Audrey spat blood into the frozen dirt. “Some fucking teacher you are.”
Kat moved with inhuman speed, hauling Audrey upright by the neck. A low growl poured from her throat. “I am sick of your bullshit,korítsi mikró.”
“What does that even mean?”
Kat’s smile was sharp as flint. “Little girl. But you can take it as ‘little bitch.’” A chill knifed through Audrey. She’d been lying to herself. Kinship? Belonging? This woman could and would kill her if she failed.
“Mihail and I stuck our necks out for you. Don’t make us regret it.”
Audrey struggled against the chokehold.
Kat leaned closer. “Hating yourself isn’t strength. Hating everyone else isn’t a strength.” She paused. “The only creature standing in your way is you.”
Then she released Audrey, letting her drop into the dust.
“Now do something that resembles success—and do it soon.”
Fear flickered under Kat’s disdain—the first honest emotion Audrey had caught from her. She was afraid for Audrey if she kept failing.
“Your chances with me are running out,” Kat said, stepping back. “And you will not like what comes after.”
Audrey lay in the dirt, humiliation burning hotter than any Voírían flame. If she couldn’t master her abilities, Ryker would kill her. Then he’d go after Cary.
She had days—maybe a week.
Audrey forced herself to her feet, every muscle trembling with exhaustion and buried rage.
Kat turned to leave. Then paused. “Next time,” she said without looking back, “try controlling it instead of fighting it.”
Audrey followed, steeling herself for whatever fresh hell Maren had planned next.
Maren hadn’t likedher from the moment their eyes met.
Her hostility had been instinctive, immediate, as though something in Audrey’s blood triggered an old predator’s response. Audrey had hoped time might soften it.
Instead, the loathing only sharpened.
Audrey had learned enough in scraps to know Maren was not just another bitter woman with a grudge. She had survived Conscription before she was twenty, survived a Field transfer after that, and come out with enough control to be trusted around unstable recruits without losing her nerve. Other women stepped aside when Maren crossed the yard. Guards listened when she spoke. Even Kat didn’t waste words challenging her.
Once, Audrey had seen a younger trainee lose control of a floating blade. Before anyone else moved, Maren had snapped her hand sideways and sent the weapon spinning harmlessly into the dirt without even looking up from the cigarette she was rolling. No panic. No flourish. Just reflex born from repetition.
That was what made her hatred harder to dismiss. She was cruel because she had survived this place so completely that part of her had fused with it.
Part of her hate, Audrey suspected, was resemblance.
Maren looked disturbingly like her, with the same dark curls, almond-shaped black eyes, and olive skin, lit cold under Nepra’s sky. Smaller, narrower, but edged like a blade. Audrey’s curves felt like liabilities in a culture of carved stone bodies, and her gold-ringed eyes marked her as something else.
Something more dangerous.
Maren lacked that—but not power.
Audrey obeyed Ryker’s rule. Mostly. She stopped reading minds. Stopped slipping through thoughts like fingers through silk. But emotional bleed? That she couldn’t stop.
By then, two weeks of training had taught her something ugly: Home Field didn’t care whether she learned. It cared whether she could be pushed into usefulness before somethingin her broke the wrong way. Every correction came with a clock behind it. Every failure tightened the atmosphere around her. No one had said it out loud, but Audrey could feel it stalking her in the spaces between orders.
That was why Maren’s strictness mattered. Why Kat’s impatience mattered. Why every guard’s glance felt heavier than it had the week before. She was running out of time to become whatever Ryker needed—or to escape before they decided she wasn’t worth the trouble.
Maren’s emotions battered her constantly—distrust, frustration, and something else.
