was the closest to submission she could manage. The leather of her pants creaked in the quiet. She stared at the fractured versions of herself in the black mirrors—a hundred scarred girls, all looking lost.
She felt the brush of silk against her arm. Cassia had settled back onto the throne, close but not touching. The vampire’s scent was different up close: cold stone, antique paper, a hint of ozone before a storm.
“Now,” Cassia murmured, her voice a low vibration in the shared air. “We wait for the sun. Tell me, Lyric… what do you do when you’re not hunting? What soothes the savaged thing inside you?”
Lyric stared at her own hard eyes in the glass. The truth was nothing. The truth was sharpening blades and running until her mind went blank. The truth was a hollowed-out place where a life used to be.
“I don’t,” she said.
Cassia’s smile was a ghost in the reflection. “Then tonight will be very long indeed. Or perhaps, very, very short.”
Outside, in the world of the living, the night deepened. In the nest of velvet and shadow, the real hunt had just begun, and the predator, for the first time, had no weapons but the truth. Lyric felt the name hovering in the space between them, a key she’d sell her soul to touch. Dawn was an eternity away.
Dawn was an eternity away. The silence between them wasn’t empty; it was thick, charged, like the air before a lightning strike. Lyric could feel the weight of Cassia’s gaze on the back of her neck, a physical pressure. Her scar itched, a phantom reminder of fire and teeth. She stared at the black mirrors, at her own shattered reflection, and wondered if the woman in there—the one with the dead eyes—was who she’d been bargaining for.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Cassia said. Her voice was closer. Lyric hadn’t heard her move. “It’s all clatter and clash in there. Like a junkyard in a storm.”
“What do you want me to think about?” Lyric’s words were grit, ground out.
“Nothing. That’s the point. Try it. Think of the wall. The grain of the wood. The way the candlelight swims in the blood in that glass you’re too proud to touch.” A pause. “Or keep gnawing on your own bones. It’s your night to waste.”
Lyric’s jaw tightened. She focused on the glass. The blood was so dark it was almost black, clinging to the crystal’s curve. She imagined the heat of it, the salt, the life. Her stomach turned, but not from disgust. From a hollow, yawning hunger that had nothing to do with food. She was always hungry now. For justice, for an end, for a single moment where she wasn’t carved open by memory.
“Why this?” Lyric asked, the question tearing itself from her. “Why not just tell me the name for a price? Gold? A favor? Another vampire’s head?”
Cassia’s sigh was a whisper of silk. “Because gold is dull. Favours are tedious. And heads… I have a freezer full of heads, darling. They make poor conversation.” She shifted, and Lyric felt the cool displacement of air. “I deal in blood, but I collect curiosities. And you… you are a walking monument to a single moment. I want to see what happens when the monument tries to be a woman again.”
“I am a woman.”
“Are you?” Cassia’s finger touched the leather strap over Lyric’s shoulder. The contact was electric, cold through the material. Lyric flinched. “You’re a weapon. A plot. A vengeance algorithm wrapped in skin. When was the last time you felt something that didn’t fuel the hunt? When was the last time you were touched without intention to kill or be killed?”
Lyric’s breath hitched. The memory surfaced, unbidden: a sun-dappled porch, her mother’s hand on her hair, the smell of lavender. A lifetime ago. Before the smoke. She shoved it down, a corpse in a mental shallow grave.
“Fuck you.”
Cassia laughed, low and rich. “That’s the idea, eventually. But we have time.” The finger trailed away. “Tell me about the scar. Not how you got it. How it feels. Now. In this quiet room.”
No one had ever asked that. They saw it, they pitied or they feared, but no one asked. Lyric’s throat closed. The scar was tight, always tight, a leather strap glued to her face. In the cold, it ached. In the heat, it pulsed. Sometimes, in the dead of night, she swore she could still smell her own flesh cooking.
“It’s tight,” she whispered, hates herself for answering.
“Like a reminder.”
“Like a cage.”
