His eyes had gone cold.

Not angry in the ordinary way. Anger had heat. Anger shouted, burned, reached for something to break. This was colder than that. Older. Patient in a way that made her skin tighten, as if something beneath the world had opened one eye and noticed her.

"Then why did you do it?" he asked.

The question came quietly.

"Why did you have to go and do that, huh, Cassiopeia?"

Cassiopeia shook as the very air started to shriek in cold fear.

A tremor moved through her whole body, from chest to knees, as if the words had struck bone. But Phei had not raised his voice, he had not moved toward her and he had not even touched the power inside him yet his presence alone was so suffocating she felt like she might die any moment.

He did not need his powers as it turned out. The certainty in the room was enough.

Right now, Cassiopeia was alive because of one thing.

The mark.

His mark.

Apparently, on her behalf, decided she was worth keeping.

Without it, she would be dead.

The slave mark written into her soul when she had bound herself to him, the same mark that had once felt like humiliation and now stood between her and death like a very practical miracle.

Without it, she knew what would have happened. Not as a threat. As fact.

The same way one knew fire burned or falling ended badly unless gravity had recently been bribed.

Without that mark, Phei would have ended her right here an now without even his powers for what she’d done!

And he would’ve slept afterward.

She felt her pulse stutter.

Was this what Maya, Sierra, and Maddie had meant?

The thought came with a chill so sudden it seemed to pass through her bones before her mind caught up.

They had spoken of it before, those quiet warnings dressed as half-jokes, saying that no matter how gentle Phei seemed, no matter how soft Phei seemed with them, no matter how sweet his smile became when Melissa touched his cheek or scolded him like he was still a boy stealing sugar from the kitchen, there was a line around her that no sane creature crossed.

Make Melissa angry, and he might glare.

Make Melissa disappointed, and he might become cold.

But make Melissa cry?

Then Phei Ryujin Tiamat could kill anyone.

Cassiopeia had dismissed it then.

Of course she had. Women in love made myths out of men all the time. A smile became destiny. A touch became salvation and a jealous glare became divine wrath.

Romance was embarrassingly talented at turning ordinary danger into poetry.

But this was not poetry.

This was him.

And now, staring at the cold stillness that had settled over Phei’s face, she understood.

If someone made Melissa cry, he would not warn them.

He would not rage first.

He would not even need to ask himself whether they deserved mercy.

The innocent boy would simply disappear, so quietly that the room might not notice until it was already too late. In his place would remain something older, calmer, and infinitely worse: A devil wearing his face, with his beautiful eyes emptied of warmth and fixed on one simple decision.

Whoever had hurt her would end.

That was what made Cassiopeia’s blood turn cold.

Not the thought that Phei could kill for Melissa.

But the fact that it would come to him so naturally.

Like breathing blinking and making love to her.

Phei did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The promise in his eyes was silent, lethal, and absolute enough to make the air itself seem afraid to move.

Cassiopeia felt that now.

She was standing inside it.

"Cassiopeia—"

She was on her knees before he finished her name.

Her body moved before pride could make one last useless argument. She reached for his arms, fingers shaking, and folded herself down because there was no other honest shape left for her.

"I must have been a fool," she said.

Her voice broke open completely.

"I became too comfortable. As your slave, I forgot my place. I forgot what my family did to you all. To Melissa. To Delilah. To you." Her forehead lowered against his arms, and the words spilled out raw. "Please. Forgive me, Master. Please."

Phei remained quiet.

Storms had that kind of silence before they chose a direction.

Then he reached for her.

Not gently.

Not cruelly either.

He pulled her up against his bare chest and held her there, his hands moving across her back in slow, deliberate strokes, and it was the most complicated thing she’d ever felt — being held by someone who was holding you to calm themselves down rather than to comfort you. She was something real to press against.

It was not tenderness offered as forgiveness. It was something far more complicated and far more painful.

He was holding her to keep himself contained.

Cassiopeia understood that instantly.

She was an anchor to him right now:-

A living weight that pressed against him while he fought not to become the thing his anger wanted. His heart beat against her cheek, too fast, too hard. His hand moved over her back with measured care, but tension lived in every motion.

He was trying to calm himself down through touch and failing by inches.

She did not dare move.

"Do you know," he said above her, voice low and stripped of mercy, "why you are not dead?"

Cassiopeia closed her eyes.

He let the question breathe.

"After everything you tried to do to my family. After walking into my life with that useless little bracelet your family sent you with, trying to bind my soul."

His hand paused on her back.

The room seemed to darken by a shade.

"Do you understand why you are standing here at all?"

She did not answer.

He had not truly asked.

"You are only alive," Phei said slowly, each word falling with the weight of law, "because you are my slave."