The world tilted when Ishan opened the front door.
The morning sun was gentle outside the Vale estate, bleeding gold across the manicured hedges and security gates. But inside, all was clenched fists and clenched jaws. A black Mercedes hummed quietly in the driveway—government plates. His mother stood behind him like a shadow he couldn't outrun.
"Be polite," she said, not looking at him.
Ishan didn't answer. His jaw was already locked in the polite tension of someone preparing for battle.
Two men stepped out of the vehicle. Both in navy suits, badges clipped to their belts. One older, stiff-backed and sharp-eyed. The other younger, scanning everything, even the trim on the doorframe, like he was cataloguing the world for later.
"Mr. Vale?" the older man asked, already knowing.
"That's me."
"I'm Special Investigator Dane Arlo. This is my partner, Folarin."
Folarin gave a shallow nod. "We'd like to ask you a few questions. About last night."
"What about it?" Ishan's voice was calm, almost detached. But his hand trembled behind the door.
Dane raised an eyebrow. "The girl who was attacked. A witness says you were there."
Amina.
His heart tripped at the thought of her face—how pale it had gone, how fast she'd disappeared behind that swarm of flashing lights and uniforms. He hadn't even been allowed near her after the paramedics came.
"She's my—" He stopped himself. What was she to him now? "I was with her. We were supposed to meet up. But by the time I found her, she'd already been..."
He couldn't say the word. It sat like ash in his mouth.
"Where did you find her, exactly?" Folarin asked, voice soft.
Ishan answered mechanically, replaying everything: the alley, the scream, the blood like spilled ink. But he didn't mention the shadow he saw slipping away down the alley—the figure he hadn't dared to chase. Not yet.
When the agents finally left, Ishan stood in the entryway, every muscle in his body pulled tight like piano wire. His mother's presence pressed against him again.
"You didn't tell them everything," she said, not as a question.
He looked at her. "Neither did you."
A beat of silence.
"You think I don't know what this is?" she whispered. "You think I don't remember the things your father tried to keep buried?"
He blinked. The air chilled.
"What do you mean?" he asked slowly.
But she was already walking away.
—
He didn't go to school that day.
Instead, Ishan sat in his father's old study, a room sealed for ten years and now broken open like a grave. Dust drifted in the beams of light across shelves filled with untouched books, trophies, and long-dead files. The smell of leather and time filled his nose.
He sat in the chair his father once sat in and opened the bottom drawer.
Nothing.
Until he reached beneath the drawer lining and found the envelope. Thick. Marked with a symbol he didn't recognize: a silver feather inside a ring of thorns.
Inside were photos.
Of children.
Names scribbled on the backs. Some crossed out. Amina's name wasn't there—but his was.
Ishan Vale. Asset Potential. Subject shows symptoms.
He nearly threw up.
The door creaked open behind him.
Amina stood there.
No guards. No nurses. Just her. In a hoodie two sizes too big, her hair messy, her eyes raw.
"How did you get here?" he breathed.
"Walked," she said.
Her voice cracked on the word.
He stood up too fast, knocking the chair back. "You shouldn't be moving. They said you needed rest—"
"I needed you," she snapped, and then winced from the force of her own voice.
Amina stumbled, and he caught her in two strides, holding her upright. Her fingers gripped his shirt like claws.
"Ishan," she said quietly, like she'd been holding it in for hours, "something followed me home last night. Something that wasn't human."
His breath caught.
She looked up at him. "Tell me I'm not crazy."
"You're not," he whispered.
She collapsed against him then, her weight trembling. He held her there, in the tomb of his father's secrets, until the sun shifted and the walls began to whisper things neither of them could fully understand.
—
That night, they lay side by side in the hidden room above the garage—an old servant's loft he used to hide in as a kid.
Amina rested her head on his shoulder. He could feel her heartbeat, fast and shallow.
"Do you regret it?" she murmured.
"What?"
"This whole thing. Us. Being engaged. All the pressure. The eyes watching us like puppets on strings."
He turned slightly, brushing her hair from her forehead.
"I don't regret you," he said.
Her breath hitched. "But?"
"But I don't know who I am in all of this. My name's in files I didn't know existed. People are watching me. Watching us. And now you're being hunted."
She closed her eyes.
"I don't want to be someone's weapon," she whispered.
"Neither do I."
For a while, they said nothing.
Then, without warning, she leaned up and kissed him.
It wasn't slow or poetic. It was desperate. Fierce. The kind of kiss that knew it might be the last. When she pulled away, her lips were red and bruised.
"I needed to know it was real," she whispered.
He held her tighter. "It's real."
Even if the world around them wasn't.
—
Somewhere, in a room with no windows, a phone buzzed.
A man in a grey suit picked it up.
"They're bonding faster than expected," came a voice on the other end.
The man smiled coldly.
"Then we begin phase two."