Cassia was silent for a long moment. “Yes,” she finally said, and the word was filled with a understanding that felt more violating than any mockery. “The best cages are the ones we carry.”
Lyric couldn’t stand it. The proximity, the probing, the way this creature was peeling her open without a single drop of blood being spilled. She was a fortress, and Cassia was seeping through the cracks like fog. The stake in her hand felt foolish, childish. The real weapon here was patience, and Cassia had centuries of it.
LYRIC TURNS TO FACE HER.
The movement was sudden, a violent twisting of her torso on the dais. Leather creaked. Her knee jammed into the velvet of the throne. Now she was looking directly into those amber eyes, close enough to see the flecks of gold swimming in the pale iris. Cassia didn’t retreat. She leaned into the intimacy, a faint, enigmatic smile on her lips. Her features were sharp, elegant, devoid of the inhuman hunger Lyric was used to seeing. This was something else. A predator at leisure.
“What do you want from me?” Lyric snarled, her voice raw. “You want me to break? To cry? To thank you for this fucked-up therapy session? I’m here for a name. That’s all.”
“I want you to stop hiding from it,” Cassia said softly. Her gaze dropped to Lyric’s mouth, then back to her eyes. “The hunger. The one that isn’t for revenge. It’s in you, coiled right under the rage. I can smell it. Loneliness has a scent, you know. Sharp and green, like crushed stems.”
Lyric’s heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. “You don’t know me.”
“I know the shape of the hole inside you. It’s a familiar shape. I’ve seen it in mirrors for three hundred years.” Cassia’s hand came up, slow, giving Lyric every chance to pull away. Her fingertips hovered beside the jagged line on Lyric’s cheek. “May I?”
It was a question. A choice. In that moment, it was the most terrifying thing Cassia had done. Lyric, who had faced down fangs and claws without a flinch, froze. Every instinct screamed to bat the hand away, to lunge, to fight. But the name hung between them, a talisman. And beneath that, a darker, weaker part of her was curious. What would it feel like? A touch without pain?
She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
Cassia’s touch was cold. Not the cold of death, but of marble in a shaded room. Her fingers traced the scar from temple to jaw, a feather-light exploration. Lyric shuddered. It wasn’t pain. It was a sensation so foreign it short-circuited her brain: pure, neutral contact. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second.
“See?” Cassia murmured. “The cage has a door.”
When Lyric opened her eyes, Cassia was closer. Her breath was cool, smelling of distant spices and that dark wine. “The night doesn’t have to be a prison sentence,” Cassia said. “It can be a ceasefire. A blank space. Let me give you that. Let me quiet the junkyard.”
Lyric’s resolve was crumbling, and she hated it. She grabbed Cassia’s wrist, tight, stopping the movement. “And then the name.”
“And then the name. At dawn. I swear it on the blood that I don’t have.” A smile. “A vampire’s oath is worth more than a human’s. We have longer to regret breaking them.”
Lyric searched her face for deception. All she saw was a vast, calm curiosity. She let go of the wrist. Her hand, she realized, was shaking. She balled it into a fist.
Cassia took it as invitation. She leaned in, closing the last inch of space. Her lips brushed Lyric’s—a ghost of a kiss, cold and soft. Lyric stiffened, a statue under the touch. It had been years since anyone kissed her. Decades since she wanted them to. Her body was a stranger, reporting sensations from a distant land: the cool silk of Cassia’s hair against her cheek, the faint pressure, the shocking intimacy of it.
Cassia pulled back, just enough to speak against her mouth. “Breathe, hunter. You’re not dying tonight.”
“Aren’t I?” Lyric’s voice was a broken thing.
“Not by my hand.” Cassia kissed her again, less chaste this time. Her tongue traced the seam of Lyric’s lips, seeking entry. Lyric’s control snapped. A dam broke inside her, a flood of something hot and desperate and shameful. She opened her mouth with a low gasp, and let Cassia in.
