Asher
The Ravens' council chamber was a cathedral of shadows. The air smelled faintly of iron, wood smoke, and old blood, the kind of room where wars had been born, where men had pledged loyalty and carved their names into legend.
A long oak table dominated the space, its surface scarred from years of fists, knives, and spilled whiskey and memories.
Memories i want to forget.
Candles lined the walls in wrought-iron holders, their flames trembling in the draft that swept through the high, arched windows. Every flicker threw shifting patterns across the stone floor, making the room feel alive, breathing.
I sat at one end of the table, hands folded, posture deceptively relaxed. Inside, however, he was not relaxed. No, he was a live wire stretched to the point of snapping. Because across the table, in the heart of this den of shadows, sat Rose Varela. Chaos. The woman who had taken her enemies' slur and turned it into a weapon. The woman who commanded men's loyalty not through empty fear, but through fire and presence.
And beside her, always beside her, was Cassian her confidant, her general, her shadow. Her best friend.
My jaw clenched, the muscle ticking with each passing second.
Cassian's voice carried first, low and rough as gravel. "We've confirmed movement on Adrian's western flank. Shadowhand reports caravans funneling resources into the south docks. If he's preparing for an offensive, that's where it'll bleed first."
He gestured to the massive map sprawled across the table. Pins, black thread, and markings smeared in red ink told a story of lines converging, territories under threat, and the choke points where blood would surely flow.
Rose leaned forward, one gloved hand tracing the map. Her touch was delicate but deliberate, like a predator calculating its strike. "The south docks are too obvious. Adrian knows we'd watch them. He's luring us there while something else moves in the dark." Her eyes narrowed. "No. His true play is east the trade route through the iron quarter. If he chokes it off, he starves the Raven's supply chain."
Cassian gave a faint, knowing smile. "You're as sharp as ever, Rosie."
The nickname landed like a knife in my ribs. No one else in the room reacted it was clearly familiar to them, ordinary. But for me, it rang too damn intimate, too careless, too binding.
Rosie. As though she belonged to him. As though her fire, her scars, her secrets, were his alone to understand.
Rose didn't flinch. She didn't even glance Cassian's way. Her focus remained pinned on the map, her mind locked in the cold logic of war. To her, the name was just air, nothing. But to me, it was an earthquake beneath the surface.
The war council pressed forward. Voices rose, strategies collided. Men from the Raven's inner circle argued about choke points, weapon shipments, and whether to risk striking Adrian head-on. I listened, silent. Observing. I was good at silence from an early age. It helped me survived. But my eyes were sharp and unrelenting, missed nothing.
Every time Rose spoke, the room fell quiet. Even the most hardened soldiers leaned closer, as though her words were gospel. Chaos, they called her but in this chamber, she was order itself. She drew lines on the map, cut down foolish proposals with icy clarity, and built strategy not from brute force but from inevitability. She didn't just plan battles. She planned ruin. Adrian's ruin.
"Adrian expects me to hesitate," Rose said, her voice low, measured. "He expects me to circle, to wait for the perfect blow. But we will not wait. We will strike where it hurts most his trust. His allies. We turn Shadowhand against him, piece by piece, until he has nowhere left to stand."
There was a murmur across the table, a mix of awe and unease. Rose leaned back, her eyes catching the candlelight, her profile cut sharp against the flickering glow. For a heartbeat, I saw her not as strategist, not as Chaos, but as something older, fiercer. A queen in the making. A storm wrapped in velvet.
Cassian leaned close, speaking in a voice meant only for her. "You don't need to shoulder it all, Rosie. You know I'll bleed for you." His hand brushed the edge of hers as he moved a pin across the map. Casual. Easy. Familiar.
I felt heat rise in his chest, and I imagine snapping his wrist in half for touching her but I swallowed it whole. Silence was a weapon too. I locked it down, masking every flicker of emotion behind my dark gaze.
Hours dragged in the council, each decision carving the path toward war. The Ravens debated reinforcements, traps, and allies, but in the end, every thread returned to Rose. She commanded without demanding, and Cassian was her unspoken second heartbeat. They moved like two halves of the same blade she struck, he steadied. She cut, he caught. To the others in the room, it was strength. To me, it was suffocating.
When at last the council adjourned, men shuffled out into the cold hallways, their murmurs fading. Cassian lingered, gathering maps, sliding daggers back into hidden sheaths. Rose stayed too, staring down at the table as though the war map were carved into her bones.
And me — I didn't move. I remained in my chair, silent as stone, watching. Watching the way Cassian leaned in close, his voice soft enough that I couldn't hear. Watching the way Rose's shoulders loosened, the iron mask slipping just enough for weariness to bleed through. She didn't fight him when he laid a hand on her shoulder. Didn't resist when he drew her into the briefest of embraces a brother's comfort, but one too close, too easy, too much for me to ignore.
my fists clenched beneath the table, nails biting into my palms. I swallowed the fire and buried it under ice. Rose doesn't see me. She didn't know I was there, watching. And that
that cut deeper than the rest.
She doesn't see me at all.
Later, when the hall had emptied, Rose and Cassian stood alone at the map once more. Their voices dropped low, conspiratorial. Asher, standing in the shadows of the corridor, caught fragments.
"Adrian won't see it coming," Rose murmured. "We'll cross him at the iron quarter. Bleed his supply lines dry before he has the chance to strike."
Cassian's voice answered, rough but steady. "Then it's decided. We end him together."
Together. The word lingered, a ghost in my chest. I turned, the shadows swallowing me whole as I walked away, silent as death itself.
My time to speak would come but not yet.
For now, I would let the storm brew.