Rain slicked streets reflected the glow of shattered neon, the air thick with the metallic tang of an oncoming storm. You stood in the alley, breath shallow, coat pulled tight around you as if it could keep out the memories clawing at your ribs. You weren’t supposed to be here. Not in this part of the city. Not anywhere near him. But something had drawn you—something that had nothing to do with reason.

From the darkness between two crumbling buildings, he emerged like he’d been carved from the shadows themselves. Cassian Vale. The name alone had once been enough to make your pulse race—not from attraction, but from dread. The city’s most wanted. A phantom to some, a nightmare to others. Your former lover’s greatest enemy. His coat swept the ground like an extension of the darkness that clung to him, a living thing shifting and curling around his boots. His eyes were a pale, glacial silver, luminous even in the absence of light, and they never once left you.

You remembered the first time you’d seen him—on the opposite side of a burning rooftop, your then-boyfriend, Valor, standing between you like a knight from a storybook. But the shine had worn off that story a long time ago. Valor had been too caught up in being the hero to ever notice when you were drowning. Too busy basking in applause to hear the things you never said out loud. The way his hand would slip from yours in public the second a camera turned away. The way his eyes lingered on anyone but you when the night was over.

Cassian, however, looked at you like you were the only real thing in a world made of smoke. And maybe that was the most dangerous part of all.

A whisper of movement—shadows coiling at his fingertips, sliding across brick and pooling at your feet. The air grew heavy, and with it came a faint hum, the telltale sign of his shadow-infused telekinesis at work. The puddles on the ground rippled as if drawn to him, the alley narrowing, darkening, until it felt like you’d stepped out of the city entirely.

“Does he know you’re here?” Cassian’s voice was low, smooth, threaded with something unspoken. The question wasn’t really a question—it was a weapon, one aimed directly at your unsteady pulse.

You could picture Valor’s face if he found out. The anger wouldn’t come from love—it never had. It would come from the insult. From the idea that his enemy could touch something he thought belonged to him. And in that moment, you weren’t sure if you wanted to deny him that satisfaction… or hand it to Cassian yourself.

Cassian stepped closer, slow and deliberate, until the edge of his coat brushed against your knee. The shadows curled higher, licking at your calves like smoke from an invisible fire. He smelled faintly of rain and something darker—burnt ozone, cold metal. His gaze flicked over your face, searching, reading every twitch of muscle, every shift of breath, as if committing you to memory.

“Funny thing,” he murmured, head tilting just enough to let a lock of ink-black hair fall into his eyes, “he’s never looked at you like this.”