The kiss deepened, turned raw. Lyric’s hands came up, tangled in Cassia’s black hair, pulling her closer. It was not tender. It was a collision. Teeth clacked. Lyric tasted blood—her own, from a split lip. The metallic tang mixed with Cassia’s cool, spice-laden flavor. She was consuming and being consumed. Her body arching into Cassia’s of its own volition, seeking contact, seeking friction, seeking to forget.
Cassia’s hands were everywhere, efficient and sure. She found the buckle of Lyric’s tactical harness, flicked it open. The leather straps loosened, sloughing away with a series of soft thuds onto the dais. Lyric felt exposed, vulnerable, her worn black tunic the only barrier left. Cassia’s palms slid under the material, over the planes of Lyric’s stomach, up her ribs. Her skin was littered with other scars—a bite on her shoulder, a burn on her side, a long thin line from a knife. Cassia mapped them all, her touch neither reverent nor repulsed. It was archival.
“So many stories,” Cassia breathed between kisses that moved to Lyric’s jaw, her throat. “So much violence held in this skin.”
Lyric was drowning in sensation. Her brain had shut off. There was only the cold mouth on her throat, the hands on her skin, the aching, empty need between her legs. She fumbled with the fastenings of Cassia’s silk robe, her fingers clumsy. Cassia helped her, shrugging the material off her shoulders. Underneath, she was bare, pale skin gleaming in the candlelight. Her body was a lesson in timeless anatomy, slim, strong, her breasts small with dark nipples already peaked.
Lyric stared, her mouth dry. She’d seen bodies, but never like this, offered not as meat but as a deliberate sacrament. Cassia took Lyric’s hand, placed it on her own breast. The skin was cool, the nipple a hard bead against Lyric’s palm.
“Feel,” Cassia commanded softly. “I’m real. This is real. This night is real.”
Lyric squeezed, a rough, untutored gesture. Cassia’s breath hitched, a tiny inhalation that was profoundly satisfying. Power shifted, blurred. Lyric surged forward, pushing Cassia back against the piled velvet of the throne. She straddled her, the rough material of her pants against Cassia’s thighs. She kissed her again, biting her lower lip, claiming her mouth with a desperation that felt like rage.
Cassia yielded, then took control. She rolled them, reversing their positions with effortless strength, pinning Lyric beneath her on the soft throne. Lyric fought for a second, a reflex, then went still, looking up at the vampire framed by flickering light.
“My turn,” Cassia said, and her eyes held a dark promise.
She made quick work of Lyric’s tunic, tearing the cheap cotton in a sharp rip that echoed in the room. Lyric lay bare from the waist up, her small breasts, her wiry frame,
She made quick work of Lyric’s tunic, tearing the cheap cotton in a sharp rip that echoed in the room. Lyric lay bare from the waist up, her small breasts, her wiry frame, a canvas of old violence under the candlelight. Cassia didn’t pounce. She went still, her amber eyes drinking in the topography of damage.
A long, silvery slash across the ribs. A puckered puncture on the shoulder. A burn, smaller than the one on her face, on the soft skin just above her hip. Cassia’s gaze was a physical weight, colder than the air.
“Fuck,” Lyric breathed out, the word shaky. She wanted to cover herself. The instinct was ancient, human. She forced her arms to stay at her sides, palms pressed into the velvet. Showing her body in a fight was one thing. This was an inspection.
CASSIA'S FINGERS TRACE.
They start at the collarbone, a light, almost clinical touch. They follow the silvery slash, dipping into the shallow valley where a werewolf’s claw had grated on bone. Lyric shivers. It doesn’t hurt. That’s the weirdest part. It feels like being read.
“This one was close,” Cassia murmurs, her thumb pressing gently on the raised line. “An inch deeper, and your lung would have filled with blood on the pavement. You were lucky.”
“I was fast,” Lyric corrects, her voice tight.
Cassia’s fingers move to the puncture on her shoulder. A vampire’s fang, but a young one, messy. “And this one? You let them get this close?”
Lyric’s jaw works. “He had my partner pinned. It was a distraction.”
“Ah.” Cassia’s finger circles the scar. “Altruism. How unusual.” Her touch drifts lower, over the quivering muscle of Lyric’s stomach, to the small, shiny burn. “And this?”
