“ROWAN!”
But it’s useless.
I’m too late.
Lucien moves before I’m even halfway there. One clean stroke. Steel through skin, and Rowan’s throat splits opens.
No sound. Not at first.
Just the fall of his body. The blood. The impossible stillness.
Then—Ezzy’s scream.
It rips through the air—raw, animal, the kind of sound that doesn’t fade, itburns. It vibrates through me, through everything, shaking loose what’s left of me.
My knees drop to the floor. “No, no, no, no” I didn’t get to say goodbye. Didn’t get to say thank you. Didn’t get to sayanything. He was trying to help. He was trying to help and now?—
Threads surge up before I even mean to call them, flaring white-hot and violent, bursting through me like wildfire. I can’thold them back. I don’t want to. They crash through my skin in jagged spirals of light—air and water and fury—fire in my veins.
“You bastard!” I scream at Lucien as I hurl them forward. Every ounce of me, breaking.
I mean to kill him. I want to.
The magic hits—For a second, I think they’ll hold—but then something shifts, they rebound. A shockwave slams into my chest, a violent, twisting kick of power. It burns up my arms, knocks me flat on my back, and before I can drag in a breath, Lucien’s already there. His hand clamping down on my shoulder, forcing me to the ground. I struggle, twisting, clawing, but it’s like trying to fight a storm.
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small, damp cloth, and slams it over my mouth and nose.
I jerk back, try to twist free, but his grip is unbreakable. A deep inhale, and my Threads falter. Vision blurs.
Ezzy’s still screaming somewhere far away—her voice cracking, fading. I try to reach for her. For Rowan. Foranything.
But the world tilts sideways.
And then?—
Black.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“You fucking killed him.” The words tear out of me—ragged, cracked—like they clawed their way up from somewhere too deep to reach.
Lucien doesn’t flinch. Just drags me into my dorm and pushes me aside. I stumble—catch myself on the edge of the desk—and fuck, it hits me.
Not just the shaking, or the cold, or the haze curling through my head.Pain. All of it. The second I stop moving, it slams in, raw and radiating. Every hit from the Trials, every bruise, every blow. There was too much fight in me to feel it then. But now? It’s all here. My right arm’s the worst. Throbbing to the bone, deep and hot.
“Why did you do it?” I mean to scream, instead, it breaks low and raw in my throat.
Lucien doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t say a word. Just unties the rope around my wrists, like this is just another job, and shuts the door behind him with a quiet click that sounds louder than it should.
Fucking coward.
I want to throw something. I want to burn the air with what’s still coiling under my skin, but I don’t.Because I need to try and figure out what just happened without falling apart.Ezzy’s not here; they split us the second we got back, said they’d question us one by one. She went first, and I’m next.
I press my palm against the wall. Reach. Try to feel my Threads. But they feel heavy. Sluggish.Wrong. Like trying to move with weights strapped to every limb.
A tightness sweeps across my chest, part pain, part something else. Like my body’s holding something it can’t name.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Breathe. Just breathe.
