Page 47 of The Madness Within

She found me.

Tonight, I’d let her dream.

Because when I confronted her… She wouldn’t just be documenting monsters.

She’d be sleeping beside one.

Chapter Eighteen

??The Rot Beneath the Smile

Dorian

I watched her on the security feed again.

She hadn’t touched the food. Hadn’t screamed. Just… stared at the far wall like it was whispering secrets I couldn’t hear.

She was always listening. Even in silence. Even now.

Ember Carr was a prisoner. But she didn’t look broken. She looked patient.

And that unnerved me more than any monster I’d gutted.

What the fuck was I going to do with her?

The question gnawed at me, sharp and constant, like teeth on tendon. I couldn’t let her go. Not yet. Not when Kreed was still out there. Not when she still hadn’t told me everything she knew.

Not when I hadn’t decided what she meant to me.

A soft knock echoed from the hall.

Cassian.

Of course.

I didn’t invite him. He never needed invitations.

He slipped into the study like smoke, already holding a glass of blood like he poured it from the sky. His hair was wet. His coat dark with something too thick to be rain. I turned off the monitors before he saw what secret lay upstairs.

"Lovely evening," he said, lounging into the chair across from mine, all elegance and teeth. “Still hunting the girl?”

I didn’t answer.

He smiled wider. “You always were bad at letting things go.”

“Say what you came to say, Cass.”

“I didn’t come to say anything.” He raised his glass in a mock toast. “Just checking in on an old friend and his very newobsession.”

The way he said it.Obsession.It coiled around the room like poison.

I leaned back in my chair. “You’ve been sniffing too close.”

“To her?” he asked, feigning innocence. “She smells like firewood and rage. Of course I’m curious.”

My jaw tensed.

Cassian took another sip, licking the blood from his lip. “She has bite. You like that, don’t you?”

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