Not to strategy.
Not to the blood drying dark along my forearms.
It slides downward instead, down the hall, past reinforced doors and concrete corridors, to a single locked room I haven’t stopped tracking since the moment we got back.
Roxy.
The shift is subtle but absolute, like a compass needle snapping into place. The battle still hums in my veins, adrenaline and the savage satisfaction of victory burning hot enough that the last traces of ice have melted from my skin, replaced by a warmth I haven’t carried since before the curse took hold. It makes the blood on my hands suddenly feel heavier. More conspicuous.
I turn, and a few of the brothers notice my flame in its crystal dome flickering with a brighter intensity as I walk past it. Scar’s gaze flicks to me, sharp and knowing, while Ruckus lets out a low chuckle. “Well…” he murmurs, just loud enough to carry, “… that answers that.”
I don’t respond. I don’t slow. I just keep moving, letting the long corridor swallow me whole, concrete and steel pressing in as my bare feet thump against the cold floor.
One door passes.
Then another.
Then a third.
With every step deeper into the secluded wing, the noise of the clubhouse bleeds away behind me, laughter fading into distant echoes, replaced by something tighter, quieter, charged with a tension that feels far more dangerous than any fight.
Concern.
Her door opens under my touch without resistance, the locks disengaging with a series of soft clicks I barely register. My focus snags instead on the blood coating my hands, my arms,not mine, but enough of it to paint a picture of violence that would terrify most humans before they understood what they were seeing.
I should clean up first.
But I don’t.
Because the only thing that matters now is making sure Roxy is still standing.
She is sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed in the clothes she wore that morning, her hands wrapped around a mug that’s gone cold hours ago. It’s been untouched long enough for a thin film to form across the surface.
Her eyes lift the moment I cross the threshold and shift to my face first.
Then they drop.
To my hands.
My arms.
The dark stains smeared across my arms and throat.
She’s on her feet before the mug hits the nightstand.
It lands with a soft clink she doesn’t seem to hear as she crosses the room with quick, urgent steps, hands already reaching for me like her body decided before her mind caught up. She stops short of touching at the last second, breath hitching as she takes in the blood up close, fingers hovering near my chest as if afraid to press and confirm what she’s seeing. “R-Raze…” Her voice catches. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s not mine. Well, a little bit is, but not the majority of it,” I say immediately. The words come out blunt because whatever this moment becomes, I won’t let it start with a lie.
The relief that flickers across her face is brief, almost imperceptible, but it’s there, and it hits harder than it should.
Her gaze snaps back to my face. “Then whose is it?”
I don’t answer right away.
The battle is still humming under my skin, adrenaline, ice, and satisfaction tangled together in a way I haven’t fully unwound yet. I’m acutely aware of how close she is now, of the way the room seems to shrink around us, leaving nowhere for that energy to bleed off. The silence stretches just long enough for her to understand what the hesitation means.
“Roxy,” I say finally, my voice low. “I did what needed doing. I reminded them who the Kings are.”