Without Your Persmission

Chapter 4: Orbiting Fire

Gretta was slicing pears with the kind of vengeance that suggested she had run out of other ways to say, I'm worried about you.

I watched from the kitchen table, cradling a mug that had long gone cold. She was barefoot, in her faded yellow robe that should've been retired five years ago. Her hair was up in a messy bun, pencils stuck in it like it was a makeshift quiver for a war she hadn't chosen.

The apartment was dim, lit only by the low moan of dusk filtering through gauzy curtains. My sketchbooks were strewn across the floor like casualties. Unopened mail. Unanswered calls. Half-drunk tea.

"Do you even know what day it is?" Gretta asked. Her tone was casual, too casual.

I lifted a shoulder. "Thursday?"

"It's Monday."

"Oh."

She slid the plate of pears toward me, sat across the table, and studied me with her art dealer eyes—the kind that could detect microcracks in oil varnish and emotional disintegration in a breath.

"I'm going to say something, and I want you to just...hear it. No spinning. No metaphors."

I nodded, knowing I'd do the opposite.

"I think you're getting obsessive again."

There it was. Neatly placed between two slices of fruit. Cold, precise, infuriatingly accurate.

I sipped the cold tea. "When have I ever not been obsessive?"

"This is different." She leaned forward. "You're disappearing again, Rory. You do this. You get caught in your head and let it rot you from the inside out. I've seen this before."

I bit a slice of pear and said nothing.

"You were doing better," she continued. "The exhibit, the press, that magazine wanted to interview you—do you even remember that? And now look at you. You're... gone. You're here, but you're not here."

She was right, of course. I had gone somewhere else. Somewhere darker, somewhere warmer. Into the warm red undercurrent of Alistair Craven.

But I couldn't tell her that. I couldn't tell anyone that I had watched him dissolve sugar packets just to tear the corners off them perfectly. Or that I knew the exact tempo he jogged at—172 bpm. That his lips moved when he read from his phone. That he had started carrying gloves again, even though it was barely autumn. That he used his left hand to gesture only when he was lying.

So I smiled. "I'm just working. That's all."

"I know you," she said softly. "You're not working. You're... orbiting something. Or someone."

My smile froze. A heartbeat passed. Maybe two.

Then, mercifully, my phone buzzed on the table.

Gretta looked at it like it was my lifeline. I looked at it like it might explode.

The email preview was brief:

Subject: Exclusive Artist Residency Invitation

From: Craven Group of Companies

My chest went still.

Craven.

I tapped the screen with a finger that betrayed no tremor. The message opened clean and polite.

Ms. Quinn,

We are pleased to extend to you a personal invitation to participate in the upcoming Winter Artist Residency, sponsored by the Craven Group of Companies. This program selects only three visual artists annually and includes a fully-funded stay at the Fairhaven Estate in Wrenloch for the duration of six weeks. Your work has long impressed our benefactor, Mr. Arthur Craven, who is eager to meet you in person.

More details to follow should you accept.

Warm regards,

Naomi Montjoy

Executive Liaison, Craven Cultural Initiatives

The words blurred. My fingers tightened around the phone. Somewhere inside me, a wire snapped.

"Who was that?" Gretta asked, peering.

I handed her the phone.

She read. Her face lit up.

"Oh my God. Aurora. This is huge. The Craven Group? Do you understand how big this is?"

I nodded, mute.

"This is—this is career-defining. This is—wait. You don't look excited."

"I'm just surprised."

"No. You're scared. Why?"

I stared at the wall behind her, at a dent in the plaster I hadn't noticed before. "Arthur Craven wants to meet me."

Gretta frowned. "You've never mentioned him."

I hadn't. But of course I had thought of him. The old man who still carried the empire of Craven on his hunched shoulders. Alistair's only living relative. Rumored to be brilliant, exacting, dangerously observant. I had once read that Arthur could detect a lie before it left a person's mouth.

I wondered what he'd see if I spoke.

I wondered if he'd see the shape of his grandson inside my irises.

"I'll think about it," I said.

