❝ But I can't turn a blind eye anymore, Osiris.
I'm not going to sit idly by and wait for someone to do something.
I'm not going to turn away those in need when I should have the power to save them.❞
(𝙢𝙤𝙤𝙣 𝙠𝙣𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙣 1)
(𝙖𝙡𝙡...
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He stood there, almost like a ghost pulled straight from a memory—familiar, yet entirely out of place in the pulsating chaos of the bar. The colored lights flickered across his face, catching the hard line of his jaw, the dark curl of his hair, but it was his eyes that truly held her in place. Focused. Unflinching. They locked onto hers with the kind of weight that could strip someone bare.
"Well, what do you know? Didn't expect we'd get to have a reunion like this, Elle," he said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in something like a smile. But it didn't reach his eyes. Not even close.
Elizabeth's breath caught in her throat. The noise around them—the music, the laughter, the clinking of glasses—faded into a low hum. Her body went still.
"What... what are you doing here?" she asked, barely recognizing her own voice. It sounded thinner than she meant it to. Unprepared.
His smile tightened, like he'd expected the question. "I could ask you the same thing," he said, voice easy but clipped at the edges. His eyes flicked over her shoulder, quick and assessing. When they returned to her, they'd hardened.
That look—sharp, calculating, scanning for exits and threats—it wasn't Steven.
Elizabeth stared at him, piecing together the subtle cues. The way he stood, shoulders squared, feet planted just right. The way his gaze kept moving, even when his face didn't. His body wasn't relaxed—it was braced.
She knew this stance.
This wasn't the soft-hearted, fumbling Steven Grant she'd known.
This was Marc Spector.
And that realization made her blood run cold.
Elizabeth didn't know what to do with her hands. One of them stayed locked around her cocktail glass, the condensation slick between her fingers, the other clenched into a tight fist by her side. Her jaw tightened, a tremble running through it as her teeth ground together behind pursed lips. She couldn't stop staring at him—at Marc. Not Steven. Not the man who had once smiled at her like she was something bright in a world full of shadows.
Marc.
Her pulse thudded in her throat, heat rising under her skin like a fever. Her nails dug into the cool glass as the memory of Cairo slammed into her with full force—her mother's blood, the frantic whispers of gods, and the sharp sting of betrayal.
He was there.
He was part of it.
Marc Spector had a hand in the night that destroyed everything.
Her fingers twitched, itching to summon a feather blade—to carve out the grief that still burned in her bones. The feather blade responded like a heartbeat in her palm, thrumming beneath the surface, begging to be released.
But she didn't.
Not here. Not now. Not when she was standing in a dress laced with Horus' magic, in a room full of criminals and shadows, and Marc was looking at her like she still might forgive him.
