Eventually, her room swallowed her. The door clicked closed and locked from the outside. Shaking, Audrey fell into bed. Voices throbbed through the walls—too loud, too close. She burrowed under the comforter like a child hiding from monsters.
A metal edge poked her hip. She fumbled and found a flask.
Thank God.
She drank, wrapped herself in her blanket, half-naked and half-conscious, and finally succumbed to sleep.
Hours later, the door didn’t open so much as explode inward, slamming against the wall hard enough to rattle the bedframe. Even the narrow slash of hallway light made Audrey recoil, shielding her eyes with a hiss. Light felt wrong this morning. It stabbed at her skull like needles. Kat stormed in, flooding the room with a sterile, merciless glare. Audrey sat hunched on the bed, trying to assemble memory shards into something coherent.
Coming here. Falling down. Maybe sleeping. Maybe dying a little.
Kat tossed a backpack onto the bed. “God,” she muttered, taking in Audrey’s face. “I’ve seen benders, but you?—”
She cut herself off.
Audrey didn’t need a mirror to know she looked terrible. She felt it—her skin was too tight and her blood too loud. “Just breathe,” Audrey whispered to herself.
Kat gave her an impatient gesture.Move.
Audrey obeyed. She washed her face, dragged a brush through her hair, zipped her jacket, and laced her boots.
Outside, the cold didn’t just hit her—it pierced her. She gasped as clarity washed over her like ice water.
Kat rummaged in the bag and thrust gloves, a hat, and a rough scarf at her. Audrey took them gratefully and stumbled after her—until she nearly collided with Kat’s back.
Her teacher had stopped dead, staring upward at the gate. Audrey followed her gaze.
Something dangled from the high stone arch, swaying in the wind.
At first, she didn’t understand what she was seeing. Just boots turning slowly in the air. Hands swollen and purple. Then the body rolled.
Felix.
The same man who had shared cigarettes with her in the yard. The same man who had laughed when she butchered her first sentence in Voírían. The same man who had pressed a lighter into her hand and told her she’d need it here.
Audrey’s stomach dropped.
I did this.
His face—what was left of it—caught the light like a grotesque lantern. The bruising around his throat was new. Ryker’s work. Felix’s name rose in her throat, but Kat grabbed her chin and forced her to look.
“No,” Kat said softly. “Not today. You don’t get to look away.”
Audrey’s breath left her in a choked sound.
“Remember this,” Kat said. “Power without control kills people.”
Her eyes flicked briefly to Felix.
“I’ve watched it happen before. Not just once,” Kat added, quieter now. “Not just to trainees. To friends. To people who thought one bad night, one bad choice, one little loss of control could be cleaned up in the morning.” She shook her head. “Home Field remembers everything.”
Then she looked at Audrey with fresh disgust. “So, when I tell you Felix is dead because this place punishes weakness faster than mercy can reach it, I need you to understand I’m not speaking in metaphors.”
Kat let go of Audrey’s chin and looked up at Felix for a long moment. He wasn’t just another warning hung up for public use; Kat knew Felix, maybe even liked him. Her mouth tightened once, hard enough to make the scar near her lip go white. “He was stupid,” she said at last. “Careless. Too soft where it mattered.” Her voice should have sounded dismissive. It didn’t. “But he was ours.”
Audrey said nothing. She couldn’t.
Kat stepped closer to the hanging body and, very briefly, pressed two fingers to her own chest in a gesture Audrey didn’t recognize. Mourning, maybe. Or apology. Then the moment disappeared, and Kat’s face hardened again.