“Holy water. My own. Bottle broke in my belt.”
Cassia laughs, a genuine, surprised sound. “You branded yourself with your own weapon. There’s poetry in that.” Her hand spreads, cold and encompassing, over Lyric’s lower belly. Lyric’s muscles jump. “And here,” Cassia says, her voice dropping to a hypnotic murmur. “Nothing. Just smooth, hot skin. The epicenter. Where all that fury lives, twitching and empty.”
Lyric can’t speak. Her breath is coming in short, sharp pants. The cold hand on her stomach is an anchor, holding her to the bed of velvet while the rest of her feels like it’s spinning away. Cassia leans down, her black hair curtains their faces. She doesn’t kiss her. She presses her lips to the scar on Lyric’s ribs.
Lyric gasps. The sensation is impossible—a kiss on a place that has only ever known pain. It’s a re-wiring. Cassia’s mouth moves slowly, following the scar’s path with a reverence that feels like a mockery and a sacrament all at once. Her tongue flicks out, tasting the old wound.
“You taste like salt,” Cassia whispers against her skin. “And oblivion.”
Lyric’s hands fly up, tangling in Cassia’s hair again. Not to pull her away. To hold her there. “Stop talking,” Lyric grinds out. “Just… do what you’re going to do.”
Cassia looks up, her eyes glowing in the shadow. “What do you think I’m doing?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. Her mouth moves lower, over the tense plane of Lyric’s stomach. Her teeth graze the skin, not biting, just scraping. A promise. Lyric arches off the throne, a silent plea. Her hips are lifting, seeking friction, but Cassia denies her, holding her down with that cold, strong hand.
Cassia’s other hand makes quick work of Lyric’s pants, popping the button, dragging the zipper down in a rasp that sounds louder than the music. She yanks them and Lyric’s underwear down over her hips in one rough motion. Lyric kicks, helping to get them off her ankles, which are still tangled in her boots. She’s completely naked now, splayed on the black velvet, exposed in the flickering light.
Cassia sits back on her heels, between Lyric’s thighs, and just looks. Lyric feels the flush burn from her chest up to her cheeks. She’s wet. She can feel the slick heat between her legs, and she knows Cassia can smell it. The humiliation is a live wire, but it’s fused with a need so deep it drowns out everything else.
“Look at you,” Cassia says, her voice thick. “All that armor, gone. Just this. A heartbeat. A pulse.” She places her hands on the inside of Lyric’s thighs and pushes. Not hard, but inexorable. Lyric’s legs fall open wider, the cool air hitting her core, making her clench. “Do you want my mouth, hunter?”
Lyric squeezes her eyes shut. She nods, a frantic, jerky motion.
“Say it.”
“Fuck you.”
Cassia’s laugh is a dark ripple. “Wrong answer.” She leans forward again, but bypasses where Lyric is aching, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of her thigh instead. Her tongue laves the sensitive skin. Lyric whimpers. It’s agony. It’s not enough.
“Please.” The word is torn out of her, bloody and raw.
“Please, what?”
“Your mouth. Please. Just… fuck, just do it.”
Cassia shifts. “Since you asked so nicely.”
The first touch is a flat, slow stroke of her tongue from Lyric’s opening all the way up to her clit. Lyric cries out, her back bowing. It’s cold, so cold, and electric. It’s like being touched by lightning. Cassia doesn’t tease for long. She finds a rhythm, her tongue broad and firm, circling Lyric’s clit before plunging deep inside her. The contrast is insane—the cold, clever tongue fucking into her, the scrape of teeth a constant threat.
Lyric’s hands are fists in the velvet. Sounds are pouring out of her—guttural, broken moans that don’t sound like her voice. She’s babbling. “Yes—right there—fucking hell—"
Cassia moans against her, the vibration making Lyric see stars. The vampire’s hands are under her, gripping her ass, lifting her hips to get a better angle. She’s ravenous. She’s consuming her. Lyric feels the coiling tension, the familiar climb, but it’s different. There’s no fantasy, no mental escape. It’s all here, in this room, with this monster. Her thighs are trembling, clamping around Cassia’s head.
