3. A Union In Blood

The walls don’t echo like your typical empty space.

But the silence suffocates, pressing in tight like a second skin stretched over raw nerves. It fills every inch of this windowless box until the air tastes sterile and still, like a hospital after the last heartbeat stops.

I’ve memorized the room. Every inch of it. Counted the cracks in the tiles beneath my boots, the scratches on the metal edge of the bedframe, and the slow, uneven drip of the sink that refuses to fully shut off. I’ve cataloged every breath I’ve taken since he left—every shallow inhale, every slow exhale I use to keep from screaming.

Sleep doesn’t come again. Not in this place. Not with adrenaline still humming through my veins like electricity wired wrong. Not with betrayal curled up inside my chest like barbed wire.

And rage. Always rage.

I’m not used to being caged. Not like this. Not by someone whose presence makes my pulse skip in ways I don’t understand, whose voice digs under my skin like a splinter I can’t pull out.

Someone who makes my spine want to break itself in resistance just to prove I’m still mine.

But I won’t give him that. I won’t give Hale Holt the satisfaction of watching me bend.

The footsteps come late, slow and deliberate, taking their sweet time to build up my already frayed nerves. Each step down the hall is a promise, heavy with unspoken weight as if the house itself bracing for what comes next.

I rise from the edge of the bed before I can think better of it. Straighten my back. Square my shoulders. Lock my knees even though they tremble beneath me. I refuse to look small for when the door opens.

It does. That soft metallic click of inevitability.

And then he’s there.

Filling the doorway with too much presence, too much calm, Hale’s dressed in black again—always black—like mourning is a permanent state of being. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, revealing the sinuous lines of ink wrapping around his forearms, runes, symbols, and names that look like they were carved into him with teeth.

He steps inside and then closes the door with an ease that makes my stomach clench.

The lock falls into place like punctuation on a sentence I haven’t heard yet.

“You’re quiet this morning,” he expresses as he stalks closer.

“Trying not to vomit at the sight of you,” I reply, voice sharp enough to cut glass.

“Save the dramatics, Calistra.”

“Save your condescension, Hale.”

For a split second, the corner of his mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. More like a warning that he could.

Then he crosses the room in a few measured strides and drops a manila folder onto the desk—the only piece of furniture in this place not bolted to the floor, like it’s the only thing in here still allowed to run.

“I brought you something,” he says.

I don’t move.

“What is it?” My voice is flat, lifeless, the only shield I have.

He taps the folder once with a finger. “What your brothers left behind. During the chaos. Communication transcripts. Log entries. Surveillance stills. And one obituary you might want to see.”

That gets under my skin.

The breath leaves my lungs a little too fast. I move toward the desk like I’m walking into a fire I already know is going to burn the crap out of me.

The top page is a photo—grainy, timestamped, barely clear enough to be useful.

But I know what I’m looking at.

My brothers. Standing over the smoking remains of a vehicle. One holds a gas can, and the other looks over his shoulder toward something—or someone—off the frame. And in the lower right corner of the image…

No. It can’t—no.

Something small.

A toy. Plastic. Bright. Meant for tiny hands.

The blood in my veins turns to ice. I slam the folder shut so hard the papers shift. “That wasn’t part of the plan,” I snap. My voice is shaking, and I hate it. “There weren’t supposed to be kids.”

He doesn’t flinch.

“You blindly followed orders,” Hale says, voice low, even. “Didn’t ask questions. That makes you just as responsible.”

I spin toward him, fury lighting up every nerve ending. “Don’t act like you’re some fucking saint. You’ve killed more people than I can count.”

“Yes.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “But I remember every face.”

The words hit harder than they should.

They linger.

Thick as smoke. Unavoidable as truth.

He runs a hand down his jaw, and the air between us stills momentarily.

“I don’t want your apologies,” he says, quiet now. “I want your clarity. You either belong in this world, or you don’t. You choose blood or you choose redemption. But you don’t get both.”

My hands curl into fists at my sides. “And you think you get to decide that for me?”

“I think you’ve been pretending you already decided,” he asserts. “But people like you—we don’t get clean. We just get careful.”

I want to punch him. I want to scream.

Instead, I say the one thing I know will still draw blood. “You kidnapped me.”

His eyes harden. “No,” he says, soft as a blade sliding between ribs. “I spared you.”

“You think?” I huff, incredulous. I’m cold all of a sudden. I lift my arms and wrap them over my chest. “You’re delusional. You know just as well as I do, you’ll take what you want, then kill me. It’s inevitable.”

