I twist violently, finally managing to wrench one arm free as the drug haze fractures under sheer terror. I slide off the bunk, collapsing to the floor in a tangle of limbs and restraints. My knees slam into the cold surface, pain shooting up my legs.
I don’t care.
I curl in on myself, fingers clawing at the smooth white floor like I can dig through it. Like if I just try hard enough, I can tear a hole back to the jungle. Back to him.
Frederick straightens, watching me with detached concern. “Ayla, control yourself.”
I don’t hear him anymore.
All I can hear is Kallus’s voice in my head. Low and fierce. The way he said my name like it mattered. Like it was a promise.
I scream.
“KALLUS!”
The word rips out of me, raw and ragged, shredding my throat. I scream it again, and again, until my voice breaks completely.
“KALLUS! KALLUS! KALLUS!”
I rock back and forth on the floor, sobbing, the cuffs biting into my skin, tears blurring the sterile white into nothing. Mychest burns. My lungs seize. I can’t breathe without saying his name.
I don’t know how long it goes on.
Eventually, strong hands grab my shoulders, forcing me upright. A needle prick. Cold fire sliding into my veins.
The world softens at the edges.
As darkness closes in, the last thing I see is Frederick standing over me, expression satisfied.
And the last thing I say—barely a whisper, barely a sound—is his name.
“Kallus.”
CHAPTER 16
KALLUS
Pain wakes me.
Not the clean kind. Not the sharp, honorable pain of a blade bite or a broken bone earned in combat. This is thick and wet and wrong—like my body is full of shattered glass and fire both, like something vital has been cracked and is leaking.
I drag in a breath and taste blood.
My vision swims. The world comes back in fragments: stone ceiling fractured by smoke, alarms howling in jagged bursts, the copper reek of spilled life everywhere. The stronghold groans around me, wounded and furious, its bones shuddering under distant impacts.
I try to move.
Agony answers.
My left side screams when I shift—burned flesh, torn muscle. One of my bone spurs is snapped clean near the shoulder, the exposed marrow buzzing with pain. My armor is half-melted, fused to skin in places. Someone—Brom, I think—has slapped a field seal over the worst of it, but I can feel how close it came. How close I came.
I force myself upright anyway.
“Ayla,” I rasp.
The word scrapes out of my throat like gravel.
The bond answers—not with warmth, not with presence, but withabsence. A screaming void where she should be. Cold. Wrong. Empty.
