Page 8

Backing up, I hit stone instead of open space. When my heel slips, the world tilts.

And then a hand closes around my throat.

The blur vanishes. Reality slams back into place. Another arm wraps around my waist, hauling me backward before I can fall.

“You—”

The rest of the sentence never makes it out, because he turns us in one motion, slamming my spine against the wall. The impact rattles my teeth, and he doesn’t stop there. He follows through, crushing me into the stone until the air in my lungs belongs to him.

Suddenly, his face is inches from mine, sharp and devastatingly handsome in a way that feels dangerous, the flicker of a passing hover-car catching in his eyes as they stay fixed on me with a terrifying kind of amusement.

“Get off me.” I twist hard, shoving at his chest with my free hand, but my fingers barely make a dent. “L-let go⁠—”

“You’re not very good at taking advice, are you?”

“W-what do you want from me?” I force out. “I d-don’t have anything. I have no money.”

“Money? Is that what you think this is?” He sounds genuinely amused as his gaze drifts over my face before settling on my mouth. “All that running, just to end up exactly where I wanted you.”

I want to tell him to get his hands off me, but my heart is lodged in my throat and my mind has stopped being useful. My entire body aches as I drag in air, trying to force myself back under control.

His thumb tilts my chin, and for the first time, the amusement in his face thins into something sharper.

“Get off me,” I grind out.

“What were you doing in Black Chapel?”

My stomach drops. “P-please...”

His thumb shifts against my jaw. “You came here tonight when you should’ve been at registration. Alone. Why was that? Hm?”

“That’s n-none of your business.”

But my breath locks in my throat, my mouth falling open in a desperate search for air. I can’t find any, can only focus on the medical band vibrating around my wrist.

“Are you g-going to k-kill me?” I manage to wheeze.

He clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “I’d never be stupid enough to kill a customer.”

“I don’t g-gamble.”

“No?” He grins. “You walked into Black Chapel alone. Got noticed by every person who hides in the shadows. And for what?”

For Sola.

I don’t tell him that. Instead, I shake my head and keep fighting for air.

His thumb presses beneath my jaw, forcing my head a fraction higher. “That’s gambling.”

“I wasn’t gambling.” My voice shakes. I hate that he can hear it.

“That’s what people say when they want permission to lose.”

The words land hard enough to turn my stomach, my band pulsing hotter against my wrist as my body tightens and my heart races so fast it no longer feels like rhythm.

He keeps looking at me, taking in the tremor in my hands, the wheeze catching in my throat, the pulse beating wild beneath my skin, and when his mouth curls up, there’s nothing kind in it, only a dark, almost fascinated amusement that makes me press back into the stone.

“Hmm. You’re nothing like I thought you’d be,” he says.