“You were marked for death the second your boots hit my ground,” Hale carries on, voice low, coiled with steel. “But I saw something else in you.”

He steps closer, slow and sure like a predator that knows its prey is already cornered. His gaze locks onto mine and doesn’t let go. It’s not hunger, not pity. It’s recognition, and that makes it so much worse.

“You’re not loyal,” he continues. “Not to Burke. Not anymore. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.”

“I am loyal.” The words come out too fast. Too loud. Too thin.

“You don’t strike me as delusional,” he snorts. “I must have misjudged you, then.”

My fist is in the air before I realize it, rage boiling over.

He ducks.

Of course, he ducks.

And his hand shoots out with a terrifying reflex, catching my wrist mid-swing. He doesn’t flinch or so much as blink. Just holds me there—suspended between fight and failure.

The silence stretches between us, thick and electric.

“Still testing limits,” he murmurs, fingers like iron around my wrist. “Still hoping I won’t do what needs to be done.”

He lets go.

And for a moment—just a flicker of heartbeats—I hate how I miss that grip. It was the only thing holding me still.

I step back, breath coming hard and fast, like I’ve run a mile and hit a wall. My pulse pounds in my throat. My skin burns.

“Why?” I ask. “Why the marriage? Why not just kill me? Get your revenge. End it clean.”

His expression stays still, but his eyes betray him—something shifts behind them. A flicker. A fracture. A storm barely held at bay.

“Because this war ends when I say it does,” he says, voice calm, too calm. “And your father—he needs to learn what it means to lose everything. Not in a blaze. Not all at once. Slowly. Deliberately. Piece by piece.” He takes another step toward me. “You’re a tool,” he adds. “Just like Burke made you. I’m just repurposing you.”

I want to scream. Instead, I walk to the bed like I’m walking on a ledge. I sit, spine ramrod straight. “Then get on with it.”

He raises a brow, impressed by the performance. Or maybe amused by how hard I’m trying to hold the cracks together. “Tomorrow, we announce the engagement,” he says. “To my people. To enemies. This will be a clear message.”

My stomach turns, tightens, flips. “So that’s it? You parade me around like some broken trophy and expect me to smile?”

“I expect you to play your part.”

“And if I don’t?”

His answer is silence. Worse than any threat he could’ve thrown at me.

He heads for the door, already half in shadow. “Try not to break anything tonight,” he says without looking back. “I had this room custom built.”

I glare at his retreating figure, jaw tight. “I’ll make sure it’s ashes by morning.”

He pauses, then turns slightly. “You’re not a prisoner, Calistra,” he says. “You’re a mere consequence.”

Then he’s gone.

The lock clicks into place.

And just like that, the room feels smaller.

Colder.

I pace. I count the steps again—twelve from wall to wall, five from the bed to the sink, six back to the door.

I trace the old scar on my shoulder, the one Maddox gave me when he decided that pain was the best way to teach obedience. “A lesson,” he called it as if slicing into me made him a mentor and not a monster.

I think about Ryker.

His voice behind that tinted window. “You’re a weight we can’t carry.”

Not a goodbye. Not even a lie. Just the truth, clean and cruel.

I sit on the floor, knees drawn up, head tilted against the wall.

***

The knock comes at dawn—sharp, sudden. I didn’t even hear footsteps. The door opens without waiting for an answer. Two guards step in—expressionless, dressed in black, all edges and silence.

Behind them stands a woman. Tall. Composed. Not a hair out of place. Cream blouse, quiet heels, and a long black dress bag slung over one shoulder. Her eyes rake over me with clinical detachment. “Mr. Holt said to prepare you.”

I don’t respond.

She unzips the garment bag, and silver silk spills free, fluid, and luminous, casting ribbons of reflected light across the bare wall.

“You’ll be expected in the east wing in one hour,” she says, unpacking a sleek brush set from a compact case. “The families will be present. Allies. Enemies. Holt will speak.”

“Of course he will,” I murmur.

She gestures to the mirror with a flick of her wrist. “Come. Stand still.”

I sigh and force my limbs to move. Every part of me resists, but I obey—because that’s what survival looks like now.

I considered pushing Hellbringer far enough that he’d put a bullet in my head and call it mercy. But then I thought of Belle. Of her smile, her silence, her hope. I couldn’t do it.

So I shifted the plan. Rewired it.

Play along—for now.

Until I find the crack in his world wide enough to escape through.

I stare blankly at the mirror as she sweeps powder over my cheekbones, my mind drifting. Not on beauty. Not on appearances. Only on the quiet, brutal calculus of how and when I’ll make my move.