They fear me. They see me as the enforcer. As the one who kept this system running.
And they’re right.
Then Bree goes rigid beside me.
“Mairen,” she breathes.
I follow her gaze across the courtyard. A woman kneels in the garden, hands in the dirt, collar glowing at her throat. Her face is lined with exhaustion, but I recognize her—the one who cooked for us, for everyone, who came to the sanctuary months ago with her family.
Beside her, a man works silently. Torn. Her husband.
And further back, near the stone wall—their son, Kellan. Barely sixteen, shoulders hunched under the weight of a collar that shouldn’t exist.
Bree’s hand finds mine, squeezing so hard it hurts.
“They came here for safety,” she whispers, voice breaking. “I promised them safety.”
More faces turn toward us now. The collars flare, then flicker—fighting her Ether and losing.
Mairen looks up. Her eyes widen—recognition, then hope, then fear all crossing her face in the span of a heartbeat.
My voice cracks when I finally find it.
“Stop.”
The entire courtyard goes still.
Chapter 38
Rhett
By the time we reach the gate, the guards are out cold—laid down gentle by Bree’s Ether, not a mark on them.
Thane and Bree stand inside the courtyard, every eye fixed on them. Every collar still glows faintly in the morning light. Every breath feels wrong.
I step through the arch and stop.
She’s shaking.
Not from fear—from everything she’s holding back. Her Ether rises around her, bright enough to paint the air itself silver. The sun climbs over the wall behind her, turning the mist into light.
The Feeders stare like they don’t believe what they’re seeing.
Maybe they don’t.
Hell, maybe I don’t.
Gray moves up beside me, tension coiled in every line of his body. Theo’s eyes are distant, seeing futures I don’t want to know about. Jace’s usual grin is gone, replaced by something harder. Zira next to Riley, who’s almost standing on her own.
The courtyard is too quiet. The kind of quiet that comes from people who’ve forgotten what hope sounds like.
It’s deafening.
The collars hum—faint and constant, like insects in summer heat. But underneath that, I feel something worse. The pressure of despair radiating off the crowd, thick enough to choke on.
My fire senses it like temperature. Pain has weight. Grief has heat.
And there’s so much of it here I can barely breathe.
