They didn't leave through the stairs.
Aaron carried her through the skeleton of the burning hospital, moving with a predator's grace through corridors that groaned under their own ruin. The air was a physical enemy—thick with smoke and the scent of something worse, something sweetly chemical that made her head swim. When they reached a gaping wound in the outer wall where an explosion had torn concrete and rebar apart, he didn't hesitate.
He jumped.
The fall was a heart-stopping plunge through choking darkness, the ground rushing up until he landed in a crouch on a lower rooftop, the impact shuddering through both of them. Ella's teeth clacked together. Cold night air, sharp with autumn and distant rain, slapped her face, washing away the oven-heat of the inferno.
Sirens screamed below—a rising chorus of earthly concern. Red and blue lights strobed against the smoke-choked sky, painting the chaos in frantic pulses. None of it felt real. It was a painting of a disaster, and she was a brushstroke trapped inside it. Her world had narrowed to the iron band of Aaron's arm around her waist, the solid thud of his heart against her back, and the frantic drumbeat of her own terror.
Her wings were gone.
The absence was a phantom limb of the soul. A hollow, echoing silence in her core where something vast and singing had briefly existed. She felt lighter, yet infinitely more fragile, as if the manifestation had stolen some essential density from her bones. She clutched the torn fabric of his coat, her fingers trembling violently against the fine wool.
"I can't," she whispered, the words torn from her by the wind. "I can't do that again. Whatever it was… it's gone."
"It's not gone," he said, his voice a low vibration against her. He was already moving, scanning the rooftop. "It's sleeping. And that is the only reason we're still breathing instead of being torn apart by a dozen rival claimants fighting over your spark."
He found a service door—painted a fading industrial green—and shouldered it open. The stairwell beyond was cold, concrete, and mercifully untouched by flame. Their footsteps echoed like gunshots in the hollow space as they descended. Down. Out. Into the belly of the city.
A black SUV idled in a loading bay alley behind the hospital, its windows tinted to obsidian, its engine a quiet purr. The driver, a silhouette behind the wheel, didn't turn or speak. Aaron wrenched the back door open, bundled Ella inside onto cool leather, and slid in after her. The door thunked shut with the finality of a vault seal. The car pulled away smoothly, slipping into the river of emergency vehicles like a shark joining a school of frantic fish.
Only then, encased in silent, moving darkness, did the shaking truly begin.
It started in her hands, a fine tremor that traveled up her arms and seized her entire body. Her teeth chattered. The adrenaline that had been holding her together evaporated, leaving her cold and naked to the shock. She stared at her reflection in the darkened window—a ghost-pale face smudged with soot, eyes wide and empty, wearing a torn hospital gown that was now a canvas of ash and dark, drying blood.
His blood.
The coppery, intimate scent of it filled the space between them. She looked at him. He sat perfectly still, profile etched against the passing streetlights, watching the world slide by with the focused intensity of a general surveying a retreat. A burn seared through the shoulder of his suit jacket, the fabric melted to the skin beneath. A deep cut on his temple had already stopped bleeding, the edges of it seeming to knit in the faint light, far too quickly.
"You killed her," Ella said into the quiet. The words felt flat. An observation, not an accusation.
Aaron didn't look at her. "I neutralized a collector. There's a difference."
"She wasn't human."
"No." A single, hard syllable. "And neither are the ones who will come next. They will be stronger. Older. Less inclined to monologue."
The casual certainty of it was the spark to her tinder-dry fear.
She turned on the seat, the movement jerky. "You knew," she hissed, fury a hot, welcome tide washing over the cold shock. "You knew this would happen. The fire, those masked things, her… this… me. You put me in that hospital knowing they'd find me. You used me as bait."
His head turned slowly. In the intermittent light, his silver eyes were chips of glacial ice. "I put you in the most secure, magically warded private facility my resources could access. A fortress disguised as a neurology ward. It was breached. That is a failure of intelligence, not intent."
"A failure?" A raw, broken laugh escaped her. "People are dead! That place is burning!"
"And you are alive." His voice remained infuriatingly calm. "The calculus is simple. It is also the only one that matters."
"I am not a variable in your equation!" she spat.
"No," he agreed, his gaze holding hers, pinning her in place. "You're not. You are the entire board. And every piece on it is now in motion because of you."
The car descended into an underground garage, sleek and silent. Massive steel gates closed behind them with a hydraulic sigh, cutting off the last sounds of the sirens. The sudden, tomb-like silence was deafening. The SUV glided to a halt beside a private elevator, its doors already open, revealing an interior of brushed steel and muted gold light.
Aaron exited, came around, and opened her door. He didn't offer his hand this time. He simply waited, a statue of expectant shadow.
Ella's legs felt like water. She slid out, the cold garage floor biting her bare feet. "Where are we?"
"My residence. The penthouse. It has certain… fortifications."
"I'm not going to be your prisoner."
"You are going to be my wife." He said it with the same tone one might use to state the time. "From this moment on, you do not leave my side without my express permission. You do not open a window. You do not answer a door. You exist within the perimeter I define."
The sheer, audacious control in his voice stole her breath. "You don't get to decide that."
