Chapter 26 26

Chapter 26 26


Caelum's POV

I glared down at the black invitation in my hand, flames of fury roiling through me so hot I could barely focus.

Vivienne had done this. Had advertised Celine to every important family in sight, without either asking my permission or even informing me. In the most public way imaginable!

If I stayed away from the Council meeting, I appeared weak. Like I was hiding.

And if I enlisted Celine, I was dragging her further into a world that had already nearly killed her twice.

If I went alone, it would be an insult to the families as I would be rejecting what they obviously viewed as my mate. They’d think that she was just a toy, not someone to be protected. She would be an even brighter target.

Every option led to disaster.

“It’s a power move,” Kent murmured. He stood in front of the window, gazing down at the city. "Your mom's talking you into a corner. "Making you take your stand, or break with it utterly."

"She always did love games." I crushed the invitation in my hand. “Loved playing people like chess pieces.”

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

That was my stock answer now. The man who always had a plan, who could weigh odds and strategy in seconds, was utterly at sea.

As every calculation I did turned out with Celine in peril.

"You could get rid of her," Ryker interjected from his post at the door. "New identity, new country. "We need to make her go away before the meeting.”

"She'd never agree to it. And it wouldn't work anyway. They know her face now. My mother made sure of that."

“Then you take her to the meeting. Show strength. Be the one to make a stand and show that you’re not afraid to take what’s yours.” Kent turned to face me. "It's what they expect. What they'll respect."

“And what if someone tries to kill her during the meeting?”

"Then we kill them first."

Simple. Brutal. The way my world worked.

But Celine was not of my world. She was soft, she was bright and good; everything that didn’t survive in the darkness I inhabited.

"I need to talk to her."

\---
I had driven to campus myself, no bodyguard. Needed to think. Space for me to figure out what the hell I was going to say.

Had found myself sitting in my car outside her dorm, gazing up at the illuminated windows like some drooling adolescent.

I'd killed men. Had built and destroyed empires. Were survivors of the kinds of things that would break most people.

But what terrified me most was the prospect of losing Celine.

I texted her. ‘I'm outside. Can we talk?’

Five minutes later, she appeared. She was wearing sweatpants and one of my shirts — she had stolen weeks ago. Hair in a messy bun. No makeup. Beautiful.

She silently got into the car.

Silent, we drove to a park at the edge of campus. Empty this time of night. Safe.
I parked beneath a streetlight and turned to look at her.

"You got the invitation."

"Yeah." Her voice was small. "Consort. That’s a lot of label to throw without so much as asking.”

“My mother has statements of preference. I’m sorry you’re stuck in the middle of it.”
"Are you?" She glanced at me, her eyes hard. "Because it feels like I've been stuck in the middle since the day I met you. And just when I think we’re heading back to normal, something pulls us back.”

"I know."

"Is that all you have to say? I know?" She laughed bitterly. “I need more than that, Caelum. What does this mean, I need to know. What you want from me."

I got out of the car. Couldn't sit still anymore. She followed.

We stood across from each other under the streetlight, and I decided.
I knelt.

(dirge One step below a proposal, perhaps just above a dirge. One knee on the cold, hard ground, staring up at the woman who had become my entire world.

"What are you doing?" she whispered.

"Giving you a choice. A real one." I took her hands in mine. "I won't force you into this. If you want to get out — right now, fully — I’ll make it so. A new identity, a fresh start, plenty of money to live well anywhere in the world. You'll be safe. You'll be free. I promise, no one from my world will ever find you.”

Tears streamed down her face. "And you?"

"I'll handle the families. Deal with my mother. Get you out of there altogether.”

"That's not what I asked. And what does it mean for you if I go?”

I couldn't lie to her. "I'll survive. I always do."

"But you'll be alone."

“That I would rather be alone than get you killed.”

She yanked her hands away, stepping backward. "Why can't we just be normal? Why can’t you just be a professor, and I’ll be a student, we live our boring life?”

"Because I'm not normal, Celine. I never will be." I stood, facing her. “I have attempted to escape this world. Pretending I could be someone else. But it keeps pulling me back. And if you hang out with me, it’ll drag ya down too.”

“So I should get out,” so to speak.”

I'm telling you there is such a thing as staying. You'll be a target. Always. Every time I hit an enemy, it is going to see you as something to target that will hurt me. You will live with security and you will live with danger, and you’ll carry one constant thing — the certainty that as long as I’m around, someone could try to kill you to get at me.

