“Thirty minutes,” he says. “Maybe less.” The confession drags something out of him. “Shit. I’m sorry. That’s not what you need to—”
“It’s fine.” The laugh that leaves me is hollow, someone else’s voice speaking through my mouth as I drift untethered, the children’s faces blurring into older ghosts—my parents’ lab, the fire that consumed them, the silence that followed.
Kane starts pacing. Precise steps, too controlled for panic. Four paces left. Pause. Three to the right. He moves as someone counting time by heartbeats.
“Listen to me. We’re not done. There’s still a chance to figure something out. We could split up, or—”
“To what end?” The words spill out. “So I can watch more people die? Let whatever’s inside me tear everyone apart?” My fingers press against the filthy ground, seeking something solid to anchor me to reality. Ice crystals form where my skin touches stone, spreading in delicate patterns. Even now, that ancient power bleeds through my control.
“Maybe I should’ve let him do it,” I whisper. “Allowed Astrafel to burn it all. At least then I would’ve died by choice, not like some gutter rat.” I gesture toward the glamour I wear, this illusion of survival. This skin that doesn’t belong to me.
“I’m not letting you die in an alley because—”
“Because what? You couldn’t save me?” I cut in, voice splintering. “No one can stop it. I can’t be saved. I was never built for salvation. I was engineered, designed, used.”
We sit in the stillness, time leaking away, thick and rotting, slipping between our fingers while the shadows draw tighter on every side.
The purr of an approaching vehicle ripples through our manufactured calm, and I keep my head bowed, unmoving, as the inevitability of capture settles over me with the weight of a funeralshroud. Whether we face it or flee, the end is written in blood and bone.
“Aria.” Kane’s voice turns sharp again, carved by urgency. “We need to move.”
“What does it matter?” The question falls from my lips. “Let it end on our terms, in the only moment we still control.”
I glance up as a sleek black car approaches the checkpoint, obsidian and chrome, polished to an obscene gleam, its elegance a mockery of our desperation. Each curve and shadow speaks of wealth, of power, of everything we’ve fled.
“Trust Kian to send such a pristine harbinger.” Something between a laugh and a sob claws its way from my throat. “At least we’ll die with flair. He always did prefer his carnage choreographed.”
The car halts at the barrier. Low voices carry across the sterile stretch of stone cloaked in authority. I bow my head, pressing my forehead to knees that won’t stop trembling.
“Is that—” Kane’s breath catches, something like impossible hope threading through his voice. “Holy shit. Is that Rowe?”
The name rips through me and I lift my head too fast, the world tilting as vertigo seizes me by the spine. But I see him. Emerging from the car is a man who has haunted my most private moments. Who has carved himself so deep beneath my skin that no amount of forgetting, no act of looking away, could erase the echo he left behind.
The last time I saw Rowe, he was on his knees fighting to reach me. Now he stands like an avenging god, power rolling off him in waves. His broad frame fills the space between checkpoint barriers, leather jacket catching the harsh light. Even from here, I can see the sharp line of his jaw; the way his presence makes the enforcers shift uneasily.
My body reacts before I can stop it and I lurch forward, some desperate part of me reaching for the only thing that’s ever felt remotely like safety. Kane’s hand clamps around my arm, but I wrench free before he pulls me back.
“Aria, don’t—”
“Rowe!”
“For fuck’s sake!” Kane swears, his voice crashing behind me as he gives chase. “Get back here!”
The enforcers pivot in unison, heads turning with mechanical efficiency. One of them lets out a dry laugh that grates through his helmet. “How charming. Our lost fugitives return. Come to have your papers corrected, or shall we extend the same courtesy we showed your predecessors?”
The containment spell crashes over us, every molecule of air sharpening into crystalline razors that press inward until breathing becomes a conscious, failing effort. My lungs seize as bones creak under an invisible weight and pain blooms—not as a strike, but as relentless compression, a suffocation that begins in the marrow and crawls outward.
Kane is beside me, his body drawn tight with strain, fury radiating off him in waves. But what unravels me isn’t his pain, but the power rising beneath my skin.
Astrafel answers the call as if he’s been waiting for it. His presence expands within me, not with violence, but with inevitability, pressing against the walls of my consciousness until I can barely distinguish where I end and he begins.
“Rowe, please.” The words come out strangled, but they’re all I have left. I meet his eyes, searching for recognition. His gaze flicks across me and keeps going.
“Do I know you?” Four words, precise as a blade between ribs.
The enforcers laugh again, louder this time, as if the performance is peaking. “Oh, how tragic. Begging the wrong man for mercy. Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll make it quick.”
The pressure builds until my ribs splinter with ache, Kane’s breath stuttering beside me as the edges of my vision darken and Astrafel pushes harder. He wants out. He doesn’t ask but demands. My magic, my body, my will—none of it is mine while he coils there, waiting to be unleashed.