Gretta gaped at me. "No. You'll say yes. You don't think about things like this."

"I do."

She narrowed her eyes. "Unless you're afraid it'll bring you too close to something you don't want to admit."

I didn't respond. She didn't push. We were used to dancing around volcanoes.

⸻

After she went to bed, I turned off all the lights and sat at the kitchen floor, back to the cabinets, heart thudding like it was trapped in the wrong century.

Alicia Crestwell hadn't appeared in three days.

Not in Alistair's coffee shop. Not in the jog path. Not on any of the social media alerts. Not even on her own.

Which meant one of two things.

She was either gone.

Or she was gathering.

The text still haunted me.

You're not as invisible as you think.

It had the acidic brevity of a woman who'd seen more than I wanted her to. It had Alicia's sharpness. Alicia's timing.

She hadn't just disappeared. She was watching me in return.

I had to vanish first.

⸻

So I scrubbed my phone. I turned off the alerts. I archived the emails. I deleted the surveillance folder. I stayed away from Brine & Bloom, even though it physically hurt me not to see him, even from afar.

I stopped jogging early. I changed my walking route. I turned my phone off at night and put it in the freezer, just in case.

I told Gretta I was working again. I started a new series called Distance.

It was all lies.

Every brushstroke was a scream I couldn't let out.

Every day without Alistair was a slow bleeding.

He was my favorite wound.

⸻

A week passed like water in my lungs.

On the eighth day, I received a call from a private number.

I answered on the fourth ring, voice a blade.

"Aurora Quinn speaking."

"Ms. Quinn," a warm male voice said, refined and low. "This is Arthur Craven."

The room went still.

"I apologize for the sudden intrusion. I've long admired your work. I make it a rule never to meet artists whose work I love—most don't survive the conversation. But I'm old, and I'd like to break the rule at least once more before I die."

My mouth was dry. "That's... very kind, Mr. Craven."

"I saw your painting Repose in Hunger at the Briarstone exhibit. It frightened me. That's rare. I want to know what else frightens you."

I swallowed. "What do you mean?"

He chuckled. "Only a creature who fears herself can make something like that. Come to dinner. Just you and me. My estate. No press."

I could barely breathe. "Of course. I'd be honored."

"Good." He paused. "And Aurora?"

"Yes?"

"I don't frighten easily. But I know when someone's hunting."

Click.

⸻

The Fairhaven Estate was built like a secret. Set in the hills like it had grown from the stone, ivy wrapping the bones of it like it was ashamed to be exposed.

I wore black. Always black. Hair pinned. Minimal makeup. I knew what image I wanted to project: self-contained, quiet, unshakeable.

A woman who could gut you with a paintbrush and then walk away without apology.

Arthur greeted me with a glass of red wine and a chessboard already set.

"You play?" he asked.

"Only when I want to lose," I replied.

"Good." He grinned. "That means you think several moves ahead."

Dinner was polite. Two courses. Perfectly seasoned. A chef I never saw.

He asked me about art. About my methods. My materials. My muses.

I lied.

He didn't call me on it.

Until dessert.

"What would you paint," he asked, "if no one were watching? If no one would ever see it but you?"

My throat closed.

"Is that what you ask your grandson?"

Arthur laughed. "Ah. So we've arrived."

I said nothing.

He leaned back. "You're not the first woman to orbit Alistair. But you're the first one he's ever noticed back."

My pulse spiked. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Yes, you are."

I held his gaze. "And do you disapprove?"

He studied me, eyes bright. "I think obsession is the only honest form of love. The rest is marketing. I just wonder if you've calculated how close you want to get before the fire eats you alive."

I exhaled.

Then smiled.

"I brought my matches, Mr. Craven."

⸻

Later that night, he walked me to the door himself.

"I hope you accept the residency," he said. "We need more women who terrify."

"Thank you," I whispered.

"And Ms. Quinn?"

"Yes?"

He handed me a card.

It was blank but smelled faintly of turpentine and firewood.

"Be careful who watches you watching."

The door closed.

And I knew I had just entered the heart of the house.

Not through Alistair.

But through the blood that made him.