Except the truth was so much worse. I was wanted for what I could do and not for who I was, that nobody stays out ofthe kindness of their heart. Turned out it went deeper than I'd guessed. I hadn't just been used for a function. I'd been made for one. Built to a spec, by the one person who was supposed to want me for no reason at all.
It made me wonder about the bonds. About Trux, Seph, Rhiot, Grayson, Kearan, and Ryker choosing me. Whether any of it was real, or whether I'd been engineered to draw exactly the plan had called for.
I went to the mirror. Same face. Same body. Same person who'd learned early that the world would break her if she let it.
I should have been angrier at her than I was. Part of me was. She'd made me for a job and then died before she could say so, left me to hear it from Zandia of all people. But under the anger was something quieter and worse, the understanding that she'd done it because she loved Ro enough to spend her own daughter on saving him. I didn't know yet whether that made it better or worse. I hated all of it.
My hands were still shaking, and I watched them do it with the detachment of someone observing her own body react. It didn't mean I was going to break. It meant I understood what I was agreeing to. And underneath all of it sat the question I couldn't answer yet, whether my willingness to pull the demon out of Ro was love or just the design switching on.
I was going to do it, anyway. Walk toward him with the dagger, sever the connection, become the conduit, carry it through me, and hope I came out the far side with enough of myself left to ask who had arranged all of this and why they'd needed me to be the one to fix it. Because the alternative was leaving my father trapped in his own body while a demon wore him. Because saving people was the thing I did, even when it cost me everything. Apparently.
I just hadn't known, until tonight, that I'd been created to make the choice.
CHAPTER 20
Iwas still in front of my mirror when Zandia's revelation settled into something close to acceptance. Not peace. Just the clarity that comes from learning your whole existence was a design. My hands had stopped shaking, at least. The Cerbie tattoo shifted against my ribs, reading my anxiety for threats, and I let out a breath I'd been holding since she walked out.
I started undressing. Mechanical and necessary. My last attempt at going to bed had failed miserably. The shirt was sweat-through, hours of crisis will do that, and I pulled it off without ceremony.
I was working off my boots when the door opened. I didn't startle. That was the first thing I noticed.
Kearan let himself in without knocking and my nervous system didn't spike. I just kept moving, levering off the second boot.
"Close the door," I said, and he did, quiet, the way of someone who knew how to move through a room without making it a production.
He took the chair across from my bed. Neither of us said anything for a moment, and the silence sat between us fullinstead of empty. His hands were on his thighs, gripping like he was holding himself in place.
I finished changing without hurrying. Not slow, slow would have been a performance. I just moved like someone who'd decided modesty was beside the point. He was already watching. I was already letting him. The pants came off, then the sports bra, and I stood in front of him in nothing but skin and the scars that came with being built for survival. Cerbie shifted under my ribs again. I felt his gaze move across my shoulders, my spine, and the rest of my body.
He stayed exactly like that while I took a quick shower. I couldn't wash off the revelations from today, but at least I could feel fresh.
Then I pulled on fresh clothes. A black tank, soft sleep pants. The whole thing took maybe ninety seconds, and he watched every one of them.
When I was done I sat on the edge of the bed and gave him my full attention.
"I'm in love with you," Kearan said. No preamble. "And I've been a coward about it. Building reasons to wait, reasons to keep my distance, telling myself the right time would come. I'm finished. No more delays."
For one ugly second, Zandia's voice was louder than his. You were built to draw exactly the design called for. The doubt surfaced before I could stop it. Maybe he didn't love me. Maybe he loved the thing Eloise engineered to be loved, the part of me that was specification instead of person. I'd carried some version of that fear my whole life, that I was wanted for function.
"Then don't."
His breath caught. I watched my response land different than he'd braced for.
I turned back the covers and gestured at the space I'd opened. "Stay." Not a question.
He stood and undressed with the same competence he brought to everything, shirt first, the burn scar catching the light, the rest after. I settled in beside him, not touching, sharing the same space while the bed warmed. But he was turned away from me.
"I want to be bonded to you before whatever's coming gets here," he said, rough. "I want this finished."
"Is this about the threat," I asked, "or about us."
He turned, slow, a full rotation until he faced me in the dark. I could barely see him, but I felt the weight of his attention.
"Us," he said, no hesitation. "The threat's just the deadline I needed. I was already going to come to you. The crisis only made me stop putting it off. That's not fear talking, and it's not circumstance forcing my hand. It's a choice I made before and I'm only now saying out loud."
I read his face in the dark for a man bending under pressure, capitulating, unsure. Found none of it. Found someone who'd decided and was finally giving it a voice. And the part of me still chewing on Zandia's warning went quiet, because whatever I'd been built to draw, a man doesn't gut himself for weeks over a specification. He does it over a person.
That was all I needed.