“I’m gonna—” she chokes out.
Cassia pulls off, leaving Lyric gasping on the edge. Her face is glistening. “Not yet,” she says, her voice husky. She crawls up Lyric’s body, her own naked skin sliding against Lyric’s. The full-body contact is a shock. Cold and hot, silk and scar tissue. Cassia kisses her, letting Lyric taste herself on Cassia’s tongue. It’s filthy. It’s profoundly intimate.
“I want to feel you come around me,” Cassia whispers into her mouth. She positions herself, one knee nudging Lyric’s legs wider. Lyric feels the blunt, cool pressure at her entrance. Not a cock. Something else. She looks down between their bodies.
Cassia is holding a smooth, dark obsidian phallus, glistening with Lyric’s wetness. It’s sizable, shaped with a slight curve.
“Where the hell did you get that?” Lyric rasps.
“A girl should never be without her toys,” Cassia smirks. She presses the tip against Lyric, rubbing it through her slick folds. “This is for you. So I can watch your face. So you can’t forget whose hand is on you.”
Before Lyric can process it, Cassia pushes forward.
The stretch is intense, breathtaking. The stone is unyielding, cold, filling her in a way that’s utterly foreign. Lyric’s mouth drops open in a silent cry. Cassia watches her, mesmerized, as she slides it deeper, until the base is snug against her. Cassia’s hand is on the hilt, her fingers curled around it, inside Lyric alongside the stone. The dual sensation is overwhelming.
“Oh God,” Lyric whimpers.
“No gods here,” Cassia says, and begins to move.
She fucks her with slow, deep, punishing strokes. Each drag of the cool stone inside her makes Lyric shudder. Cassia’s other hand is pinning Lyric’s hip to the throne, controlling the pace. She’s relentless. The wet, obscene sound of their joining fills the air, mixing with Lyric’s ragged breaths and the distant thrum of bass.
“Look at you,” Cassia grunts, her own breath coming faster now. “Taking it. All that fight, and you’re just a greedy, wet hole for me, aren’t you?”
The vulgarity sends another jolt through Lyric. She is. She’s mindless with it. Her hips are meeting each thrust, her nails digging into Cassia’s back, surely hard enough to draw blood if she were human. “Harder,” she begs, her voice broken.
Cassia obliges. Her thrusts become faster, harder, driving the air from Lyric’s lungs. The base of the toy grinds against her clit with every plunge. The cold inside her, the friction, the degrading words—it’s all crashing together, pulling a tidal wave of sensation from the depths of her.
“Cassia—” she warns, her body tightening.
“Come,” Cassia commands, her voice cracking like a whip. “Come for me, hunter. Show me what’s left of you.”
The orgasm detonates. It’s not a release; it’s an annihilation. White fire erupts behind her eyes, searing through every nerve ending. She screams, a raw, torn sound as her body convulses around the cold, hard intrusion, clenching and spasming. Cassia fucks her through it, prolonging the pulses until Lyric is sobbing, oversensitive, pushing weakly at her shoulders.
Cassia slows, then stills, buried deep inside her. She’s panting, her pale skin flushed with a faint, rosy hue. She looks… alive. Ravished. She pulls the toy out slowly, making Lyric gasp at the sudden emptiness. Cassia tosses it aside, where it lands on the wood floor with a definitive thud.
She collapses beside Lyric, on her back, both of them staring up at the shadowed ceiling. The candles gutter. Sweat and sex cool on Lyric’s skin. She feels hollowed out. Scooped clean. The junkyard in her mind is silent, just a flat, ringing quiet.
Minutes pass. The world comes back in fragments: the smell of wax and sex, the ache between her legs, the cold air on her wet skin.
“The name,” Lyric says finally. Her voice is wrecked.
“Patience,” Cassia says, not looking at her. “Dawn isn’t here.”
“You got what you wanted.”
“