EVELYN’S POV
“If you cooperate with me, I’ll help you.”
The words left my mouth before I had time to measure them.
For one strange, suspended moment, the hollow seemed to hold its breath around us.
Jack’s ruined body strained against Lucian’s bindings, the dying forest crackled softly under the weight of the corruption leaking from him, and Lucian Reed stared at me as though I had just offered him a blade and asked him to place it against my throat.
Maybe I had.
I barely knew him.
I knew his name, his reputation, the fragments Catherine allowed to circulate through her laboratories, and the wary respect even her most loyal people carried when they spoke of him.
I knew he was dangerous. I knew he had helped Catherine more than once. I knew that, just like me, he had stood close enough to darkness that it had left stains in him no amount of regret could fully wash away.
And yet, when I looked at him, something in me paused.
