"Hold still. You're shaking," Vivian whispered.
Her fingers were cool against my jaw, tilting my face up. I was pinned against the edge of the workbench in her private lab, the scent of ozone and expensive vanilla clinging to her. It was a dangerous distance. Too close. I could see the gold flecks in her irises and the way her lower lip hitched just a fraction.
"I'm not shaking," I lied, though my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. "I'm just... cold."
Vivian let out a soft, humming sound. She didn't pull away. Instead, her thumb brushed my cheekbone, a slow, deliberate motion that made my skin prickle. "You're always cold, Tess. Or always nervous. Which one is it today?"
I swallowed hard. The collar hidden under my high collar felt like a lead weight, a ticking bomb waiting for Silas to press the button. I wanted to lean into her. I wanted to tell her that I was terrified of the thing I was supposed to be—Fallstar, the gravity-wielding disaster who was currently topping the most-wanted list.
"Maybe I'm just not used to people being this nice to me," I snapped, trying to regain some ground. I pushed back slightly, but the workbench caught my hip, keeping me anchored in her space.
Vivian smiled. It wasn't the polished, camera-ready smile she gave the press. This one was soft, unguarded, and absolutely lethal. "Since when is being nice a shock? I thought we were friends."
"Friends," I repeated. The word tasted like ash.
I looked around the lab. High-tech scanners, floating holographic displays, and a containment unit that looked like it cost more than my entire apartment building. This was where she analyzed evidence. This was where she figured out how to take me down.
"You're staring," Vivian said, her voice dropping an octave. She stepped closer, her chest nearly brushing mine. The heat coming off her was dizzying. "What's on your mind?"
"Nothing," I said quickly. Too quickly. "Just wondering why you spend so much time in here instead of out there, being the Golden Girl of Halcyon."
She chuckled, a low vibration I could feel in my own chest. "The Golden Girl gets tired of the pedestal, Tess. Sometimes I just want someone to look at me and not see a symbol. Someone who actually..."
She trailed off, her gaze dropping to my lips for a split second before snapping back to my eyes. The tension was thick enough to choke on. I could feel the gravity in the room shifting—not because of my powers, but because of her. I was drowning in the orbit of the only person I was contracted to destroy.
"Someone who what?" I whispered.
"Someone who sees me," she murmured.
She reached out, her hand sliding from my cheek to the back of my neck, her fingers grazing the very edge of the collar's metal rim. I flinched, jerking my head away as if I'd been burned.
Vivian froze. Her eyebrows knit together. "What's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
"No! I just—" I scrambled back, putting a few inches of safety between us. "I'm just jumpy. Bad sleep. You know how it is."
"You're acting weird," she said, her voice shifting from soft to suspicious. She didn't move, but her eyes narrowed, scanning my face. "Actually, you've been acting weird for three days. Every time I get close, you bolt. Why?"
"I don't bolt," I argued, crossing my arms. "I just have a lot on my plate. Work is... stressful."
"Working as a freelance consultant shouldn't make you look like you're expecting a firing squad," Vivian said. She stepped forward again, her curiosity piqued. "And there's something else. I can't put my finger on it, but whenever I'm around you lately..."
My blood turned to ice. "What?"
"You smell like her," Vivian said quietly.
I stopped breathing. "Like who?"
"Fallstar. That metallic, burnt-ozone scent. The smell of a gravity well right before it collapses." Vivian's voice was no longer soft. It was clinical. Professional. The voice of a hero hunting a predator. "I smelled it on the wreckage of the bank vault last week. And now, standing here... I smell it on you."
I forced a laugh, though it sounded more like a wheeze. "I—I don't know what you're talking about. I probably just walked through some smog or... or maybe it's my perfume?"
"You don't wear perfume, Tess," Vivian said.
She didn't grab me. She didn't tackle me. She just moved in, her presence suddenly overwhelming, cutting off my escape routes. She leaned in, her nose almost touching the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply. I could feel her breath on my skin, a warm contrast to the sheer terror flooding my veins.
"It's faint," she whispered, her voice vibrating against my skin. "But it's there. Why do you smell like the most dangerous villain in the city?"
I backed up until my spine hit a cold metal pillar. I was trapped. The power imbalance was screaming in my ears—she was the law, the strength, the one with the moral high ground. I was a fraud in a cheap blazer with a slave collar around my neck.
"I don't know!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "Maybe I'm just unlucky! Maybe the city just smells like that now!"
Vivian pulled back just enough to look me in the eye. Her expression was a heartbreaking mix of hope and horror. She wanted me to be innocent. She wanted the girl she liked to be real. But the hero in her was winning.
"Lying doesn't suit you," she said, her voice hardening. "And it definitely doesn't work when you're shaking this hard."
"I'm not lying," I whispered, though I was. I was lying with every breath.
Suddenly, the collar around my neck didn't just feel heavy—it burned. A sharp, searing heat bloomed against my skin, a warning from Silas. He was watching. He was always watching. The heat intensified, a jagged pulse of electricity that made my muscles lock.
I gasped, clutching at my throat, my fingers digging into the fabric of my shirt to hide the glowing red light beginning to seep through the collar's edge.
Vivian's eyes dropped to my hand. She saw the way I was clutching my neck. She saw the sudden tension in my shoulders.
"Tess?" she asked, her voice laced with a new kind of urgency. "What's happening? Are you hurt?"
She reached out to pull my hand away, to see what I was hiding. Her fingers brushed my wrist, and for a second, the warmth of her touch fought against the searing heat of the collar. I wanted to scream. I wanted to push her away and run until my lungs burst.
But she didn't let go. She gripped my wrist, her strength surprising me, and she leaned in closer, her face inches from mine. The air between us was electric, charged with suspicion and something far more volatile.
"Look at me," she commanded.
I looked. I saw the hero who would arrest me without hesitation if she knew the truth. I saw the girl who had smiled at me like I was the only person in the world.
Vivian's gaze shifted, her eyes narrowing as she caught a glimpse of something beneath my collar—a flicker of crimson light, a mechanical pulse that didn't belong on a civilian.
She didn't pull away. She moved even closer, her lips nearly brushing my ear, her voice a low, dangerous thread of sound that sent a shiver of pure dread down my spine.
"Don't lie to me," she whispered. "Tell me right now who you're working for, or I'll make you."