"And if I can accept that?"

"Then you're insane."

She laughed through her tears. "Yeah. Probably."

“I need you to contemplate this. Really think. You have twenty four hours. Whatever you choose I will be behind it. Even if you decide to walk away.”

She looked at me for a long time. “What am I supposed to pick to eat?”

“I want you to pick yourself. Your safety. Your future." I cupped her face. "I want you to live, Celine. Even if it’s without me.”

"That's not an answer."

“It’s the only answer I have.

She pulled back, walking toward the car. I fell in behind her, drove her back to the dorm in silence.

She turned to me before she stepped out. "Twenty four hours."

"Twenty four hours."

Then she was gone.
\---

The following day I buried myself in work. Teaching. Grading papers. Faking like my world wasn’t collapsing while I droned on about gravitational forces and orbital mechanics.

A student in my afternoon class hand his hand up. Professor Reed, do binary star systems ever escape from each other?

I stopped with a marker poised just above the whiteboard.

Binary stars. Two stars circling each other, drawn together by gravity. Orbiting around each other for millions of years.

"No," I said finally. "They're bound by gravity. They collide and are destroyed or orbit forever. There’s no way out once the bond is made.”

The student nodded, scribbling notes.

But there I was, relation of the equation on the board had a completely different meaning for me.

So that’s what Celine and I were. Binary stars. Locked into something more powerful than gravity, unable to resist their mutual attraction.

We would run into each other and blow ourselves to oblivion.

Or spin there eternally, bound by this dance of risk and love.
There was no third option. No escape.

I should have been scared at the truth of it.
Instead, it brought clarity.

I walked myself through the lecture on autopilot, dismissed the class and went home to wait.
\---

She arrived at my door precisely at midnight.
Twenty four hours on the dot.

I opened up to see her standing there, in jeans and a jumper, looking at once resolute and terrified.

“I’m going with you to the meeting,” she said before I could get a word in.

"Celine—"

"I'm going. And I’m not going to be talked out of it.”

“You know what you’re tying yourself into?”

"Yes. I'm agreeing to danger. To being a target. “Long to live in your world that’s so severe.” She stepped closer. "I'm also agreeing to love. To partnership. To standing with you instead of running.”

"You should run."

"Probably. But I'm not." She took my hand. "I love you, Caelum Morano. I’m not giving up on that. Not for safety, not for normalcy, not for denying the racists the spectacle of burning their cities.”

I drew her close, up against my arms, holding onto her as if she might vanish. "You're insane."

"Yeah. I've been told."

\---

The following three days were a blur of planning.

Vivienne sent stylists. Designers. Security briefings. Everything Celine would need in order to survive a ballroom full of the deadliest individuals to populate Europe.

It was the night before the meeting and I watched her stand at my bedroom mirror in Vivienne’s choice of frock. Black, elegant, sophisticated. Diamonds on her throat and her ears.
She hardly resembled the college student I’d met months before. She appeared that she had a place in my world.

It terrified me.

“You don’t need to do this,” I said, for the hundredth time.

Then she turned, and I saw steel in her eyes that wasn’t there before. "Yes, I do."
"Why?"

"Because I love you. For running would haunt me from there to eternity. Because I would rather be in danger with you than safe without you.”

I got to her and pulled her tight. "If anything happens to you—"

"Nothing will happen. You'll protect me. Your men will protect me. I'll protect myself." She smiled. “We’re going to walk in that meeting, present a united front and walk out together. That's the plan."

"It's a terrible plan."

“It’s the only plan we have.”

Kent knocked on the door. "Boss, we need to leave. Cars are ready."

I took Celine's hand. "Last chance to run."
"Not a chance."

We made our way together to the elevator. Kent and Ryker sandwiched us, with another six guards. All armed. All ready for war if need be.

As we got in the car, Kent beckoned me over as Celine took her seat.

"Boss, intel just came in. At least one person at the meeting is plotting an assassination. We don’t yet know who the target is.”

My blood ran cold. "Me or her?"

"We don't know. Could be either. Could be both." He met my eyes. "This could be a trap."

I glanced over at Celine from the inside of the car. She was retrieving her reflection, tuning up her necklace, pretending to be brave.

"Then we'll be ready for it."

And we climbed into our car and headed for the meeting that could make us or break us forever.

And I didn’t know which one it would be.