Stephen hadn't actually been taking them to see Lolo. As soon as they were out of the crowd's earshot, he pulled Joie into a quiet alcove near the garden doors. His hand stayed heavy on her shoulder, his eyes searching hers with a terrifying, calm intensity.
"Lolo is fine, Joie," Stephen said, his voice a low rumble. "But you aren't."
"I just wasn't expecting her to be here, Kuya," Joie whispered, her breath hitching.
"Expect the unexpected. That's the first thing I taught you," Stephen reminded her, his face hardening. "Be calm. Be level-headed. If you can't control your heart, you can't control the room. Now, go outside. Take five minutes. Shout, go crazy, if you have to, but when you come back through these doors, you are the Iron girl that I know. Do you understand?"
Joie nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. Stephen let her go, turning back toward the gilded chaos of the party without a second glance.
Joie pushed through the heavy glass doors.
The music from the ballroom was now a muffled thrum. Outside, the air was heavy with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and the cold spray of the marble fountain.
Joie stood by the water's edge, her back to the house. She didn't need to turn around to know who had followed her. She knew that footstep. She knew that presence. It was the rhythm that used to beat against her own in the quiet corners of the PNR train.
"You shouldn't be here, Alliana," Joie said, her voice like ice. "Go back to Cheska. Go home."
"I did go home!" Alliana's voice shattered the silence, raw and vibrating with a pain that no medical degree could explain away. "I went home every night for three years and wondered if you were even alive. I broke up with you on the phone because I was scared, Joie! I was scared of being left behind. But you? You didn't even fight for us. You just... vanished."
Joie finally turned. In the moonlight, her eyes were red-rimmed, the mask finally showing a jagged crack. "I didn't vanish. I was sent away. There's a difference."
"Then why walk past me like I'm a stranger? Why the cold look?" Alliana stepped closer, invading the space Joie had spent years guarding. "I see the way your brothers look at people. Did you become one of them?"
Joie felt the weight of the hidden blade in her garter. She thought of the "obstacles" she had neutralized in Bangkok. She was now a woman who knew exactly where to strike to cause the most pain.
"You don't want to know who I am now," Joie said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "The girl you met on the train? She's dead. Lolo killed her, and I buried her in Bangkok."
"I don't believe you," Alliana challenged, reaching out to grab Joie's arm.
Joie's reflexes, honed by years of training with Stephen, kicked in instantly. She twisted out of the grip and pinned Alliana's wrist back with a clinical, painful efficiency. For a second, her eyes weren't those of a lover—they were the eyes of a Tenorio.
Alliana gasped, her eyes wide with shock and a hint of fear. "Joie... you're hurting me."
Joie snapped out of it, releasing Alliana's arm as if it had burned her. She backed away, hitting the edge of the fountain. "See? That's what I am now. I'm a weapon, Alliana. My family doesn't run hotels. We run a graveyard. Every cent of my tuition was paid for by someone's life."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Alliana looked at her wrist, where the skin was beginning to redden, then back at Joie. The fear didn't win; instead, a deep, agonizing pity took its place.
"So that's why you walked past me," Alliana whispered. "It wasn't because you hated me. It was because you were trying to protect me from you."
"I can't be with you and do what I do," Joie sobbed, her composure finally disintegrating. "I look at you and I want to be that girl on the train again. But then I go to work and I have to remember how to break a person. I can't live in both worlds, Alliana. It's tearing me apart."
Alliana didn't run. She stepped forward and pulled Joie into a fierce embrace. Joie stiffened, her body programmed for combat, then she collapsed against her, her tears soaking into Alliana's white dress.
"Then let it tear," Alliana whispered into her hair. "I'm not that girl who waits for a ghost anymore. If you're in the dark, then I'll just have to bring a flashlight."
As they stood there, two figures in white clinging to each other in the shadows, a door opened on the balcony above. Stephen stood there, silhouetted by the ballroom light. He didn't say a word. He didn't even yell at her for losing her "level-headed" composure. He just watched them, his expression unreadable, before turning back into the party.
The peace was temporary. The war was just beginning.