The girl I was trying to protect.
The girl they’d tortured and killed.
Fire twisted into a vortex, drawing deep into my heart like a planet about to become a blackhole. Every molecule of heat, every thread of anger, every splinter of grief and helplessness and rage, rage,ragegathered into a crushing supernova.
Oxygen bent toward me.
Pebbles danced by my boots.
I coughed up another mouthful of blood as my marrow charred. The power took everything, killing me to keep a promise. A promise to make everyone pay.
The guards kept firing—muzzles flashing, sulphur rising—but the sound warped and slowed as if I controlled time itself. My vision fractured with every bullet. Stalactites dripped like candle wax.
And only once they’d run out of ammunition did I turn to face them.
My arms tightened around the dead girl as I glowered at the men who’d done this.
She was hungry?
Well, so the fuck was I.
Absolutely starving for retribution.
All it took was a thought.
The supernova inside my chest collapsed. Reversed.Boomed.
They didn’t just burn—they vanished. Reduced to carbon shadows and gone.
I summoned hell and hell answered and the fire targeted my mind in payment.
Every heartbeat cost me something.
A name.
A memory.
The pieces that kept me human. The memories I treasured and the moments with Rook all blurred. My childhood shrivelled like burning photographs, erasing my past, deleting the man I’d been.
Staggering backward, I almost dropped the girl as my tendons broke, one by one. My pulse thudded all wrong. My heart fought to keep beating.
The fire was no longer my enemy but my weapon. And mere mortal flesh didn’t stand a chance of containing its wrath.
This was the price.
If I kept going—
There would be nothing left of me.
But if I stopped—
There would be nothing left of them.
Screams hit my ears.
I ran.
The ground ruptured beneath my boots. The earth rumbled, lending me its unimaginable fury as my gaze landed on the woman, man, and newborn. The emaciated panther had collapsed close by, its eyes closed.