"I do." He took a step closer, and she saw the true exhaustion now, buried deep beneath the iron control. It was in the slight tightness around his eyes, the microscopic tremor in the hand he flexed at his side. "Because the energy pulse you released when you manifested wasn't just light, Elena. It was a beacon. A thunderclap in the silent places of this world. By sunrise, your face—this face—will be on screens in territories you cannot fathom, circulating among families, covens, fae courts, and Syndicate cells who trade in miracles and monsters."
He moved past her toward the elevator, then stopped, turning back. The golden light from the cab etched the severe lines of his face.
"And because," he continued, each word dropping like a stone into the silence, "you are no longer simply an amnesiac woman. You are a sovereign-level event. A liability. The ultimate prize. And according to the Accords—the ancient, bloody laws that still govern the world behind the world—there is only one claim strong enough to grant you a semblance of safety."
From the inner pocket of his ruined jacket, he withdrew not a wallet, but a slender folio of aged, black leather. It was tied with a cord of braided silver and obsidian. He untied it with deliberate care and lifted the cover.
Inside, on parchment that looked too old, too thick, was a marriage certificate.
But it was like no legal document she had ever seen. The script was elegant, flowing, some of it in a language of sharp angles and spirals that seemed to shift when she looked directly at it. But there, clear amidst the arcana, were two names:
Aaron Silas D'Cruz.
And beside it: Elena Lyra D'Cruz.
Her name. Her name, given weight and permanence by ink that held a faint, internal gold shimmer, like dust from her own vanished wings.
Ella stared. The parchment hummed. A subtle, deep vibration she felt in her teeth. It recognized her. It knew her.
"You forged this," she breathed, but the protest was weak. The document radiated a terrible, formal power.
"No," Aaron said, his voice grave. "This is a Blood Accord, witnessed and sealed. It is binding in the halls of human law and, more importantly, in the unseen courts where such things hold the weight of geas and oath. I did not forge it. I invoked it. The moment your power woke, the oldest protections available to me were triggered. This was one of them."
He let her absorb the implications. The garage felt colder.
"You're insane," she whispered, but the words lacked conviction. Insanity would have been simpler. This was something else. This was strategy etched in blood and magic.
"Perhaps," he conceded, no humor in his eyes. "But this document grants me legal authority in the mundane world and recognized, uncontestable claim in the non-human one. As my sworn wife, you fall under my protection, my household, and my banner. To harm you now is not merely an attack. It is a declaration of war upon me and everything I represent. It gives even the hungriest predator pause."
She looked from the shimmering parchment to his face, searching for a lie, for the glint of a manipulator's pride.
She found none. Only a resolve so absolute it was terrifying.
"You're using me," she stated flatly.
"Yes."
"At least you're honest."
"I have run out of the luxury to be otherwise." He closed the folio, the soft snap final. "The collectors will hesitate to take what is formally claimed. The Syndicate will not move openly against this seal. The old families will debate and scheme rather than strike. It buys us what we need most."
"And what is that?" she demanded, her voice rising. "What do I get from this… this gilded cage of a marriage? Besides a larger target and a husband who is essentially a stranger with a dangerous filing system?"
For the first time, something in his impregnable armor shifted. Not much. A slight softening around his eyes, a minute relaxation of his shoulders. It wasn't warmth. It was the grim acknowledgment of a shared, desperate trench.
"You get time," he said, his voice lower. "You get answers—answers I will give you, starting tonight. You get training to control what is inside you so it doesn't tear you apart or paint a target on the moon. And you get the one thing no one else will offer you: the chance to survive long enough to choose your own path. To remember who you were, and decide who you will be."
The elevator doors began to slide shut. He moved swiftly, catching them with his hand.
He didn't enter. He stood at the threshold, a silhouette backlit by gold, and extended his hand toward her. Not a demand. An offering. A pact.
"The woman you were is gone, Elena. The memory is ash. Until you find her again, or build someone new from the pieces…" He held her gaze, and in his she saw the reflection of the burning hospital, of wings of light, of a future thick with storm clouds. "…this is who you are."
Ella looked at his outstretched hand.
At the long, elegant fingers, scarred across the knuckles. At the man who had lied with calm grace to doctors, who had turned fire to ice and shattered concrete with a thought, who had looked at a being of ancient power and chosen obliteration to protect a stranger.
She looked at the cage he represented. Gilded, powerful, suffocating.
But she also saw the shield. Forged in ancient law, edged with his own formidable, frightening will.
Outside this garage, the world was literal and metaphorical fire. Hunters moved in the shadows. Something ancient had tasted her power and found it sweet.
She had no memories. No past. No weapons but a terrifying, dormant light she could not control.
She had only this: a claimed name, a dangerous protector, and the brittle, furious will to survive.
Her hand lifted, cold and trembling.
It hovered in the space between them.
Then her fingers slid into his.
His grip closed around hers—not crushing, but absolute. Certain. It was the grip of a man holding the only rope off a cliff.
Not because she trusted him.
But because his was the only hand offered in the burning dark.
He drew her into the elevator. The doors sealed, and they began to rise, leaving the ruin of her old life—whatever it had been—far below.
And as the numbers climbed on the panel, Ella knew, with a chill that settled in her bones:
Somewhere in the world he had just drawn her into, in the deep, hidden places where monsters and monarchs dwelled, something was already whispering her name.
Not Elena.
Her real name.