Something flickers across Seth’s face. Not guilt, exactly. Maybe regret. But not the kind that comes from hurting someone you care about. The kind that comes from a job becoming more complicated than expected.
“Did you report everything?” I press, desperation bleeding into my voice. “Every conversation, every moment I trusted you, every time I let my guard down? Did you tell Phil about all of it?”
The silence stretches between us, heavy and damning. Seth’s grip on my arms shifts slightly, and I catch the smallest curve of his lips. Not cruel, but satisfied. Like he’s exactly where he wants to be.
Like this moment—my terror, my betrayal, my complete helplessness—is what he’s been working toward all along.
The realization breaks something inside me.
Not the gentle kind of breaking that heals clean. The violent kind that leaves jagged edges and makes you dangerous.
“You were supposed to be safe,” I whisper.
The Ether responds to my words, silver light climbing higher around us. But the black threads are spreading through it like poison, and the air begins to taste of metal and lightning.
“You were supposed to be different.”
The crowd shifts restlessly. People step back, sensing something building. Even Phil’s confident expression flickers as the temperature around us drops.
“You were supposed to bemine.”
The last word comes out raw, desperate. Because that’s what hurts the most—not that Seth was working for Phil, but that I thought I finally had someone who was just mine. Someone who chose me without wanting to use me or break me or reshape me into something else.
Someone who saw me as worth protecting instead of worth hunting.
But there is no one like that. There never was.
My eyes find them in the crowd—Gray’s face twisted with something that might be fear, Rhett’s hands clenched uselessly at his sides, Jace looking younger and more lost than I’ve ever seen him. Wes pale and shaking. Theo’s usual calm shattered. Even Thane and Stellan, hanging back with expressions I can’t read.
Even them.
The realization fractures whatever I had left.
The ground splits beneath my feet, hairline cracks spreading outward like a spider web. The ancient stones in the sanctuary walls begin to hum, power flowing through them like they’re remembering something they’d forgotten.
“Let go of me,” I say one more time.
Seth’s hands tighten. “I can’t do that, Bree.”
His voice is gentle. Apologetic, even. But his grip doesn’t loosen.
And that’s when I understand that he’s not going to let me go. That Phil isn’t going to stop. That no one is coming to save me because the person I thought might try is the one holding me prisoner.
I scream.
The Ether explodes outward like a star going nova.
Silver and black light erupts in every direction, tearing through the air with a sound like the world splitting open. The sanctuary responds instantly—stones crack in the walls with reports like gunshots, ancient timber groans and splinters, the very foundations of the building shudder.
The power doesn’t just destroy. It transforms.
Where the silver light touches, impossible flowers bloom from cracked stone. Where the black threads reach, the ground turns to obsidian glass that reflects nothing. The two forces war with each other, creation and destruction locked in perfect, terrible balance.
The earth bucks beneath us like a living thing. Cracks spread outward from where I fall to my knees, radiating through the courtyard in a pattern that looks almost like wings. The air itself burns, crackling with energy that makes every nerve in my body sing.
Glass shatters in every window of the sanctuary. The crowd cries out, hands pressed to their ears as the sound of raw magic tears through the space like breaking metal. Some collapse to their knees. Others run.
And through it all, the sanctuary’s ancient power awakens.
