And rip.
The metal screams.
My arms burn.
The door tears loose from its frame with a shriek that echoes down the corridor and I throw it aside hard enough to crater the opposite wall.
She’s sitting on the cot inside.
Bruised.
Bloodied.
Upright.
Eyes locked on me like she’s been waiting for this exact moment her entire life.
“Tur,” she breathes.
The bond slams into equilibrium so hard it almost knocks me off my feet.
I take one step into the cell.
Then another.
And for the first time since they took her, I let myself breathe.
CHAPTER 25
KIMBERLY
The cell door doesn’t open.
It stops existing.
The steel sags inward first, glowing orange at the edges like it’s trying to remember how to be solid, and then it peels back with a shriek that scrapes down my spine, the metal folding and tearing like wet paper under forces it was never built to withstand. Heat rolls into the room in a brutal wave, chasing smoke and sparks and the sharp, coppery tang of burned circuitry, and the recessed light strip above me flickers once before dying entirely, plunging the cell into a dim, firelit half-dark.
Then Tur steps through the smoke.
For half a second my brain refuses to categorize what I’m seeing, because whatever is standing in my doorway no longer fits inside the mental box labeled “man.”
He’s taller than he was the last time I saw him, or maybe it just feels that way because the bone spurs are fully deployed now, ivory arcs rising from his forearms and shoulders and spine in lethal, elegant curves that gleam with blood and firelight. His armor is scorched and gouged and dented, black composite split open in places to show raw skin beneath, and there’s a dark, wetburn blooming across his shoulder where plasma clipped him hard enough to cook flesh under the plating.
The corridor behind him is a ruin.
Concrete walls cratered and blackened.
Lights shattered.
Smoke boiling out of open doorways.
Nine enforcers scattered across the floor in grotesque, unmoving shapes, their weapons lying where they fell, one of them still twitching weakly and making a wet, animal sound that cuts off when Tur shifts his weight and something inside him snaps.
More screaming echoes from farther down the hall.
Not fear screaming.
Dying screaming.
