Chapter 179

SIENNA

The weight of Gideon’s words still hung in the air like smoke.

You bleed for it. You prove it.

And then, impossibly, Tristan Mercer lowered himself into a chair at Vivian’s table. Not at the head, not in any place of prominence—just the far edge, a shadow among the gold light. It was wrong. Surreal. This man, who had been specter and serpent for as long as I’d known his name, was sudd